During the height of my arrogance T-3 months ago, I believed it was possible to write a reasonable rough draft of my book after starting a full time job, while breezing through a masters program, reading Infinite Jest, training for a half marathon, building a business, and keeping up regular blog posts.
As I was entering my material in google documents, I realized that not only had I written a lot less than I previously thought, but I had produced the equivalent amount of text as a short story. Where I had anticipated being able to have a rough draft in time for New Years, it’s become apparent to me that I might have bitten more than I can chew.
This is humbling. I feel that in large part, I’ve failed to prioritize this. I’m somewhat disappointed that although I’ve written something for 15+ chapters, I’m nowhere near complete.
Although my book isn’t nearly ready, I’m proud that I’m continually pushing forward, writing at least once a day, and preparing my thoughts in a way that’ll hopefully be useful to the world.
I think there’s also a fear and anxiety about completing a large and challenging book. I’ve started and put down Infinite Jest more than 3 times, in large part because I felt intimidated and scared of such a shiny, polished, and resolute larger than life manuscript.
I fancy myself someone who can write well, and although I’m good at writing critical essays, completing a book is harder than I had originally thought.
A few days ago, I had thought I was almost done with my first draft. This was because I had written a bunch of different pages across different sites and exaggerated my cumulative impact.
Going forward, I’m going to focus more on total word count and see if that solves the alignment problem, where I write something of moderate length, and pretend to myself that it’s a chapter, when it’s apparently not.
I’m also approximately halfway done with my master’s degree. Since I started in November and I anticipate getting through class 6 in the coming week, measurement is working in other areas.
Running has similarly been a success. I’ve been hunkering down, doing pushups, light lifting, and many miles on the treadmill. I find a podcast I like, listen to the entire thing, and run until I reach my goals.
I’ve maxed out with 8 miles so far, but if I continue to run more, I think I’ll be able to get to my broader goal of 13.2 and run my first half marathon.
I run at about 6.2-6.7 miles per hour during these long runs. Given that I’m able to keep up this pace for longer amounts of time (almost an hour), I anticipate that I can run longer if I run less quickly (say running a half marathon).
The hardest part for running is being alone with my thoughts and being bored. I’m a naturally anxious energetic person. Just being in a trance for 2 hours leaves my mind understimulated. Maybe it’s a bit of ADHD, but running’s greatest challenge for me certainly isn’t physical.
I wonder if anyone else feels the same way.
P.S. I think when I’m done writing this book (which is a while away), I’ll start to be a little less filtered on my blog, and share some of my more unvarnished keep-away from public takes.
Isadore Johnson's Website 