For hours, days, weeks I’ve been trying to get my WordPress website to work properly. There’s a bug somewhere precluding my editing or saving blog posts outside of the initial text draft. That means I can’t add photos, make changes to any post once I’ve uploaded the text to the site, modify any pages that already exist (such as the Running Tally that lists the dates of the marathons I’ve run). I’ve tried a lot of different things… all to only bring more frustrations and false starts. It’s actually a lot like my running these days whereby I think I have a plan of action and I spend time figuring out the logistics and means of getting from point A to point B so that I can run from point C to point D and on and on and on. And it all goes wildly astray.
Not that any of this is particularly interesting outside of an explanation as to why there aren’t a lot of posts any more and why there’s not ANY photos of any kind. There’s a part of me that thinks maybe that’s a great thing. Was I using a photo as a placeholder for a thousand words? Was I just sloughing off pages figuring “some day” I’d try and clean them up? Unexamined life choices of being guilty of shoddy proof reads as a press to just produce content.
I should note that this new word processor I’m using highlights “unexamined” as misspelled… apparently “unexamined” does not exist in its lexicon and it keeps telling me the correct way to spell that is “examined.” We truly do live in Orwell’s future of disinformation and brainwashing. I think this every day confronted with the latest social media post or crazed press secretary gaggle or scrolling the newsfeeds… even sources I trust that I think attempt to corroborate information and stories are stuck having to cover the dumbest things in the world because unfortunately too many people in power not just here in the United States but around the globe, are all engaged in the dumbest rhetoric, actions, and right out in the open malfeasance.
All of this is to say that I am thinking of a “back to basics” approach to the website here. Words not images. Prose not photos. An attempt to write and evoke what it was that got me running in the first place – a chance to disconnect from the digital, to escape the rat race of money, business, and alerts and find a place in the world proper. To in effect leave behind perpetual drug of screens and isolation inherent in social media and “digital life” and find the admittedly endorphin high of running and being IN the world, not just VIEWING it.
One of the reasons I try and avoid treadmills at all costs for training purposes, despite being told it’s a great way to improve form, speedwork, or consistency, is that I run to be out in the world itself. The three-dimensional space of reality. Sights, smells, sounds, people in the “wild” of life. And I want to feel like I’ve gone SOMEWHERE after my run. I almost always do an out and back or circuit for my training runs and I really only have about three or four “courses” I run regularly. But it’s still outside, out in the world, OUT THERE… and I at least see more than just a screen or a wall in a poorly climate controlled gym.
Thus, a post here and there just of words. Words, words that may mean nothing, that may fail to convey the human experience, that may falter and fall down with mixed metaphors, dangling participles, misspellings and dodgy grammar. I will not be using “grammarly” or chatgpt to review the work. That way leads to, in my opinion, a more homogenized style of writing. Maybe that’s what people want … lord knows I’m guilty of grabbing a Wendy’s Frosty even though there’s better ice cream options (Dusseldorf had when I was there some flavors of gelato all priced at a euro a scoop – those scoops remain the stuff of dreams). I go chain when perhaps I should go mom-and-pop. But I still sometimes strive to find that hole in the wall, that regional specific authenticity. We can enjoy the shared consistency of the global transnational reach of certain conglomerates. But we can also enjoy and seek out the things that are special and unique to a place, a culture, to a person. We should celebrate that which makes us similar, what we share and can help us perhaps be kinder to one another. But we should also celebrate what makes us different… because it’s the melting pot of differences that combine to create something new and better. To only do what we’ve always done leads to stagnation and eventual decline. Not to get all philosophical but we should seek the weird, different, and unexpected. And if that means going back to basics, to words written without digital photos or digital overlords sanding down the edges, then so be it. It’s not going back, it’s resetting to go forward. Sometimes you get lost on the course and have to doubleback to find where you got off course. The flag in the sand, the arrow made of flour on the road, the hand made sign that says you should’ve turned left at Albuquerque.
None of this matters. It’s mainly just for me now. And that’s okay. It doesn’t have to be a social influencer, monetizing their channel. It can just be stray thoughts written into the digital ether. If any of this resonates with you, go outside. Talk to a person… or don’t. But put away your screen, your phone, your tether to the artificial world and enjoy the world that exists outside your door.
As for me… I am going to try once more to fix this website kerfuffle. And assuming it goes as well as it’s been going, maybe I’ll go for a run to clear my head. There’s worse things I could be doing.
