{"id":44052,"date":"2025-09-28T18:08:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-28T22:08:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.runkevinrun.com\/?p=44052"},"modified":"2025-09-28T18:08:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-28T22:08:10","slug":"writing-into-the-darkness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/?p=44052","title":{"rendered":"Writing Into the Darkness"},"content":{"rendered":"For hours, days, weeks I\u2019ve been trying to get my WordPress website to work properly. There\u2019s a bug somewhere precluding my editing or saving blog posts outside of the initial text draft. That means I can\u2019t add photos, make changes to any post once I\u2019ve 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\u2019ve run). I\u2019ve tried a lot of different things\u2026 all to only bring more frustrations and false starts. It\u2019s 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\u2019t a lot of posts any more and why there\u2019s not ANY photos of any kind. There\u2019s a part of me that thinks maybe that\u2019s a great thing. Was I using a photo as a placeholder for a thousand words? Was I just sloughing off pages figuring \u201csome day\u201d I\u2019d 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\u2019m using highlights \u201cunexamined\u201d as misspelled\u2026 apparently \u201cunexamined\u201d does not exist in its lexicon and it keeps telling me the correct way to spell that is \u201cexamined.\u201d We truly do live in Orwell\u2019s 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\u2026 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 \u201cback to basics\u201d 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 \u2013 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 \u201cdigital life\u201d 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\u2019s 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 \u201cwild\u201d of life. And I want to feel like I\u2019ve 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 \u201ccourses\u201d I run regularly. But it\u2019s still outside, out in the world, OUT THERE\u2026 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 \u201cgrammarly\u201d or chatgpt to review the work. That way leads to, in my opinion, a more homogenized style of writing. Maybe that\u2019s what people want \u2026 lord knows I\u2019m guilty of grabbing a Wendy\u2019s Frosty even though there\u2019s better ice cream options (Dusseldorf had when I was there some flavors of gelato all priced at a euro a scoop \u2013 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\u2026 because it\u2019s the melting pot of differences that combine to create something new and better. To only do what we\u2019ve 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\u2019s not going back, it\u2019s 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\u2019ve turned left at Albuquerque.

None of this matters. It\u2019s mainly just for me now. And that\u2019s okay. It doesn\u2019t 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\u2026 or don\u2019t. 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\u2026 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.","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For hours, days, weeks I\u2019ve been trying to get my WordPress website to work properly. There\u2019s a bug somewhere precluding my editing or saving blog posts outside of the initial text draft. That means I can\u2019t add photos, make changes to any post once I\u2019ve uploaded the text to the site, modify any pages that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44052"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44052\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44059,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44052\/revisions\/44059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}