第5页

To keep on going, you have to keep up the rhythm. This is the important thing for long-term projects. Once you set the pace, the rest will follow. The problem is getting the flywheel to spin at a set speed - and to get to that point takes as much concentration and effort as you can manage.
The energetic ones were zipping down the road, slicing through the air like they had robbers at their heels. Others, overweight, huffed and puffed, their eyes half closed, their shoulders slumped like this was the last thing in the world they wanted to be doing. I am somewhere in the middle.
Basically a writer has a quiet, inner motivation, and doesn't seek validatio in the outwardly visible. 
I run in order to acquire a void. But as you might expect, an occasional thought will slip into this void. People's minds can't be a complete blank. Human beings' emotions are not strong or consistent enough to sustain a vacuum. What I mean is, the kinds of thoughts and ideas that invade my emotions as I run remain subordinate to that void. Lacking content, they are just random thoughts that gather around that central void. 
Other people have their own values to live by, and the same holds true with me. These differences give rise to disagreements, and the combination of these disagreements can give rise to even greater misunderstandings. As a result, sometimes people are unfairly criticized. This goes without saying. It's not much fun to be misunderstood or c riticized, but rather a painful experience that hurts people deeply.
Emotional hurt is the prices a person has to pay in order to be independent. This sense of isolation, like acid spilling out of a bottle, can unconsciously eat away at a person's heart and dissolve it. 
By running longer it's like I can physically exhaust that portion of my discontent. It also makes me realize again ho weak I am, how limited my abilities are. I become aware, physically, of these low points. And one of the results of running a little farther than usual is that I become that much stronger. I quietly absorb the things I'm able to, releasing them later, and in as changed a form as possible, as part of the story line in a novel.