Do I Have Something to Say?

And if I don't have anything to say, can I make it look as if I do by changing my usual font and writing my non-content in red?


Or by adding in some blue sky?


I'm often so busy that I feel I don't have the time to write in this blog, even though I have so much that I'd love to record here. Today I do have a little time, but not much in the posting pitcher to pour out. It's like, the old Beatles song I sometimes sing to my sleepy self when I run early in the day:

Nothing to say but what a day, how's your boy been
 Nothing to do, it's up to you
I've got nothing to say but it's OK

 Good morning, good morning
Good morning ah

Ah, indeed. I had a conversation with my friend R. this morning that touched on ways for a person to follow a meaningful path, a daunting endeavor given the particular strictures a person can feel limited by--finances, relationships, employment, health (you fill in the blank). For myself, I have no pat answers. I feel honor-bound to run and to eat vegetarian and to drive my car as little as possible, and in some general way these things feel like they head me toward a "meaningful path." But they feel more like odds and ends than like anything substantive.

I started this post with the idea of conveying how sometimes in order to write about running I need to write about not running. Most immediately I intended to comment on the busy-ness of my life right now (I'm working full-time instead of half), and on how said life means I'm running less and am in a bit of a panic over my commitment to run CIM. Then came the thought: If running is meaningful, is what I do when I'm not running meaningful too?


I just took a short walk in the autumn air. Enough navel-gazing for now.


Often Z has told me he would like to leave a legacy of something worthwhile that he has made that will endure. I think I know that feeling. Yesterday I took this picture of construction workers atop the unfinished Oakland Kaiser hospital. I was at Kaiser to have my injured pinkie examined. (It's healing. It's fine. I've got nothing to say but it's OK. Good morning.) In general I'm not a fan of building large resource-consuming buildings, but there's something in me that loves bigger-than-life construction. The steel! The cranes! The burly workers! I feel the same way about construction as I feel about speed.

Leaving a worthwhile legacy. Building something big. Going fast. In my mind these are closely related to what I might do when I'm not running, that is, related to my meaningful path.

All something to think about when I run in SF this evening. Whew. I wish I were on that run right now.

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