It’s less than 24 hours until Valentine’s Day, but this post isn’t about my wife. Although she is great. It’s about the very real love I have for running again, and it’s all because I gave myself something that I couldn’t get out of.
A couple of years ago, I was in a bad way. Despite loving running my whole life, health issues caused me to just about give up on it. First came an injury that got me into cycling, and then the really big hitter after my COVID-19 booster shot. Since early 2022 I’ve been unable to run without it causing more issues with my health.
I got this stupid idea to enter London, like I have done every year, and was secretly happy when the decline email came. A few weeks later I had a call from Epilepsy Society offering me a place, and I couldn’t say now—and that has been my saviour. I’ve always been a grab the bull by the horns person, and if you get some sponsorships for it before you’ve had time to think, it means you can’t back out.
So I had to get running. There was no choice but to run through the breathing issues and needing an inhaler. It started out crap, but slowly I began to feel myself again. I’ve fallen back into love with running again, and all because of charity work. It gave me a reason not to give up, to force myself to get better, and although I’m still not 100% I feel the best version I have been for years.
The calmness that running brings helps me in so many areas of my life, and I can’t believe I went without it for so long.
It seems my throwaway post about not publishing to my blog gained some traction. Many people took it as it was intended, a commentary on it being too easy to reply and push it in front of my face, but many more people did not.
It’s a shame to see it used as some kind of signifier of privilege. Before I published, I did wonder if it would be yet another reason to ignite something beyond its intention—particularly on micro.blog. Absolutely, you can read into the post whatever you wish, but its intentions are surface level.
It does not arch back to privilege, nor is it any kind of commentary on political or racial issues. It’s just a blog post about me not publishing because I would rather not start yet another discussion on note-taking apps. I would have, were it not so easy for people to reply and make their feelings known directly to me on my blog post comments.
To see it extended to some kind of indicator of deep-rooted entitlement is annoying at best. Whilst I do think it’s important to think about the way your words could be taken, these kinds of issues are why I don’t publish most of my blog posts. I love a constructive discussion on my thoughts and ideas, there is nothing better than having them tested, but this is beyond that.
I would rather not reply. Nor do I want to give it time to think through the ideas posed in response. I think this may be the point that I give up because I can’t be doing with it. If you miss the point, that’s on me too, but reach out to me first, please.
Last month, I wrote a post that never got published. It was written out, formatted, edited and ready to go. As far as I could take it, but I hovered over the publish button and decided against it. There was nothing controversial there, but it criticised a poor take from someone who is well liked, and I couldn’t do doing with the hassle of replies.
In many respects, the unpublished post in question did its job. Much like the others that I get halfway through and never finish. It got the thoughts out and on to ‘paper’ instead of swirling in my head. The self-censorship didn’t lose me anything, and perhaps gained me a lot of peace, but I still find it funny that I couldn’t publish it on my blog. A space that is reserved for me to reflect on the things I want to write about.
I repeat, there was nothing offensive in the post, simply a retort to the terrible take. The issue that I foresaw was who it was towards. If you offend the community in question, then tend to swarm and reply in droves. All putting in their opinion, even when not asked, which is great, up to a point. I felt as if I wanted to publish it without seeing it anywhere else, perhaps if it were kept away from the blog’s main feed it could still live — but that defeats the point.
As such, it just sat there, doing nothing and annoying me, so I deleted it today and this post is my cathartic release instead. In both deleting the post and publishing this one, I have balanced my blogging chi, but there is still some weirdness there for me. I think that perhaps social media makes it too easy to reply, and too easy for me to read them.
If the reply took effort to reach out to me personally, or write their own blog post, this may put off even the most motivated of people. Even then, it would be very unlikely that I would see it without visiting their blog directly. I have had these protracted discussions before with fellow bloggers through link posts, and they generally go down much better than those thrown at me in 280 characters.
Adam Newbold, writing about using URL as a sentence:
URLs convey valuable information, and good URL design ensures that they provide the right level of context and set proper expectations. Incidentally, good URL design is something that is still lacking all over the internet,
I can’t remember where I saw Adam’s post linked to, nut it had the exact pull quote highlighted and I saved the post for reading later, thinking this was a fascinating idea. Something I could get behind. But the more I thought about it, the more I think it doesn’t really matter — which I think by the end Adam also agrees with.
I understand the idea. Maximising the amount of information in the URL, but on the modern web I don’t think it matters. I mean hey, it matters to Adam and that’s really cool, but in general. When was the last time you paid attention to a URL?
I link to loads of them, both on my blog and in my day job, and there are only two instances they matter. Both of which are every niche and only matter to me in my day job — SEO and direction.
In every other instance, you’d be hard pushed if you even see the URL on the modern web (and perhaps that is another point worth talking about at a later post). Most browsers hide them and only show you the top-level domain. When it comes to sharing on the web, even platform either obscures them with their own linking and/or shows you a rich preview with an image.
Perhaps I am wrong and they really matter to people. I understand it’s essential to own them, and not change them, but as for what they look like — who cares. Well, Adam does clearly, do you?
Can I quote post, a quote post? Well, tough, I am. Matt Birchler talking about dunking on people being a sport:
…a surefire way for you to generate engagement this week is to talk shit about…
The first thing that comes to mind reading Matt’s post is the outline of all the performative behaviour that happens on social media. Big brands and users alike farming the rage of other people for attention. There’s nothing that seems to get people going than when they hate something you like, or like something you hate.
As I’ve written about before, of course hate what you hate, and embrace it, but there becomes a line when, as Matt writes about, your personality is outlined more by the things you hate than what you enjoy. You are more concerned about the external things that you should hate, than the internal, there becomes a little too much you in f^%k you.
Derren Brown talks about exactly this in the first part of his excellent book Happy. If you base your personality on doing the opposite of something, anything, you are giving up control. He uses the example of walking on the right side of the road, simply because everyone else uses the left. It might seem anti-establishment until everyone walks on the right now. Do you then cross the road?
Arcing back to Matt’s post, he have all been teenagers and disliking the right things was “cool”. It’s an important part of growing up, but why look at other people so much? Why let others dictate what you like and don’t like? Even if the reason they like it, you hate it — other people are making your decisions for you. Certainly, you can have a f^!k you personality, but you might find you are only screwing yourself.