Being ambitious is good when it motivates and propels you. But what if it prevents you from enjoying what you’ve accomplished, because you’re forever pressing ahead with the more that you could be accomplishing?

Kevin offered me that perspective, yesterday, when I was pushing for more, more, more, better, better, better, as I always, always do.

I am thinking about that today.

I am thinking, too, about running. How it’s such a piece of me, now. I only started running regularly about three years ago, so it hasn’t always been a piece of me. But it is, now. It seems fundamental to my health and well-being. When I am feeling down, like I was yesterday with my more, more, more-ness, I drag on my stinky old running clothes and squeeze time to find space for a run.

Yesterday evening, with a thundershower threatening, and a less-than-ideal location (busy semi-rural roads, some with bike lanes, some without), I dropped my daughter at her soccer practice and off I ran, beating a steady rhythm on the pavement, watching out for cars. Around the sixth kilometre, I struggled, worrying I’d gone out too fast, knowing I couldn’t turn around since my route was one big loop. But by the next kilometre the difficulty had vanished and all I heard was the steady drumbeat of feet and breath.

I felt powerful. I felt alive.

“You are your own best medicine,” Kevin said afterward.

It’s a hard thing to do, to run. It doesn’t really get easy. It shouldn’t, anyway. That’s not the point of it. The point of it is to throw yourself into effort and to be present inside your body’s work. And then your head goes quiet. And you enjoy what you’ve accomplished, even as you are accomplishing it.

I’m afraid that writing has been and will always be for me a place of intense discomfort as well grace.

I’m afraid that writing costs me in ways that are physical and emotional, that in order to pour myself into words on the page, I have to make payment. I don’t say this lightly. Creativity cannot be taken for granted. It may be a gift, but it cannot be freely received. The very act of creating means holding something unfinished and imperfect to the light, and loving it for what it might be, even while accepting all it cannot be. It means you’re never really satisfied with what you make. Because you know (and only you do) what you imagined you could have made. It means living an every day life uncomfortably suspended with your unfinished work.

I suppose we all have unfinished work. Unfinished business. Longings. Discomforts. I suppose this is not unique to the writer and it sounds self-pitying to suggest so. Let me be clear: I’m not sorry to be a writer. I’ve chosen this as much as it’s chosen me. I could have been, and could yet be, something else.

I think it’s just that I’m beginning to understand what it is I’ve chosen, by being a writer.

And why I need to run, if I am to write. I am not running away. I am not running toward. I am running. It can never be like that with writing. So I’m thankful, thankful, thankful to be able to run.