Mistakes, Massages … (Part 2/3)

The steel bench was cold. Really cold.

I knew it was cold because I’d decided to sit on it despite the early start on a late winter’s morning. I would be walking more than enough over the next 61 hours, and standing up was just an irritating reminder that I couldn’t do much else while on my feet. So I decided to sit and wait for the train. Eventually it pulled into Stoke station, coming to a halt with a tired metallic squeal, and welcomed me on board for the journey to London.

The trip was work-related but extended into my own time, hence travelling on a Sunday. The aim was to visit a couple of independent cinemas for my intended A Tour Of The Indies e-book, before heading to a trade show. From the Olympic Park in East London, to the Borough of Brent and its NW10 postcode, to North Greenwich and the ExCel – my pre-paid £30 Oyster card was about to take a hammering on the Tube network.

Even so, comfortable shoes were a necessity. My shins nearly felt normal again, but I was nervous about expecting too much of them. At the back of my mind lurked the idea that a momentary lapse in concentration to dash for a train or hurry across a road might hamper the final stages of the healing process.

Rubbing Me Up The Right Way

As it turned out, a couple of days of gentle activity actually helped my legs rediscover some strength. Not enough strength, however, to warrant cancelling the appointment made with a physio the following weekend. A sports massage was a whole new life experience, although my only apprehension about it – perhaps bizarrely – was whether I would feel ticklish!

Mercifully I spared myself any such embarrassment, and instead sat fascinated as it was pointed out how I’d overloaded the small muscles at the front of my legs. I can’t remember the name of those muscles, and will hopefully never have to make a point of learning it. Thanks to the physio demonstrating a couple of stretches to do at home, I’m in a position to take better care of myself.

By the end of the session I was like a whole new man, and with 24 hours more rest I would be out on the pavements again. But a renewed lease of life wasn’t the only thing I got from the massage (no sniggering at the back, thank you…).

That Wasn’t In The Plan

Sitting on the physio’s couch came about because I chose not to follow a training plan. I believe I know my body better than a plan designed to suit as many people as possible. I may not always listen to my body (see Part 1!), but I want to run based on how I feel on any given day. I don’t want to feel obliged to run a prescribed distance, or beat myself up if circumstance doesn’t allow adherence to the plan.

Of course, doing any running is better than getting injured. But having failed to heed my body’s warnings, I ultimately gained a better understanding of how my legs were responding to the style of training I had adopted. As an added bonus, the physio had plenty of practical advice about the Great North Run, having travelled up for several years with participating friends. Amazingly, the frustration that resulted from a near-three weeks of inactivity turned into a positive and educational experience!

Never The Write Time

All of this took place in the aftermath of the trip to London, and in the midst of three work-related trips to Wolverhampton for various training sessions. Throw in numerous early mornings, celebrations over Mother’s day weekend, and a quick-fire trip to East Yorkshire that also resulted in some (very minor) car issues, and you might see why keeping up frequent writing suddenly became tricky.

Ideas for blog posts became scarce as real life once again made its presence felt and energy levels dropped. Over the latter half of March, I managed to draft and craft a couple of thousand more words for the cinema book and bring it up to date with the London trip. Not an insignificant achievement, but it didn’t feel like enough for a month that was passing by at a faster pace than February had.

Lessons Learned

It’s very easy to get over-exuberant, with the result of pushing yourself up to (and sometimes beyond) both your physical and mental limits.

More running and less travelling for work means I should have more time and energy to write, but beyond that I feel fortunate on a number of levels. Not just that my legs escaped any sort of permanent damage, but that this creative and physical journey is giving me the chance to enact some tired clichés very literally.

Previously, I’ve described how my Great North Run entry came about from ‘following my dreams’. The visit to the physio presented an opportunity to demonstrate that I could ‘learn from my mistakes’. Do I want to find myself writing a post like this again?

No, because if I have to write something similar, it simply means the only thing I’ve taken from this experience is that I won’t get ticklish during a sports massage. Not exactly a grand new philosophy for life!

Mistakes... (Part 1/3)

Being accepted for the Great North Run flicked a switch inside me. I became possessed by a fever, of sorts; a breathless insanity.

I need to train hard, to eat well. I need to show discipline and not waste this chance I’ve been given.

January came to an end and so, as per my plan, I started running again. Got out on dry roads and began the slow process of putting mileage back on my legs. That’s as far as my plan extended: simply, to run.

I knew I could build distance and stamina, and I knew how I could improve speed and strength. It was all the plan I needed.

And within three weeks, I was injured!

It was nothing to do with running. What injured me was the insanity – the sudden and fearsome enthusiasm to improve my physical condition, and the desire not to let myself down. What injured me was trying to do a workout DVD concurrently with a regular regime of running. The name of the DVD?

Insanity.

It’s an intense workout programme, designed to get you “in the best shape of your adult life”. Devised by a personable guy called Shaun T (though I suspect most people would be more impressed by his physical conditioning than his personality…), Insanity is centred on whole-body fitness and a comprehensive nutrition plan to help you through the 6-days-a-week training.

There is a hell of a lot of jumping involved, and my shins weren’t fond of all the extra impact going through them.

One Friday in mid-February there was just enough light remaining in the day for me to go out and do two or three miles. When I got back, I did the Insanity ‘Fit Test’. The next morning, I rose early and went to run another three miles, including some hills. Half way along my route – as far from home as I was going to get – I was hobbling in pain.

I’d hurt my shins before, with a week’s rest seeing them recover. For some insane, potentially harmful reason, I completely failed to recognise the signs again. On Sunday, I did another Insanity session; on Monday, I went for another run, up some more hills.

Yep, you guessed it: I had to hobble back home once more.

And on Tuesday, I did another Insanity session. Apparently, I was intent on learning some lessons about fitness the hard way. Finally, I recognised the pain in my legs and forced myself to rest. I knew I would get better, but boy did I want it to happen quickly.

One week turned into two. Two was in danger of becoming three. I kept telling myself things were improving and, to an extent, they were. But there was always a niggle lurking at the front of my shins, an ever-present reminder that I could easily start too soon and make things much worse.

Throughout all of this I kept writing blog posts; continued to document the creative journey I had embarked upon a matter of months previously. But just as my fitness – and enforced lack of activity – was coming to dominate my day-to-day thinking, so the blog was coming to dominate my creativity.

The posts were satisfying and, I felt, worthwhile. They carried what seemed to be a coherent message, but with the limited time available alongside the day job, they were reducing my ability to work on the larger projects for which I had laid foundations over the festive period.

Having started February with good intentions, suddenly March was imminent and something needed to change. If I carried on sitting around doing nothing, I was liable to go insane. Of course, that assumed I hadn’t gone insane already…

'Frozen'

A few weeks ago, I wrote 1000 words for the purposes of entering an Editor’s Brief on the website Ideas Tap. The brief was on the theme ‘Frozen’, and it resulted in a disarmingly honest (and perhaps overly-metaphorical!) piece of work. The closing date was the end of February, and I’m assuming nothing has come of the entry (the process was a touch clumsy, and I couldn’t be 100% confident that I’d done it correctly), so I thought it was time to share it here.

The invitation dropped onto the doormat, landing with a soft thud.

Well, okay, it arrived in my inbox. Silently, without fanfare or fuss, and lacking any of the romance you might associate with invitations delivered by the postman’s caring hand. Perhaps someone could create an e-mail service where the inbox is a doormat and an animated dog virtually fetches your new mail…

Or maybe not.

The invitation arrived just before Christmas and I accepted it graciously, without hesitation. The celebration was a month-and-a-half away and there was every reason to celebrate.

Six months on a library-run writing course left me with a mile-wide grin, thrilled at the experience of nurturing a project I hadn’t realised could exist within me. Thrilled at creating a living piece of work, enjoyed by others on the course. Thrilled at the regular sessions with other writers, learning from their experiences and teaching them something new.

So thrilled that I launched, breathless and unprepared, into creating a website to extend the project. My confidence said it could be successful, and that I should also agree to read some of my work at the impending celebration.

I accepted the invite eagerly, and came to wish I hadn’t.

January is a difficult month for a lot of people. Normally I’m not one of them, but January 2012 was different. It was the month that I lost the ability to cope with responsibilities at home. A new job became all-consuming. Satisfying, but all-consuming and therefore detrimental to the creative me.

The real me.

In feeling that I had to choose between career fulfilment and creative fulfilment, the project I took such joy in building the previous summer stalled. I wanted the project to blossom into something greater and it stalled and I couldn’t get it going again and I didn’t know how to deal with that and it left me exhausted.

Across 40 days-and-nights, I lost all sensation of being a writer. Lost any sensation that I could be a writer ever again.

* * *

I sat on the shore of a frozen lake, lacking the will or the energy to walk round to the other side. Confidence and inspiration waited there, but I only understood the path straight across. Mercifully, I also understood how brittle the ice was, and how I was apt to drown if I didn’t negotiate a sensible path. Occasionally I put a testing foot on the surface, but always withdrew at the last moment.

I didn’t want to drown.

My heart begged for what was on the other side. I’d tasted those riches but I clung to what I had on my side of the lake. I didn’t know how to get across and back again, didn’t understand how to follow the shoreline. It left me cold, shivering, creatively impotent. I was aware of it happening – painfully aware – but I didn’t want to drown.

February arrived. My foot fell through into the watery blackness and I wrote the most cowardly e-mail I’ve ever written. “I started a new job last month, and I might not be able to make the celebration event” was the half-truthful gist. Mysterious work commitments that I knew nobody would question, and that masked (convincingly?) a debilitating lack of the confidence I once discovered.

The freezing water was up to my thigh a few days later. “As I thought, I’m not going to be able to make Thursday night. I’m really sorry for any inconvenience.” I physically typed the words, but mentally wondered how I would breathe if I fell through the ice any further. I didn’t want to drown.

I missed the event. Missed the celebration I was so eager to attend just weeks before. I felt better for it, content in the numbness as I sat on the ice with my legs dangling in the water. I sat, and the ice sat with me. I sat through the fresh spring and the joyful summer and the lake remained inexplicably frozen.

* * *

The crisp autumn finally brought some warmth to the year. It spread through the water, gradually melting the frozen surface: the warmth of the people on my side of the lake, the warmth of home and work finally in harmony. I understood what it meant to be outside. What it meant to be alive, and to have a body that deserved better than I was giving it. The colder the changing seasons became again, the warmer I felt.

Drowning was no longer an option: I wanted to swim.

And swim I did. My mind awoke to the benefits of a healthy body and, bit-by-bit, I started to swim freely between the two sides of the lake. Not always in a straight line, sometimes following the shoreline, but always enjoying the warmth of the water. Enjoying feeling good about myself and my place in the world.

* * *

The invitation dropped onto the doormat, landing with a soft thud.

It was a metaphorical invitation, so it possessed all the tactile qualities I wanted to imagine. The invitation was to me, from me, asking if I would like to start writing again. Asking if I wanted to wake the project I’d left frozen in time for twelve months. And it wondered if I might have learnt something that I could share with other people.

I accepted, rationally and without haste. The project was well preserved and I had a better idea of how I could help it blossom. I wrote on my own, I wrote in the company of friends (a first). I wrote for hours on end, I wrote in 45 minute bursts snatched from the clutches of the day. I’d avoided drowning – just – and I didn’t want to risk it again. As long as I remembered how to swim…

After a mild Christmas, the UK froze into 2013 but the blood was flowing and I no longer felt the cold. I didn’t want to drown. I wanted, finally, to just write.

Gonna Get Myself Connected

Given the choice, most people would not elect to spend a cold Friday morning on an industrial estate just outside Wolverhampton.

I certainly had no choice in the matter, and so found myself walking across my employer’s manufacturing site with only a few inadequate layers to shield me from the wintry climes. A group of us were trekking across to another warehouse, and along the way my heart lifted as I spied an unwanted office desk sitting abandoned on a patch of unused ground.

It lifted because I take great joy in out-of-context things. They appeal to my creative side, to the part of me that knows these things wouldn’t be half as effective if they had been done deliberately. They appeal to the same creative side that wishes it had taken photos of all the abandoned shopping trolleys I saw around Macclesfield town centre once upon a time.

After seeing what needed seeing in the warehouse, I hung back from the group as we retraced our steps. I wanted to snap a quick picture of the desk, but without making a big fuss. Although I’ve become more open with people about my creativity since the turn of the year, I still don’t feel as though I can adequately explain it or ‘prove’ it (until such a time as I hopefully finish my cinema tour book, at least!). Thus, I still perceive the occasional ‘funny look’ whenever I indulge in a spot of creative talk.

The only person behind me was a friendly chap called Jim who has spent 30 years installing roofs and is a pro at bedding roofing felt in hot bitumen. The iPhone blurted out its mock-shutter noise and, with a chuckle and the slightest hint of sheepishness, I explained that I simply couldn’t resist taking a photo.

“Well, it’s abstract isn’t it?” said Jim, and merrily continued on his way.

In my last blog post, I mentioned some of the creative/business books I’ve been reading. I’m nearing the end of The Icarus Deception now, and one of Seth Godin’s central themes is the ‘connection economy’. The world is no longer about manufacturing goods for a faceless consumer population. It’s about making an emotional connection with like-minded people, however much of a minority those people might be.

As a result, I’ve started to look harder for connections I can make. I could make more, certainly, but these things take time and I’m also trying to see the connections that other people make, so that I might learn from them. The connection I made on that West Midlands industrial estate was only short-lived, but it was a connection nevertheless. And it was a perfect illustration of how they can be found in even the most unlikely places.

As an aside, one of the other appeals of this abandoned desk was the image it formed in my head: an image of Monty Python-era John Cleese sat behind it, wearing a dinner suit, and saying, “And now for something completely different.”

Mixing Business And Pleasure

I never expected to find myself reading business books.

Being creative, writing – what does any of it have to do with business? And yet, here I am. The last book I finished was Make Your Idea Matter by Bernadette Jiwa. Currently, I’m halfway through Seth Godin’s The Icarus Deception – the book I won from The Clear-Minded Creative.

As I’ve got to know Godin’s work a little more over the last few weeks, it has become clear just how much of an inspiration he is to many creative souls. And the crucial word in the title of Jiwa’s book is ‘Idea’.

In other words: these aren’t dry, weighty tomes full of traditional theory and called things like, 100 Common Mistakes Made By Top CEOs (I don’t know if that is a real book, by the way. I’m guessing it isn’t!). I’m not some wannabe industrialist who wants to bring the essence of Sun Tzu’s The Art Of War to his shop floor.

I’m just a guy who wants to write. And as interesting and inspirational as these books are, a small piece of me thinks I’m betraying myself by reading them. The old, It’s only the quality of your writing that counts reflex kicks in. It kicks and screams a bit; tells me I shouldn’t need to create a ‘brand’ around myself.

Meekly, I reply, “I’d have gone to work at the local newspaper if that was the case.”

In truth – and however much it pains my subconscious to say it – the only reason I’m starting to make any sort of progress is because I finally understood what ‘fruitless work’ meant to me. After four years with a blog jokingly entitled ‘The Repository of Fruitless Work’, suddenly I inverted the whole thing and worked out a way to use everything I’d done before as an example for others of how not to do things.

Finally, I had an idea of how to stop flying so low and aim a little higher. And now, I can write sentences like that because the likes of Godin have made sense of those thought processes.

In Make Your Idea Matter, Jiwa writes: “The best artists market to save their own souls, so they can keep doing the thing that matters. Marketing is part of your art now.”

I think I’ve gone some way to understanding and accepting that. And it’s why I’ve added an ‘About’ page to the blog. Because it’s part of my writing now.