the writing life

I stopped on the treadmill, desperately pressing the big, red, judgmental STOP button. The
display mockingly flashed the numbers 0.36. Miles, that is. That was sad. It looked easy…it
did. Life is a race that you never signed up for. You can stop and watch on the outskirts of the
road marked off for great human victories, or you find your own reason to run. So I signed up
for a ten-miler. Then, I ran. Running hurts more than people will admit. The thing is, when you
stop, it hurts more. Writing is a race, too--against your thoughts that threaten with their fleeting
slipperiness to run past you. Writing hurts more than people will admit. But you know what?
Stopping hurts more. At the end of my ten-miler, they gave me a memorial coin. From my
writing life, the living pages are my trophies.