A few months back, a friend of mine said she couldn’t read my blog anymore because she found it too depressing. I didn’t know what to say and because I didn’t want to deal with it, I shrugged it off as an anomaly.
But in the past few weeks some other readers have told me they were leaving the fandom as I had gotten just too dark and morose. That’s no longer an anomaly, it’s a trend.
I still don’t quite know what to say, and this may all just be the sleep deprived ramblings of a 37,000 feet airline passenger in a middle seat.
I know I’m in a dark place, more than a little depressed and that some of the posts may err on the side of an erstwhile virtual therapy session. But that was/is kinda the point of runkevinrun dot com. I was trying to tell my story, warts and all, the good and the bad. I know all stories are prone to biases and elisions due to space, time, and authorial choice. All stories have lies wrapped up in the truth and truth wrapped up in the lies. But I was and remaine highly cognizant of the social media curse.
All of us, myself included, tend to curate our social media feeds with the best and brightest moments – adding filters and pithy sayings to show just how great our lives can be. Or perhaps it’s to show how we wish our lives were. Or maybe social media is how we don a false mask so that society doesn’t see us for who we really are. Whatever the reasons behind our posts and our rose-colored viewpoints put on display, social media has created a fear of missing out (shortened in net speak to FOMO) and made for a “keeping up with the Joneses” madness that is unparalleled in human history. Although the French Revolution comes close what with its food porn “let them eat cake” meme. I found social media to be a make believe world, an impossible take on humanity, and little more than bread and circuses for a society made all the more alienating, an echo chamber rather than a marketplace for ideas.
And so when I got into trying to write about me and my running, I was drawn to the notion that a marathon is like life, and life like a marathon. There are peaks and valleys, struggles and hardships, success and victories. There are moments of elation and depression, of tears and smiles. There is the gamut of the human condition in micro that informs the macro. Unlike social media, I wanted to show it’s not all long walks on the beach at magic hour and leisure suits.
I’ve recently been asked a few times how I’ve been able to run as many races as I have. Like the rest of it, I don’t really know how to answer that. I don’t have a secret formula or master plan. It is again that the marathon is like life and life like a marathon. No matter how prepared you think you are, no matter how strategic a plan you have, on any given day you just never know what kind of day it’s going to be. All you can do is enjoy the moments of bliss, deal with the pain, climb the uphill and roll with the down, and try to keep moving down the road. No matter what has come before, it’s never easy. You just hope you can keep one foot in front of the other. Sometimes it’s an Usain Bolt stride (okay, maybe not THAT big a stride. Have you seen that guy’s stats? He’s unbelievable). Sometimes it’s a Mt Kilimanjaro shuffle. But you just keep trying to press ahead. Because in marathoning as in life, what is the alternative?
I know there’s been a lot of darkness in these posts of late. Believe me, I wish it weren’t so. But it is what I as a runner and as a human find myself facing at the moment. It is my truth, my story, and reflects that the running and the living are fraught with challenges great and small. But even in that world of night, there’s a pinprick of light that pierces the veil. The light shines because I keep trying to move forward. And while at times it’s the tiniest of holes, there’s comfort in even that. For light focused through such an opening burns brighter and hotter and may eventually set the world afire.
And while I struggle with shortcomings and panic attacks, aches and pains, frustrations and setbacks, I keep trying. There’s another race, there’s another day. All I can do is to keep trying.
And so regarding this trend thing that has somehow been not so much a wake up call as a focal point of frustration. Perhaps I’ve said too much… or perhaps not enough. It could be just narcissistic hokum that makes me think it might be useful for other people to know how hard it all can be – the race on foot and through time. Maybe I’m deluding myself in thinking there’s hope in this thing yet, or maybe I’ve just failed in my efforts to convey what I’ve been trying to do or say. All I can do is to keep trying.
And yet perhaps a break is in order to re-evaluate the pros and cons of this blog. I had hoped this trip to Europe would provide a clarity and a reset but as with so many laid plans, things don’t often work out the way we intend. I’m struggling at the moment and maybe no one needs to be part of that save for myself.
I will try again tomorrow.
I will run again tomorrow.
Because that is all I can do. That is all I do.