A Better Blog…in 31 Days
If I'm breaking some sort of law...I'll take this down.
Along with another million or so people.
There’s this section of the blog that he’s been doing for a couple of years called “31 Days to Build a Better Blog“, and I’ve decided to do it. And blog about it. Just like my hero, Darren Rowse. See how that works?
If you’re new here, you should know that I have no aspirations of being “A-List”, but I certainly want to be better. This blog will never be in the top 10 visited in the world, but if I made the top 1,000, that’d be pretty cool. Maybe this is the first step in that direction.
Each day, I’m going to do the task assigned, and then I’m going to write about that task. Unless, of course, the task is to write a post. Then I’ll probably just do the one. I am pretty lazy, after all.
So sit back and enjoy my attempt to move from the E-List, to the D-List of bloggers!
Stuff I Don’t Quite Like. Not Quite.
Anarchy bad. Conformity good.
I’m ashamed.
Actually I’m not. And I’ve got other stuff like that. Stuff that everybody else seems to just lurve, meanwhile, I don’t get it. So, as part of my quest to become gooder, I’m going to catharsisize here and share them with you. In no particular order of dislike:
- Dave Matthews Band: Yep, this is actually redundant.
- Yoga: I really, really want to like this. Cause it looks so cool to be all bendy like that.
- House: The TV Show. I suppose I understand, cause Hugh Laurie is pretty much a genius. Everyone else is great. That kid from Dead Poets Society…awesome. Yeah, but has anyone else ever noticed that every single episode is…the same? Like, exactly the same. Not in the typical CSI sort of way. More like the writers are pulling a fast one on us. “Heh, heh. They’ll never know we use the exact same plot in every episode, but just change out the names of diseases and stuff!”
Person is sick with some obscure mystery disease. House suspects he knows what it is, but cares more about being right than about people. Kid from Dead Poets Society tries to be his conscience. Boss lady yells at House chief of police style. House’s staff holds him in disdain, and doesn’t believe him despite the fact that he’s always right. Oh no, the person’s going to die! No, wait a minute…oh…yep. House was right. Again.
- John Eldredge Books: For my Christian friends…sorry, I disagree. With, well, lots of stuff he says.
- Google Wave: It’s bad for several reasons. And I’m a nerd for having it on this list.
- The Twilight Books: Oh yes, I did in fact read the first one. My suspicions were correct. Stephenie Meyer is a terrible writer. Not as bad as I am, but still, terrible. Though I guess millions of people can’t be wrong.
Things I’ve Been Within 10ft of On My Commute Run
I think “scorpino” sounds cooler.
On my runs, I’ve seen some crazy stuff. And here is a list of that stuff. For your personal enjoyment.
- A mule deer.
- A coyote who chased me for a ways.
- A bear.
- A momma bunny with about 300 baby bunnies…who decided being alive was more important that being a mommy when she scampered off faster than the babies could keep up.
- A woman in her 60′s. She was passing me.
- A beetle the size of my hand. Not exaggerating.
- A porcupine who “hid” from me by rolling into a rather large spikey ball.
- A group of kids smoking pot.
- A rattlesnake.
- A dog trying to bite me.
- And as of today, a scorpion.
Oh what wonders lie on the trail of…wonder…work…anyway, I see some cool stuff.
Inhibitions Part Deux
A few weeks (or maybe months) ago, I wrote a post about inhibitions in terms of creativity. I was wondering, more than anything else, whether they are good or bad for the creative. This is not to be confused with limitations, which I believe are always good for creativity.
Well, I sort of worked out an analogy this weekend that might explain a bit where I’m at with the whole thing.
Oh, and if you’re a hard core pacifist, you may not relate very well to this analogy.
Imagine when you’re born, your creativity is born with you. An infant, but alive and uninhibited. As a child, just like you likely were, your creativity is somewhat wild, pretty original, and more than a little free.
Problem is, as you get older, inhibitions start to creep in. Imagine inhibitions are those creepy demons in the stripped shirts from the worst Christmas movie of all time, A Christmas Story. These guys crawl in, and grab your creativity. They hold it in this weird, restrained, contorted position. They don’t allow it to go out, experience the world, stretch it’s muscles, work out…nothing. Your creativity is stunted. It’s held back. As you grow up and mature, your creativity is not allowed to do the same. By the time you’re an adult, your creativity is either dead, or a vegetable.
Those creepy dudes come from everywhere. School. Your parents. Your friends. Society. Religion. All of these expectations turn into nasty inhibitions that sneak up and grab your creativity and torture it to death.
My creativity has done a decent job of keeping some of these inhibitions at bay. Not good enough of a job, though. My creativity is out of shape. Some parts of it are atrophied. It’s a little sickly. Functioning, but barely. Still bound up and held down by those striped shirt punks that should have been shot long ago by a Red Ryder carbine-action, two hundred shot Range Model air rifle with a compass in the stock and a thing which tells time.
So now, I need to fight. I need to allow my creativity to fight like an animal. To beat these inhibitions back. Kill them, if necessary. It needs to be violent. Mean. And it needs to push its boundaries. See how far it can run, how much it can lift.
For a while, I need to just…create. Even if it’s shocking. Even if it’s crap. If I need to write a story about a family of little people who cannibalize the citizens of a Michigan town, I need to do that. If I need to write an expose that criticizes the mating habits of raccoons, I need to do that. Doesn’t mean I’ll be creating stuff like this forever. I just gotta get my creativity back in healthy shape.
And it may take some messiness to do it. Those striped-shirt buggers gotta die.
Running Update: The Ascent
America's Greatest Challenge
Actually, that’s not true. I’ve been madly in love with the mountain since then. My first ascent was with a group of friends, and I fell in love with every step of the 13 or so miles. We didn’t even know there was a race then. Not until we saw 80-year-old guys practically sprinting up the final 16 Golden Stairs.
I wanted that.
That first ascent got me to the Springs, and it inspired me to run that race 16 years later.
Now, you should know. I won’t be competitive. In fact, I’ll be a huffin’ and a puffin’ pretty much the entire way up and I’ll still finish somewhere toward the rear side of the middle of the pack. I’m not running this race to win. I’m running it because I love the mountain.
Yeah, yeah, all mush aside, I’m a month away from the adventure of my life. My run in (pun intended) with my first ultra was probably my biggest challenge to date, but my trip up the Pike to eclipse that. By far. A half marathon up a 14-thousand-food mountain. If I didn’t know that my finish time will be mediocre at best, I’d be pretty proud.
Wait, I haven’t run this yet. And some of my previous distance efforts have proven that I can’t quite claim superhumanhood. Not sure if I’ll ever have that honor. I’m happy just to chase superhumans up and down mountains while I pretend to be even close to their level of awesome.
Okay, back to this race. I’ve been running, and I’m a bit injured. It appears, from my armchair, that the fracture from earlier this year has changed my gait, and it’s caused quite the case of tendonitis in my foot/feet. It sucks, but I’m good to go. One thing that’s not so good to go, is my weight, probably the original source of my running injuries.
I’ve been running a little on the heavy side for a while now. I’m not “overweight”, per se. Just heavy for a runner with my frame. That’s haunted my running hobby for a while, but running uphill for 4+ hours means every extra pound really counts. So in addition to logging a decent number of miles, many of them uphill and above 12,000 feet, I gotta lose me some weight.
Normally, I’m not in any way obsessed with pounds. The uphill makes them matter to me.
So I’m going to attempt to drop down considerable weight within healthy limits over the next month. Naturally, I’ll be eating quite a bit from the increased training miles, but I gotta make sure I’m burning more than I’m taking in.
This post has gotten quite a bit longer than I originally intended. My next few posts will be quite a bit briefer.
I promise.
I hope.