Optimism

November 14, 2006: Today I ran hard on the treadmill. Fast. Since I joined the gym, I've usually taken a leisurely pace to my workouts running around 5 mph (a few less than in my cross country days) and burning a few hundred calories before cooling down and heading home for dinner.

Today was different. After an after work shopping trip with Ann, and little success, I finished my workout with the feeling that running might have been the best thing for my day. It woke me up, jostled me out of the fumbling funk of the last two days. After a busy weekend, and a lot of gin on Saturday, I felt as though a good run could get anything toxic out of me, leaving me healthy for most of the day tomorrow.

I am going out this week. I am meeting people. I have accepted the fact that I am someone who thrives on having too many things to do instead of nothing, someone who would rather feel overwhelmed than empty. I now live in a city with millions of people, and all it takes is a few hours and I am on my way to building my new community. My foot is planted.

My senior year of college I wrote a book review on a few collections of personal essays that focused on solitude, isolation, and finding "solace" in new places and foreign territory. I've found the isolation, and the independence, the loneliness of the city, and the solitude of your own little room in a dusty, overheated apartment. I refuse to find solace; I am ready for fresh and interesting people, the small community in many, and the six degrees of connection that even prime television portrays as reality.


November 5, 2006: I was on MetroNorth Sunday evening, taking the train back to the city after a great family weekend with Margaret. I pulled out an old envelope and start jotting down words on the back of the pastel purple paper. Any words that came to mind I scribbled down, plucked randomly from my stream of consciousness, never stopping or straining to think of something that would look good on paper, or show my creativity. Just plain, boring, and somehow mindless brainstorming.

The paper was filled within a half and hour, with another half-hour left to ponder and sift through the twisted list of words. I closed my eyes, allowing my pen to circle and pick a word. My makeshift game narrowed down to 10 words:

Style
Pressure
Intuition
Understanding
Company
Elegance
Projects
Betrayal
Solitude
Imagination

I fancied myself having the inspiration, creative capacity, and intellectual stamina to actually turn these words into a story, a novel, a national bestseller, but time had gone to far for me to plan any of that before the train pulled into Grand Central.

Betrayal stood out; solitude, pressure are two things I felt almost everday; imagination, intuition, elegance, understanding, and style are four things I hoped never to lose; and projects and company I hoped always to have.

Maybe a sentence first, or a paragraph should go down on paper, before anything else is thrown into the mixture of ideas that have filtered in and out of mind, applying for the little space left available in my day of corporate 9-6 work weeks, gym hours, and 7-hour sleep.