Waning Energies

The moon is full tonight.

By rights, if I am in concert with the supposed characteristics of its phases, I should be at the zenith of my activity, yet the last couple of weeks has seen a distinctive waning in my activities.

I had wanted to make November my kick-starting month, because of NaNoWriMo, to get back into my writing habits. I wanted to get into a nice regular rhythm of running and strength work to build me up gently for next year’s races. I wanted to clear and cut back many of the plants in the garden to get them ready for their slumbers. But after nearly a year of hard writing (for my MA) and hard running (for my marathons) and almost no gardening (sorry Anne), the last couple of weeks seemed to have pushed everything into mañana land and I’ve done very little.

Granted, during the first week we had our gorgeous holiday at the Burgh Island Hotel, and then last Sunday, I managed to get myself slightly injured just before the cross country race. For some reason, I tried to jump over a little ditch filled with about five inches of water, in order to try and keep my shoes dry for about ten seconds longer. As I landed on my right leg, I felt it twist a bit at the knee. I still managed to run my race, but I decided to have a rest for a little while after.

So now it’s a Monday, a full week and a day later, and I think I can run. But it’s raining. And these two weeks have put me into a blanket of laziness which is so comforting on these wet, wintry days, but I do need to now throw it off. I had hoped that the extra time gained from not going out to run could have been ploughed into my novel writing, but the blocks are up for that too. The plot going forward is unclear. I’m unsure whether to go back and start re-writing the things I know I want to change or to keep forging ahead, trying to cut a path through the overgrown jungle of my brain. Or should I park the whole thing for a while and try my hand at short stories?  

Perhaps, like Haruki Murakami the writer, as he describes in his small book about running and life, I cannot do one without the other. I already know that these blogs keep me enthused about my running, and it seems that, without running, my head goes foggy and dull, so I can’t write.

The forecast from lunchtime is looking brighter. I’m going to get my kit together and take myself off for an hour or so. Take those first steps. Then, I’ll take a notebook and pen. Go old-school and be completely offline for a couple of hours while I try and work out what the next few chapters will look like. I may even get an hour cutting some plants back, but let’s not push it.

After tonight, the moon will be ‘waning gibbous’, as it continues blithely in its dance around the Earth. I’m sure my productivity happens in some sort of cycle too. Or is it a spiral. The less I do, the less I want to do. The opposite is true too, so I just need to begin again, and build that joy up once more.