I haven’t run since since September 24. That was two weeks before shoulder surgery put me on the couch for six weeks with nothing to do but let muscle attach to tendon and tendon to bone. I’ve been off the couch since late November and taking walks, but I am definitely missing the mental/creative benefits that find me with a regular running practice. Which is to say, I miss the clarity of thought and writing that seems to attend with physical exertion.

I am bugging my physical therapist for a Get Back to Running date. She says sometime between mid-February (Valentine’s Day!) and end of March. That is wide zone of six weeks, but at least I now have targets on the calendar.

Being honest, I can see that I have taken my inability to run as a bit of an excuse. Instead of embracing the opportunity to walk more, I have let myself wait to be able to run.

This is a habit that shows up often in my writing. When I don’t have time to sit and fully do the thing I really want to do, I often don’t take the times that offer themselves in between things to write what/where I am able. When I tell myself “there is no time”, I am ignoring the time between things. This, I think, is the nature of practice. Working with time in a realistic rather than idealistic way.

As Paul Simon puts it in another context: “I can’t run but I can walk much faster than this.”