Tuesday, November 11, 2014

it is november 11th (my favorite day!) and that means 11 days of NaNoWriMo have past and I've written um approximately twice. So add this to the list of failures I have. I'm actually tired and can't think of any major failures up until this point so this may be my first one. My second one may come on Saturday when I attempt to run a half marathon without training. At 9 in the morning sitting outside in Charlottesville at Christines bachlorette weekend running a half marathon without training seemed like a good idea. Buzzfeed supported me and I even had dreams about running laps up and down a mountain and was convinced it would never be that hard. Race day is three sleeps away and now 13.1 miles seems way longer than it did six weeks ago. I've done some fake training--walking a lot, doing some sprints around my neighborhood, and doing a 30 day plank challenge (which I've also failed to do every day like I am supposed to--add it to the list). I just did a 2.5 minute plank and feel like I'm well on my way to failing on race day. I'm okay with that.

I haven't been doing a lot of writing. I've been doing a lot of thinking about writing, which is not the same thing. I bought a moleskin journal to write down all the things I want to write about because I always think of them at the gap or driving and by the time I get home I can't ever remember them. We've been talking in my social justice class about activism and verbalism. activism is acting without thinking which makes dialogue impossible. verbalism is talking talking talking forever but never putting action behind anything. praxis is the connection between activism and verbalism and manifests itself in action and reflection. this is really hard for me. i either obsess over something and talk it to death (sorry pals) and then finally succumb to action mostly because everyone encourages me to do so or i'm so tired of talking about things i just want to punch myself in the face. or i do wild actions without reflecting on how they will affect me or those around me. i'm not sure if premeditated activism is a thing but i think i do it. like i have thought a lot about running this half (and talked about it) and have done research about how to best run races without paying for them but in reality i'm just going to do it saturday morning. just going to do it and hope that i blend in enough to not get thrown out of the race. (to be fair--i'm not going to cross the start or finish line or take any water/snacks from the people so i'm trying to bandit/ghost run as nicely as possible). so it's praxis but not in the real way that praxis is supposed to be implemented or effective.

i think the balance is hard. walking the walk-talking the talk. doing things for you and not for other people. the times when i'm most active and least reflective are when i'm trying to impress people. actually...i talk a lot about situations too but more so because i'm an external processor and not as much to impress people. in grad school everyone freaks out all the time. everyone is always stressed and always bitching about how stressed they are. verbalism. i'm not into that. i'd rather spend that time complaining doing fun things then sitting down and writing a paper and complaining about it in the moment if need be but not for hours upon hours. i'd rather play tennis. or watch gilmore girls. or pretend i'm training for a half marathon.

so really...be a praxis person (is that an adjective? i don't know...) and be better than i am and act upon things and reflect on them. do things for yourself. do things for others. do things. that might be seeing a movie you've been talking about seeing--even if you go alone. or if you're going going going--chill. take a hike. reflect on life. good news is we'll all figure it out in the by and by and sometimes that's all you can want.

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