Prologue

Over the years, I’ve worked harder and harder to find meaning in life. But the more I've looked, the more I’ve wondered if I was going about my search the wrong way.

I've been looking for meaning through experience, but I think now that I've always had it backwards. Life will never be defined by extravagant experience, but about finding extravagance in common experience. So for 2009, I'm going to focus less on living large, and focus more on living well. Each month I'll start a new month-long project (like trying to run 3 miles faster than George Bush), to find uncommon results from common experience. Each project will involve daily activity, so every day of 2009 you can check my progress on the monthly projects and see what I discover.

None of these projects will cost much—in fact, I think most will be free. So if you're looking for a year uncommonly rich, you can join me. There's no membership required, just participate and comment if you want. Either way, get ready for a year I hope is unlike any other.

Epilogue

I stumbled across the finish line, but I manage to complete 8 of the month-long projects successfully. Blogging is now over at Wonderfam!

 
 

It's May, and May was a …

A Month of Accomplishment (about)

 

~ or ~

 

Forcing myself to finish something (about)

 

01
09

The pain of getting lost

Written by Nathan on January 9, 2009 at 11:58 pm from A Month of Resolve.

I ran a new course tonight while visiting my mother-in-law, which contrary to the default mother-in-law jokes, is usually a great experience. But as much fun as the trips usually are, the run was not so much fun. I took a wrong turn somewhere around the 1.5-mile mark. I didn’t particularly run the wrong distance, because St. Pete, FL uses a great grid for their roads. But I lost my sense of pace and I lost my focus and the whole experience was diminished.

Usually, in or out of pain, I enjoy these runs. I have a sense of purpose (beating Bush!) and like the scenery (my hometown!). But without my bearings, feeling lost, the miles crept by painfully. To top it off, owing to my mapped run I had a 1/10 mile cooldown walk after my last mile and it wrecked me. I spent half an hour after the run rolling around on the ground, experiencing various degrees of burning pain. A few bags of frozen vegetables later my legs are feeling mostly normal. Well, mostly normal. The muscles are still slightly cramping.

Of course even getting lost, I still finished. And I still finished in 26:45 which falls in the better side of my runs. But my splits reflect my disorientation (I think) – 8 minutes, 8:45 minutes and then 10 minutes. At least my first 1.5 miles were in 12 minutes on the dot, so perhaps when I know this course a little better I can trim down the time. 

I’m still feeling good about tomorrow. Sure, I got lost and my legs hurt. But if I run tomorrow, it’ll be a course that’s no longer unfamiliar. I’ll regain my sense of direction, purpose and pace. I can’t help but find the parallels in my wife’s pregnancy, now in it’s 8th month. We haven’t done a ton of mapping, but we know the route of pregnancy pretty well with two other children. Perhaps that’s why this 9-month course has seemed to easy.

(2) Comments

2 Responses to “The pain of getting lost”

  1. michaeljwolf says:
    January 11, 2009 at 1:00 pm

    crazy. i love reading this, and just realized you live in st. pete. random. love to ride from largo to there on the pinellas trail.

  2. Nathan Clark says:
    January 15, 2009 at 11:39 pm

    Hey Michael – actually just a frequent visitor to St Pete. We live north of Orlando, but we’re in town all the time.

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