Running in the Heat

Alright, a metaphor-thingy occurred to me regarding the whole writing/workaday deal that I was rather sloppily mentioning previously. It's not particularly original or anything, just two Things I'm Dealing With (/With Which I'm Dealing) that frustrate me in parallel ways.

Writing, for me, is like running. (Told you. But bear with me.) They are both activities I try to do regularly, and sometimes I even get pretty good at building up a habit. Sometimes I am compelled to do these activities, even at inopportune times. Sometimes I really just don't want to, and I feel good about myself when I make myself go through it anyway. And, of course, sometimes it's easier than others. 

We are in a brutal heat wave right now, or in other words, business as usual for Louisiana summer. Not even August and I sweat standing still. So even a sedate jog seems like an exercise (ha) in insanity, not to mention an invitation for heat stroke. I have more or less given up on complaining abut the weather, especially during the summer (i.e. 9-10 months out of the year), but now when I want to run, I have to do at least a mental rant every time. Because it sucks. In addition to undergoing suffocation in motion (I am breathing but oh god where is all of the delicious oxygen?), I am so much slower during the summer. So much. And it's really, really difficult to go out there knowing I am going to drown in my own sweat and take ten minutes longer to go the same distance I always do, especially when it was so much easier just a few months ago. In the fall/winter I actually feel good when I go for a run, all zesty and energized--like how I hear exercise is supposed to make you feel. And I get better at it, and run faster, and look all cute in my shorts. Then summer rears its ugly hot humid head and oh god why. But you know what? In the last week, I've done my usual run--the long one, 2.8 miles--three times. Three. It wasn't pretty, but dammit I did it anyway. Take that, stifling weight of summery sluggishness.

My writing (and my attitude towards it) tends to follow a cycle of furious advancement followed by long plateaus. After having such a great semester of words, I fear--I know--that I am about to hit/hitting one of those plateaus, one which threatens to be impressively bleak and barren. And since my periods of good progress tend (not coincidentally, obviously) to coincide with workshops where I am being forced to read and write and interact with my peers, I am particularly nervous about this dry spell--for the first time in a long time, there are no formal workshops in my forseeable future (informal ones will be attempted, but those have a history of falling apart rather consistently). Making myself write during these times wreaks havoc on my psyche bordering on physical pain. I realized today, not incidentally on my run, that this is more or less exactly what trying to run in the summer is like (Ok I am thinking really hard but oh god where are all of the brilliant words?). Except somehow it is easier to make myself finish a run, and then start another, and another, than it is for me to keep writing. Or start writing. Or restrain from burning my notebook. But dammit, I need to keep doing it anyway. Because if I stop now, I'm afraid I won't ever start again. And I refuse to have that particular weight of regret on my (now tanned) shoulders.

So I won't. Get ready summer, because you about to get all churned up in my pigheaded determination to forge through this writing plateau. Now, take that.