Lost

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I have a confession.

A writer’s confession, which should be taken with all the appropriate hand-wavings and grains of salt. When you look at the real problems of the world, my meager problems mean little. But it’s weighing on me nonetheless.

I haven’t worked on my novel in almost two weeks.

On the one hand, I feel okay about that, but on the other hand, I feel very much not okay about that, because I know I’m not going to be able to work on it today, and it’s dubious whether I’ll be able to get to it later this week either. The excuses for this are twofold:

One, it was vacation last week, and as much as writing is a release and an adventure in pink unicorn land, there are days when it’s work, too. And of late, the writing has felt more like work than like a unicorn frolic. As such, a little vacation from it is, I think, warranted, and what better time than when I’m on a vacation from actual work? I got to turn the ol’ brain off, veg out and watch some TV, take the kids and the wife on a few day trips … it was good. Didn’t have to worry about how to get my protagonist out of his latest scrape. Didn’t have to construct the machinations of the villain working behind the scenes. Didn’t have to batter my brain against the Rube Goldberg machine of gears and spindles and flywheels that constitutes the plot of this thing.

Still, I felt guilty about leaving that creative garden untended for the week, sort of the same way I feel about letting my lawn continue to grow, sprouting weeds and dandelions and the occasional mushroom, while my neighbors keep their lawns neatly trimmed.

Sidenote: there’s a new show out called Speechless, about this deadbeat family with a handicapped, mute son. No idea if the show has any staying power or not — the first few episodes have been pretty funny, but who knows — but I at least resonate with the family. Not because they’re jerks — the mother proudly drives in the emergency lane, runs stop signs, and flings bluster and righteous indignation and her son’s handicap at anybody who even looks sideways at her. And I have a hard time getting down with that. What I totally get, though, is that they just don’t give a sharknado what other people think of them. Lawn is overgrown? Paint is peeling? Car’s looking a little dumpy? Yeah, no, we’re not going to fix those things. They just don’t matter to us; we have only so many fargos to give. To that, I give a deep, sonorous AMEN.

So I returned to work on Monday, all set to hunker down and return to the love-hate relationship I have with my current novel. Which brings me to…

Two: I can’t find my flash drive.

Now, before you say anything, know that I’ve already said every possible thing to myself, mostly inside my own head, occasionally in raging, fists-pounding-on-the-desk angry shouts. How can you be so stupid? Haven’t you heard of backups? How could you possibly lose it? Dunce! Idiot! Disorganized, sloppy, careless!

And my excuses are like the rain in Arizona: woefully inadequate, but all there is. I write the novel mostly at my job, so keeping it on the flash drive makes sense for taking it home, back and forth. But I have to steal time at work to write, so I don’t exactly have a routine, and, well, backing up is the last thing I’m thinking about, because usually I’ve either got parent calls to make or meetings to get to or students coming to my room and …

Well, here’s my other dirty confession. I haven’t backed up outside of the flash drive in over a month.

Sigh.

And of course, with the whole of the novel missing (or at least my recent work on it), I can’t re-read to get inspired to write the next bit. Not to mention the soul-crushing stupidity I feel when I think about the project at all, which pushes every creative thought right out of my ears.

But I’m going to have to face up sooner or later. If the drive doesn’t turn up in the next few days, it probably never will; there’s only so many places it could reasonably be, and considering all the places we went over the break … well. That little piece of plastic and silicon could be anywhere in a fifty-mile radius, which means it might as well be on the moon for my likelihood of stumbling across it again.

Luckily, the weather is changing. Morning runs have been downright pleasant — sixty degrees or so with the stars twinkling overhead — and have done good things for my blood, which on Monday was boiling, and which today is only simmering. Further, when I think about it, the beginning of the novel was going to need massive re-working anyway, probably a complete re-write in lots of places, so the first 40,000 words were hardly carved in stone.

Still, for the moment, they’re not carved anywhere, and that’s tough to see around.

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The Weekly Re-Motivator: Awkwardity

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I’ve always been pretty awkward.

That might come as a shock, given my background in theater and my career choice as a teacher and the way I prattle on at length about any- and everything around here, but there it is.

Socially awkward. I’ve even gone so far to consider myself socially retarded. I’m often the quiet guy in the room, not because I don’t want to take part in conversations (well, sometimes), but because I just don’t know what to say. But then, what feels like a comfortable silence to me will turn into an uncomfortable silence in the room, and then I sit there thinking I should really say something, but then the words come out like cow vomit.

I think a lot of people struggle with this, but I also think I maybe have it more than most. (Then again, maybe that’s the old Dunning-Kruger effect talking — that thing that makes you overestimate your experience when you don’t have much. Americans, it turns out, suffer from Dunning-Kruger than most other nationalities.) Like, I know that some people feel awkward sometimes. There are hashtags about it. But for me, it feels like it’s all the time.

And I think that’s part of what compels me to write. Because I screw up these social interactions every day, so I get another crack at them when I create these alternate realities in my own head. And again, I think we all do that — we all play the I shoulda said THIS game — but for a writer, it’s different. When I tell a story, I get to get it right, and (hopefully!) readers get to see me get it right.

They say you should write what you know, and while I think that advice can be overly limiting (if we kept to it, we’d never have science fiction), it’s also pretty impossible to avoid. All writers, I think, write themselves into their stories. And in looking at the stories I’ve written, the characters I’ve spent the most time with… well, it’s safe to say that they’re pretty socially awkward like me.

First novel: A struggling writer battles through his self-doubt with the help of a muse. His only real friend is the one who is financially obligated to spend time with him. Hmm!

Second novel: A girl who is socially segregated because of the role that’s been selected for her by the community. She doesn’t have friends because she will, for all intents and purposed, be “killed” when she comes of age, and everybody knows it. Hmm, hmm!

Third novel: A kid born to superhero parents has no superpowers, but falls in with the superheroes anyway — so that he can learn to exploit them. He trusts none of his “classmates,” and in return they ridicule and fear him. Hmm, hmm, hmm!

So authors write themselves into their stories; this is a trope we’re all familiar with, and I certainly seem to be doing it. But is it a thing we can avoid? Well, with novel #2, the protagonist I described was not actually the protagonist for 80% of the first draft; she was a supporting character who I realized was a lot more compelling than the protagonist I was trying to write. That person was popular, and fit in effortlessly with his social group and with somebody beyond it — and he rang hollow to me for most of the writing. So it can be done, but not without its pitfalls.

Pitfalls. If there’s an apt metaphor for the writing process, it’s a field littered with pitfalls. Because as you build this story for your characters (the ones who are totally yourself), you have to place pitfalls in their path, try to trip them up at every step. But you have to watch out for your own pitfalls, the gaps and the traps that threaten to snag you in the midst of your process. It’s a delicate dance.

And dancing is something we awkward types don’t really do so much.

This weekly remotivational post is part of Stream of Consciousness Saturday. Every weekend, I use Linda G. Hill’s prompt to refocus my efforts and evaluate my process, sometimes with productive results.

 

Heads Against Walls

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Why am I still watching news about Donald Trump?

Why did I stay up late — on my vacation, even — to watch Monday’s debate?

Why do I know what’s been said on both sides about this latest scandal, the beauty queen and what he said about her?

Why do I keep reading like an intern trying to break the big story, clicking every damn headline that has the word “Trump” in it?

He looked into building in Cuba during the embargo. His foundation doesn’t have the proper paperwork. He might have drunk the blood of puppies to get that lovely orange glow. (This isn’t verified, but he would deny it, which basically makes it true.)

Unless you’re new around here, you probably know that I basically made up my mind in this election months ago, when it became clear that Trump would win the Republican nomination. Notice I said when it became clear he would win, not before the primaries ever took place. I tend toward the liberal side of the spectrum, but I might have — and possibly even probably would have — voted for a Marco Rubio or a Jeb Bush over Clinton, who, whether it’s justified or not, does not have a reputation for trustworthiness.

But as soon as Trump became the Republican running man, the Democrats could have put up a trained chimp, for all I care.

Fine and good. I, like most, have made up my mind, and at this point, that opinion might as well be cast in stone.

And yet, like a suburbanite to a Starbucks, I keep coming back. I don’t know why. And that kind of scares me.

Because, in my heart of hearts, I still believe that Trump might not actually want to win this thing. I still suspect, as I have from the beginning, that his campaign is about increasing his own visibility and putting his name in people’s mouths. The “no such thing as bad publicity” principle.

Which means that anything we say to one another only helps this man to get what he wants. And I am not okay with that. Which is why I’ve been relatively silent on the matter for a while.

But dammit, this sharknado is coming to a head, now. It looks very much like the news cycle will consist of Donald Trump first and everything else happening in the world second from now until the election, even though by all accounts, the two sides in this election are fixed in amber. Clinton supporters aren’t going to switch and go for Trump. Trump supporters aren’t going to switch and go for Clinton. All that’s left is the (somehow) undecided people in the middle.

But here’s the problem with that. (For non-Trump supporters.)

With a normal candidate, any strike, any ding on their record, any scandal can do serious damage to their image and their perception. But not Trump. There are so many scandals, so many scars, so many warts all over him already — what harm can another scandal possibly do? How much difference does a single grain of sand make when added to the Gobi desert?

I know the irony is rich here, but I just want to draw attention to the fact that I think any attention drawn to Donald Trump is a mistake. Which is why I won’t be doing it again.

I hope.

Savage Race Recap: Blow-by-blow part 3

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Disclaimer: This is the third part of a race report. If you care about continuity, the first part is here, and the second part is here. If you think that running and obstacle course races are endeavors fit only for the insane, well, you might not be wrong, but feel free to skip this entry. If you’re intrigued by all this, you can find lots of pictures and in-depth descriptions of these obstacles at Savage Race’s website.

This entry concludes the (maybe too) lengthy detour I took to talk about this race. Regularly scheduled programming will resume.

The first half of the course, despite its challenges, has been a kids’ gloves introduction to the course. In the second half, the gloves come off immediately. Mile four begins with the craziest ascent I’ve ever seen on a running trail. We’re leaning against the hill itself for support in climbing the hill; ropes and pickaxes wouldn’t go amiss here.

Then we turn around and come right back down it; apparently we climbed that monster for the sheer hell of it, and if that isn’t a perfect metaphor for this race, then I don’t know what is. Our next obstacle is a dunk into ice water — there’s literally a refrigerated truck next to two pools, and as I go under, I can feel the cubes clinking off my dome — which, frankly, comes none too soon in the ninety degree heat.

Then there’s more pain: we pick up lengths of 4×4 and sling them across our backs to carry them a quarter mile across more rolling hills. Why? Because we can. We’ve already run a 5k and covered an elevation gain of something like a half mile, given and taken; why not slog some lumber while we do more of the same? And then we shimmy sideways across railings not unlike the ones you stand in while you’re waiting for your turn on the American Scream Machine, and if you haven’t fantasized about doing that, well, then maybe you’re reading the wrong race report.

The obstacles come fast and furious now; the first half of the race gave us maybe three challenges per mile, but we’ve got twenty more to cover in the last 2.5 miles, which means a lot less running and a lot more scrambling. “Wheel World” pits us against rotating garden spigots that leave a lot of racers twisting and spinning helplessly in space before splashing down in defeat, but a simple application of my old maxim — momentum matters — carries me through the obstacle. Instead of attacking it head on, I roll into it sideways off the launch platform, and the rotation carries me cleanly across.

Then it’s up a culvert on an incline which shifts to a decline when you’re halfway across. The culvert is too narrow to crawl on hands and knees but too slick to commando crawl. I inch forward like a slug until it tips and spits me out into the dirt, my abs burning and my knees bruised.

Then a climbing wall; not up, but across, and it’s leaned backwards at a fifteen degree angle. This is my first failure: I just don’t have the grip to hold myself up and I stumble off into the dirt. But here’s the thing about that: at this point in the race, people are failing obstacles left and right, and there’s no shame or anger in it. You just dust yourself off and truck on. A point of training to return to for the next time.

Now another crawl under barbed wire, but this one through the thickest, soupiest mud yet; we come out the other side looking like the Michelin Man hosed down in brown goop. It clings and clumps to us as we mount the hill for the next challenge: a simple ramp. Except, thanks to the mud, it’s impossible to climb the thing. Even the rope is slick with the mud of hundreds of previous runners trying to summit this thing.

At this point, you can barely finish an obstacle before you’re on to the next. A twenty-foot climb followed by a terrifying leap into a deep pool. A diabolical jagged monkey bars over murky water. (This one puts me in the drink halfway across.) An inclined traverse around telephone poles that you have to hug like the college girlfriend that’s looking for a reason to dump you. A maze-like series of ropes and rings that drops racers like a series of particularly bad habits. (I slip off the rope almost immediately, with burns on my pinkie and ring fingers to show for it. Never in my life have I injured my pinkie finger, until today, but there it is.)

And here, again, I’m forcibly informed of the key difference between an OCR and a road race. Road races, and to a lesser extent, trail races, are a more or less linear challenge. The difficulty goes up predictably with the distance, and the race gets harder the farther you go. The effort wears you down, but you know what distance and pace you’re capable of. But with OCR, the challenge is on an exponential curve: they save the best (most challenging) obstacles for last, but by the time you get to them, you’re gassed out by the previous obstacles and/or the viciousness of the run itself.

I’ve now failed three obstacles and I’m almost a half hour behind my predicted finish time. And in a strict running race, that would be shattering. But here? Today? Staring down the final obstacle — a fifteen foot quarter-pipe, mud-slick from failed attempts to summit it and topped with hooting, cheering savages who’ve already made the climb — well, earlier I likened the event to a bacchanalia, and while there are no chemicals involved, we’re all drunk at this point. The falls on earlier obstacles don’t matter, the bruises on my knees, shins, and elbows are irrelevant, the mud caked in my eyebrows and the stubble on my scalp is totally off topic. I don’t care about the burning in my calves from the relentless ups-and-downs of these murderous hills. Every runner who makes the top of this ramp does so to a chorus of cheers and howls, and every one who fails and slides back to the earth meets a sympathetic groan.

But I’m tapped. I’ve got nothing left. The six miles of the run and the ridiculous crescendo of the obstacles have left me a pile of sentient Jell-o. I can no more make it up that ramp than I can sprout wings and ascend into the heavens. But I lower my head and charge at the ramp anyway.

I grab at the rope. My fingers seal around the knot, strangling it. Somehow, I fling my arm upward and catch the next know, and creep higher. But that’s it. I’m done. The ledge is right there, but I can’t reach it. I cry out, or at least I think I do. On the ledge above me is some guy I don’t even know, and he’s shouting at me like I’m Rocky. Grab that ledge. You can do it. Grab it. Come on! He could help me, but he knows — as I know — that it’ll mean that much more if I can make it on my own.

And I do. My fingers catch the ledge, then a hand has my forearm and I’m being lifted upwards over the edge. I tumble onto my back and stare up at the sky for a moment.

It’s a clear, beautiful Georgia afternoon. Wispy blue clouds, postcard blue sky. The roar all around me goes dull.

I’m acutely aware that this afternoon would have been a gorgeous one whether or not I had put myself through the wringer of this race. But somehow, the air is a little sweeter, the breeze a little cooler, the sky a little bluer.

But there’s no time to rest. I get to my knees and turn around to offer a pay-it-forward hand up to a few other racers climbing their way up after me. High-fives and slaps on the back abound. Then, it’s over to the other side of the wall — a slide right back down into (you guessed it) more muddy water. And there’s the finish line. Somebody puts a medal around my neck. A bottle of icy water is shoved into my hand. Half of it goes on my head, half of it goes down in a few greedy gulps. It tastes like the untamed glaciers of the Arctic.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking and writing about this race, a lot more than I usually bother to write about running. (Partly that’s because fitness isn’t really the focus of my blarg here, but partly that’s because there’s really only so much you can say about running.) But I think the race deserves a bit of time and reflection. It wasn’t just an event, it was an experience. I’m not going to say I’m a better person because of it — that would be shallow and too easy, I think — but there’s an ineffable sense of accomplishment swirling around me after finishing this thing, even almost a full week later.

There’s something primal about it that no amount of running or hours spent in a gym can replicate. Running, jumping, crawling, climbing — these are things our bodies evolved to do, and the creature comforts of this modern life have allowed too many of us to forget we can do them. Savage Race was a test in a way I’ve never been tested. It’s a bit like life, really: it throws a challenge at you, beats you up, bruises you a bit, knocks you in the mud. Then, if you come through to the other side, it says, “okay, you handled that. Now how about this one?” And it repeats, on and on until you drag yourself across the finish line, or until you tap out, give up testing yourself and walk the rest of the way home.

I’m happy to say that, even though I didn’t complete every obstacle, I tried every one. And my run may not have been pretty, but life ain’t pretty. We all get a little dinged up, a little scraped and bruised along the way. We all get a little dirty. Sometimes it hurts. But you can still run the race with a smile on your face.

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Savage Race Recap: Blow-by-blow part 2

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Disclaimer: This is the second part of a race report. If you care about continuity, the first part is here. If you think that running and obstacle course races are endeavors fit only for the insane, well, you might not be wrong, but feel free to skip this entry. If you’re intrigued by all this, you can find lots of pictures and in-depth descriptions of these obstacles at Savage Race’s website. Now, onward!

For a guy who runs mostly roads, it’s challenging enough going off-road. The footing isn’t as sure, the hills are ubiquitous, and you have to watch your every step for roots and rocks and, in this case, horse sharknado. From speaking to a few finishers before my wave started, I know enough to know the hills are going to be nasty, but I’m still not prepared. The first half mile of the course takes us down from the start line, up over a tree-lined hill that we couldn’t see past before, down again across the inline toward the lake (which has us leaning sideways to keep our balance), and back up again to get into the woods proper. As we roll down into another valley, we have to cross this tiny stream of runoff,  just wide enough to be unhoppable. Racers are hesitating and trying to pick a dry footing across. I shake my head in wonder. This is a mud run, isn’t it? And I pile ahead, right through the stream, kicking up spray and mud in my wake, and I hear the splashing of other feet right behind me. I immediately wish I hadn’t, though — mud run or not, running in wet shoes is not fun, and with all the hills and cambers, my feet and toes are sliding around and raising blisters already.

Despite all that, I can feel myself breaking the first rule of racing: don’t go out too fast. I can’t help it, though — the adrenaline is surging, I hear the light tromping of feet all around me, and there’s a cool breeze through the shaded paths, so that even at ninety-plus degrees outside, the running feels like heaven.

But we’re at the first obstacle: a pair of fences made of widely-spaced two-by-sixes about eight feet high. I don’t break stride — from my run I hop onto the fence and climb it like a ladder, toss my legs over, and drop to the ground. One down, and while it was hardly a challenge, I’m exhilarated. Then it’s through another patch of trees, and I see barbed wire stretched low across the ground. I’m preparing to drop to my belly when I see another racer lay out sideways in front of the obstacle and begin to roll through the dirt. Well, that looks a lot easier than commando crawling, so I follow suit. What I don’t notice is the downhill grade in the second half of the obstacle, and by the time I roll out the far side, I’m not so much rolling as tumbling. Clear of the barbed wire, I sprawl out and watch the sky spin crazily overhead for a few seconds before I stumble to my feet. I’m not the only one spun like a top, but we master it and truck on.

It’s a hot minute, fully a half mile of hills and trees, before it’s obstacle time again: another field of barbed wire. Didn’t we already do this? No, this one’s different — in addition to low-slung barbs, this one has lanes marked off with wire as well. No rolling through this one — it’s time to crawl. As I’m shimmying along, I hear the inevitable skritch of a snagged shirt and torn skin; the guy next to me just popped up too high and paid for it. Meanwhile, on my other side, there’s a commotion of rustling grass and a cloud of dust as another guy rolls past like Wile E. Coyote on rocket skates. Basic training comes in handy, it seems.

A bit further on, there’s a deceptively simple-looking set of chest-high pommel horses that must be vaulted; I clear them pretty easily with a half-cartwheel, half barrel-roll over the top, but I see lots of folks getting tossed on their backs as they hit the far side, or unable to get a grip enough to clear them at all. What’s easy for one is never easy for all.

Just after the start of mile two is the first obstacle that looks truly imposing, the strangely named “Venus Guy Trap.” If you’re picturing the jagged, toothy plant laid open for a fly, you’re not far off; this is a set of two ramps at 45 degree angles facing each other across a mud pit. You must first climb up the seven-foot back of the ramp (and the lip hangs well over the support, so you’re really dangling), navigate down the one ramp, tromp through the mud, and then do the same thing in reverse, except now you’re slippery from the mud. I watch a few people attempt it before trying my hand; some can muscle right over the edge, others can’t even get their hands on it. Well, hell. You got me, and I got you, right? I step up to a struggling racer, make a platform of my hands, and offer a boost up; figuring if I invest some karma now, it’ll be there for me when I need it later. I boost three people over the first lip and then turn around for my own attempt, and here I’m surprised again; turns out I can make the climb just fine. Not exactly graceful, but I clear the edge and roll down the ramp with no trouble. That’s the first daunting task, but it won’t be the last.

But here, again, this race is shaking up my preconceptions. Because there are people in the race who are clearly not physically fit enough for an obstacle like this, and I’ve been wondering just what the hell they were thinking, signing up for this thing. Case in point: there’s an older guy I’ve been gaining on for the last quarter mile who I finally catch up to at these two ramps. He’s overweight, too, and clearly struggling already just from the run, even though we’re only two miles in. To add to the indignity, his shirt is torn from the barbed wire a half-mile back. But he’s not in it for himself; he’s here to support his daughter. As they approach the obstacle, he wordlessly hustles up to the base of the climb and goes into a wall-sit, offering her both his knee and his shoulder to help her get to the top. Once she’s over, he hoofs it around to the far side to meet her on the other side. And suddenly I feel a little bit like an a-hole for being so judgey — everybody comes to this test for their own reasons. And the family that runs obstacle courses together…

The next mile has a handful of challenges that look tougher than they are — there’s what looks like a giant Swiss cheese wedge and a traverse across chain-link fences suspended over murky water, both of which are easier than they look. Then a few that are designed to make you uncomfortable and literally cover you in mud and muck: these are ditches with barriers submerged in the water/mud that you must crawl/swim/claw your way under to advance. If dignity was intact before this point in the race, it’s gone now — we are all unidentifiable orange-brown foot soldiers tromping off to new discomfort.

But in the midst of all that is another challenge to the spirit: one of the simplest obstacles yet, but a doozy nonetheless. This one is simply a free-standing wall eight feet high that offers no handholds or footholds. Nothing but upper body and scrambling feet will get you over — and maybe a leg up from your fellow racers. But I clear this one on my own as well, surprising myself again in the process.

We’re through eleven obstacles now, and three miles into this six-mile affair, and I’m already noticing changes in myself and the other racers. Not nearly as many people are running in between obstacles; myself included. I’m still jogging the straightaways and the descents (where I can manage it without risking a catastrophic tumble), but anything more than a gentle incline has me walking, and the course is stingy with anything gentle, even leaving the obstacles out of the equation. The walking is not terribly surprising, though. What’s surprising is that as the obstacles get tougher (and make no mistake, there’s a pretty steep difficulty curve the farther you go, which is actually kind of cruel … you might say SAVAGELY cruel, okay, I’m sorry, I won’t make that joke again), the people attempting them get fewer, and the camaraderie among those that fling themselves into the maw strengthens. Kind of like a chinese finger trap — the harder you work against it, the stronger it becomes. Those of us who try every obstacle get more determined, we help each other more, and when we succeed, there’s back-slapping and high-fiving and primal screams all around.

There’s a high in all this. As much as my body hurts more and more the further I go, there’s a sort of euphoria settling in. It’s not a runner’s high (although to be fair, I’m not sure I’ve ever actually experienced one of those in five years of running). The pain doesn’t disappear and give way to magical feelings of well-being and serenity. The pain is there, lurking in the back of the mind like a murderer hiding in the basement in the latest slasher flick. But who cares about the murderer in the basement when there’s a crazed, endorphin-fueled party going on upstairs?

I’m starting to see why this OCR has become such a thing. I came to the race alone, but now I’m recognizing the faces of the handful who are on the same pace as me. We’ve become almost a family flung together in this gauntlet; we kvetch and moan about the brutal hills, we encourage each other in the run-up to each new obstacle, we wait with hands outstretched as each of us muscles through the next struggle. I don’t even know their names, but I know their shouts of jubilation and their groans of agonized defeat.

And I’ll hear a lot more of both in the second half of the course.

Concluded here.