Recovery & Reflection

I am recovering nicely from the Devil's Lake race. I went for a short 2 mile run on Friday and the knee felt a little stiff toward the end. I will try running today.

My hamstring is about 95%, and I don't feel any problem in my foot. Foam rolling the hamstring appears to speed recovery. The first day I rolled it I could feel the muscle breakage and a knot, but each passing day of rolling the breakage and the knot lessened. Yesterday it felt almost normal.

I will most likely not be able to run the Howl 8 hour race in a few weeks, so my desire for training due to the inability to run is on the wane.

Having some extra time this week gave me a chance to pause and reflect on the direction of my life. As my time with photography winds to a close, the old task of finding a meaningful activity is once again upon me. In my early 20's I struggled to find it, but eventually stumbled upon art and photography, which consumed me for 10-12 years. The past 5 years have been off and on. With the disappearance of chemical photography I lost my desire to work with it any longer. Digital pictures are fun, but I can't get myself to take it seriously, maybe because I have not cultivated a love for it.

Being 43 and still relatively healthy, it seems wrong to fritter away my leisure hours. I once had a sense of the importance of time, how no day should be wasted. But not having currently dedicated myself to any pursuit, it is all too easy to just lay around reading or daydreaming. I am dangerously close to losing my sense of work ethic, but I also know that nothing is set in concrete. If I become immoral toward work, with a little effort and luck maybe I can get that sense of fire-tested ethics back into my blood.

I know that there are various periods in any life, and that I cannot always be straddling a mountaintop of positive emotion and good fortune. There will be low points, a dull string of moments which will bring pause for concern and confusion.

With each passing day I know I am coming closer to the end. Van Gogh rode a wave of desolate and mostly lonely work for 10 years, and when it was time to call it quits decided there was nothing worth moving on to, so put an end to his life. Other artists were able to remain at their posts for decades, and thus did not have to face a life after art.

And what exactly does one do when a life of art comes to a close? Art is a high and moral pursuit; also a dangerous one. For me it had to be done privately, in solitude, without letting on what exactly it was that I was doing. 99% of artists don't make a lot of money, yet I have to consider myself fortunate because I did manage to sell the majority of my pictures, and have the odd feeling of knowing that 200-300 of my photographs are floating around somewhere in the world.

Now that the pictures are gone and I am no longer working, it feels like I have never made them at all. It leaves me feeling empty and stupid, and in search of something to do. Running is a purposeful activity, but is a side show, something done for pure pleasure. Perhaps if my body was not always breaking down, I would not mind using 4-5 hours a day running and exercising. But not being able to consistently work at a high intensity, I need to find something else to keep me going.

I need something to dedicate my time to. Before finding art, I had doubts about there being anything for me to do at all. Perhaps I will remain with art, but in a different medium. Maybe it is time to start a life of painting and drawing. All it takes is 10 years. I have a chance to make it to 53, so why not? It is something to consider.....