Typing, paused

As the days and weeks go by and the number of blog posts becomes less and less frequent, there is a gnawing sense of guilt about the lack of production in this area of my life. If you look at the blog statistics from many years ago, there were several years where we averaged more than one post a day for the entire year – a few years, more than 400 posts! We had a lot to write about. There’s not as much to write about these days, and there are far more distractions hovering in our universe – even for someone like me, who doesn’t spend a lot of time scrolling social media.

Writing is a tricky thing. At least for me, and I imagine for most writers, the spirit needs to move me to put down some words. I need something to write about. This may seem like an obvious statement, but when you are staring at a blank screen – or contemplating and searching into a scattered mind with fewer and fewer words to share – you realize that writing is far more than typing fast (one of my few skills … I can type really fast). For a long while, I think my wife Heidi equated the two, or at least her words conveyed that to me. Because I’m a literal nerd, words matter to me. Years ago, when my full-time career at Dutchess County’s Finest Daily Newspaper ended and I began doing most of my writing from home, if I had a freelance deadline looming, Heidi would ask me, “do you have some typing to do tonight?” Of course, I knew what she meant, but I would cringe at the question, especially if I had my weekly running column due and I wasn’t sure what the topic was going to be. Look. I’m no Frank Deford, Grantland Rice, Christine Brennan, Juliet Macur, Tyler Kepner or David Maraniss (for those keeping score at home, all phenomenal writers – most alive, some dead -- who I have tried to emulate throughout my writing career). I’m well aware that my newspaper columns and stories hastily ended up as kindling for a bonfire, or at the bottom of a bunny cage, or mercifully placed in the recycling bin. But still, it’s writing. It’s not “the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” (again, for those keeping score at home, that is the shortest sentence that includes all 26 letters of the alphabet – we used to use that as a typing test message back in the day). You type to write, but writing isn’t simply typing.

Where am I going with this? Oh yes, the lack of blog posts. There’s a certain unusual sameness to our days now. The previous sameness had a lovely cycle, one that we miss dearly. Last weekend should have been Paul Short, a meet we have gone to for decades. At practice yesterday (oops, sorry, “training”), a bunch of guys started rattling off the things they miss about normal practice, mostly mundane things like van rides, drinking sugary Gatorade mix out of the coolers with the littered plastic cups in the back of the vans, terrifyingly unsafe bus drivers, complaining about meal money as we bring them to a grocery store at the beginning of a meet bus trip, all the stuff that used to annoy us on a daily basis but we now miss so dearly. A lovely cycle. That lovely cycle had a rhythm to it, and this blog was able to follow that rhythm. We tried to create a pandemic rhythm during the spring and the summer. Now that we are in the fall, life has gotten busier – a very different kind of busier than ever before. And so, there are few posts, less fast typing than before. In his song “Patchwork Quilt,” a tribute to Jerry Garcia, the great Warren Haynes wrote and sung the following lines: “But the spirit she moves me. In fact she pushes me along.” Right now, the spirit has moved me to around 600 words, but far fewer times than in the past. Warren was right when he sung about “a patchwork quilt of life. Memories embroidered on your soul.” So many great memories embroidered on our soul from 30 years of coaching wonderful athletes, 40 years of running, jogging, walking, racing (for me, “racing” really should be in air quotes). I don’t think it’s all over, just “paused” (that’s the latest pandemic vernacular to sprout up lately … “paused” or “on pause”). And so, I guess, the frequency of blog posts has also “paused.” I’ve had a list of blog post topics staring at me for weeks, but the typing has paused. The spirit has paused. I have to believe she’ll move me – she’ll move all of us – again, at some point.