My Traveling Treadmill Desk Goes to Dodge Park

Scenes from Dodge Park today*
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* ("today" being a few days ago when I wrote this)

My Traveling Treadmill Desk Goes to Dodge Park

           

           Recently I read several articles about treadmill desks.  You stand at a special desk doing your work (or play) and walk along on a special slow-paced treadmill, killing two bird with one stone.  You get your work done and you get some exercise, too. And, elsewhere, I read that if you walk at a pace that is comfortable for you, you can be smarter, more creative and more productive.   What could be better? 

           My own personal "treadmill desk" could be better for me.  It allows me to work and simultaneously get exercise, be creative and productive, and see an ever-changing scene.  The desk is air, the treadmill is the sidewalks, paths, roads and floors I travel along as I walk.  I have a small "palmtop" computer called a Psion that allows me to write while walking, which is what I am doing right now. 

             Today, the treadmill slipping under my feet is the plowed and paved multi-use path along the Clinton River at Dodge Park.  The sun is shining, the sky is blue, the river is flowing past but there is almost no one else here, maybe because there's a foot of snow on the ground.  I have the whole park to myself.

           One problem with my treadmill desk is the temperature control knobs.  They're non-existent, and it is twenty degrees and windy.  That's 20 degrees Fahrenheit, way below freezing.  My fingers get cold when I write.  Since I can’t type with gloves on, I have to warm my hands in my pockets between sentences.

            Although today, the sky is blue and the sun is shining, other days, I can't control the snow or rain that falls on my "treadmill desk."  I could, however, choose to use my "treadmill desk" at the mall, or, if I could afford a gym membership, doing laps at the gym (not my favorite activity, but still better than an actual treadmill for a change of scene.)

            Another disadvantage of my "treadmill desk" is that the Psion requires XP, and Microsoft is phasing out support for XP.  XP is the last windows that supports the Psion software necessary to download my work form the Psion.  Sadly, Macs do not work at all.

           On the Psion, I've written Cowbird stories (many never published due to computer and other issues), blog posts, flash fiction, poems, short stories and entire (as of yet unpublished) novels.  But my virtual-treadmill way of life may be coming to an end soon because of the lack of compatibility of the Psion with newer computers.

            I could never afford a real treadmill desk; they're bit pricey.  Even if I could, would I like it?  No trees, birds, flowers, dogs to greet and pet.  Then again, no freezing fingers, no rain, snow or wind, no sidewalks treacherous with snow and ice.  Okay, it might be nice sometimes in the winter.  No unbearable heat, sweatification, or bugs and less opportunity for beggars or thieves.  Okay, it might be nice during summer hot spells.

            But then I might miss people stopping me to say they see me all over town, miles from home.  They ask me, "Did you really walk there?"  Yep.  I walked.  And I carried my “desk” with me and wrote a chapter in current novel, while admiring the scenery between thoughts, words and sentences.

            I wonder if there's somewhere you could try out a treadmill desk, to see what it's like.  My husband says, probably not.  Manufacturers have learned that it's best to play on hype, notions and fads.  Most of these things, he says, end up at the curb when people discover that it's not as much fun as they imagined and involves real work and commitment.

           I have plenty of commitment for walking and writing.  I walk and I write every day.  But that commitment might not translate well to an indoor treadmill desk, and that's a lot of money to experiment with.  A moot point anyway, since we can't afford it.

            I like my own special "treadmill desk" anyway, with the big blue dome of sky overhead, the foot of snow underfoot (at the moment, since I'm off the paved trail), the river sliding by and ducks and geese paddling and talking quietly among themselves.

Normal

Normal

            Normal

            Two men ride by on bicycles.  They each look strange in a different way.  One is whiskery, as in unshaven for two days, riding a small bike, and hunched over a large box he is balancing on his lap.  The other, riding on the other side of the road, is riding a very tall thin old-fashioned "English" bike and sitting up very straight.  He too is "whiskery." He has a fairly long grey beard and long grey hair.   He is sitting ramrod straight and riding a hundred feet behind the other guy and on the opposite side of the road. He is the one on the correct side of the road. The tall guy is tall and thin on a tall thin bike and the short guy, while not fat, is slightly plump. 

            They both strike me as strange, but then I think of people dear to me, Keith, for example, my brother Tom, Judy, Jaison, Rosy.  My parents. Everyone I know is strange and interesting.

            I remember one time when my kids were tweens and we were talking about one of our family friends, and the kids said that person was strange.  Then, one of us mentioned another friend, and that friend, too, was pronounced weird, and then we named everyone we knew, and they were all pronounced weird.  It turned into a kind of game, taking turns naming a person we thought might be normal and the others ticked off the weirdosities of that person.  Oh yeah.  We laughed and laughed.  Then we tried hard to think of someone who was not weird, but name as we might, we thought of weirdosities for every single person.  We finally settled on one person who we decided was not weird, Betsy Fallon. 

            Betsy, my husband's sister, had two children, taught preschool, lived in a nice house by the lake, had a nice dog, a nice husband (who was weird), and acted "normal," whatever that mean.

            Years later, we decided Betsy, too, was weird, and could think of no one who wasn't.  Including, of course, ourselves. 

            What exactly is normal?

            I remember reading an article in Science News about Perceived Beauty.   They showed a bunch of pictures of people to a bunch of people and had them rate them on a scale of one to ten for attractiveness.  The images had been produced by a computer that overlaid pictures of many people, 3, 5, 9, 15 and many more.  The more faces combined into the image, the higher the attractiveness rating. 

            What we perceive as most beautiful, according to the article, is actually most average.  The more average person is the most beautiful or attractive (handsome) she or he appears to our animal minds.  The too big noses are averaged out by the too small noses, the too big chins by the too small ones, the wide mouths by the narrow ones.  Something in our animal nature is programmed to find the most average face attractive. 

            There may be an adaptive advantage to this.  If I, who have tendency to gain too much weight, marry a man who is delightfully thin, perhaps our children will approach normalcy.  Or not--some may be fat and some thin.  Perhaps those people who look most normal have the greatest opportunity to be used as breeding stock if we perceive them as attractive.

            I wonder if that might also be true with behavior.  Those people who behave in a pattern closest to what society labels as normal have the greatest breeding potential and thus theoretically produce the most offspring and create the largest pool of their genetic material in future generations.

            I think of the two men who rode by on their bikes, and I think to myself that "the very fact that they are riding bikes with all this snow and these puddles makes them weird, especially since they are adults, not kids or teens."  Then I think, "I might do that myself."  And then I think, "Yeah, but I'm weird."  The “normal” people in my neighborhood go to the gym if they exercise at all.

            And then I think of the people I love best in the world.  They are all out on the tail ends of the bell curve for normalcy—not so far out as to be dangerous, gust far enough out to be really interesting.

            We tend to be afraid of unfamiliar people who look weird or strange.  But when we get to know them, they look like people we know and love.  Those two men--they might each be someone's dearly beloved. They may never have met each other, but this may be the day that they meet and become lifelong friends--or lifelong enemies.  I vote for friends. Or, they might be nefarious criminals bent on some far-out scheme, only pretending to not be together so no one will suspect that inside box are the weapons they need to rob the bank on the corner and begin a long and devious crime spree.

            Interesting as the crime binge may be, my guess is that they are probably ordinary people involved in ordinary lives, and I know from long experience that many of our ordinary lives are quite extraordinary!

My Moleskine in Addis Ababa Ethiopia

Mary's book is in Addis Ababa Ethiopia
for 2 weeks
photo by Mike Kline

Mary's Moleskine in Accra, Ghana
"Pouring Creativity into Mary's Mole"
photo by Mike Kline

Happy Pi Day

I am baking pies all day today for Pi Day!

 

Not "Just Writing" Exactly

Melting Snow
There is much more than shows here in most spots!
photo by me, Mary Stebbins Taitt
click image to view larger.

            Friday, March 7, 2014, 3:18 PM I am walking between walls of snow over wet and icy concrete.  The snow and ice are melting because the sun is shining and there are puddles gathering in the low spots. Deep puddles.

            Yesterday was my first day on this new Psion, whose name is Caution Bravery.  I woke up this morning with a very sore thumb and rubbed on some Voltaren gel in hopes of cutting back on the pain so I could function.

            So, this is my writing practice.  Slogging through puddles in the achingly brilliant sun.  Wait, that's too many adjectives and adverbs.  The snow has a high albedo, and could damage one's eyes if one were out in it too long in the sun.  It doesn't look dirty, as it often does when it melts, because there is a fresh layer over the old snow.

            What are today's goals for a writing practice?

            1) Awareness:  to be as fully awake aware, alive and present as possible in this moment of bright sun, splashing water, melting snow, water running down storm drains, thick and muddy.  To be awake in my own life and within my own thoughts, and to be awake to world and the people in it.  I see wet grass emerging form under the snow, brown and soggy, soggy leaves left from autumn.  I notice I am dressed too warmly and am getting overheated.  I notice the sounds of splashing as I walk, the birds cheeping, cars passing on the street, my discomfort walking over the ice.  I notice wanting to go home and divest myself of my heavy coat and hat.

            I try to save my words and get an error message.  I decide to go home and start over.

            I realize that I am carrying my backpack, because I was originally intending to go to the grocery store.  I take it off and cram my big thick coat and my hat.  I am STILL warm.  Water has splashed over the top of my boots and my feet are wet.

            I had attempted to stop my watch, but it had not stopped.  I am timing my walk because I have to walk a minimum of 45 minutes.  Sometimes, because of my fibromyalgia, this is difficult for me, and other times I can walk much longer and farther. 

            I have come out to Mack, a local main drag, in hopes of better sidewalks and less ice and water, and so far, this is turned out to be a wise move on those fronts, but now I have to endure constant traffic.

            I am carrying my little 2/3 Panasonic camera (“Pandora”) with the stereo close-up lens.  I would like to go in florist shop and photograph the flowers, but because of the biopsies on my face, and Band-Aids over them, I feel like a freak.  Keith says I look as if I've been in a knife flight, and that's not reassuring.  I feel shy about asking to photograph the flowers when I look like Frankenstein’s monster.

            2) Journal:  My writing practice often serves as a journal and record of my life, which feels valuable to me, so I continue with the goal of using my writing practice to record events and concerns.  I could go on about that, but several other things wish to be recorded.

            3) Discovery:  it is in my writing practice that I often discover that I am thinking or feeling.  I love the little aha moments.  I can't exactly write that down as a goal, or maybe I can.  It's sort of like expecting the unexpected.

            4) Generate ideas:  I wish, during some of my writing practice sessions, to generate ideas for my current writing projects, my poems, novels, kids’ books, short stories etc.  Often, bits that begin as "just writing" morph into goal-oriented writing, that is, a poem or story or an idea for novel. 

            I have a regrettable tendency to write myself into a corner, from which I can't find an exit without tracking over wet-paint or battling the Urgals.  Sometimes, in my writing practice, I can find a chainsaw or shoes with stickers on them so that I can walk through or up the wall and escape.

            In one of my novels, the bad guys orchestrated the killing of some lesser bad guys, some good guys and the protagonist in a complex scheme.  I knew what they were up to when I started, but I've had a senior event and forgotten what I had in mind.  I had this novel more than 3/4 written (first rough draft) and would like to rediscover my intention for it or invent a new one.  That would be a good thing to do in a writing practice--at least I think so. 

            Actually, what really happened was sadder (to me) and more complex that what I just wrote.  Here's what happened:  I took a vacation from work (in Syracuse, at the time) and went to the UP (Upper Peninsula) in Michigan and stayed at a campground right on the beach.  I set up a little table on the beach and spent two weeks working on my novel.  I'd already been working on it for a year and my goal was to finish it and I nearly did, but right near the end, there was a computer glitch and the computer blue-screened repeatedly and had to be sent back to IBM to be repaired.  Everything on it was lost.

            I had a backup copy on a CD, but the heat in the car warped the CD, rendering it useless.  I had another back-up copy on the Psion, but the day I returned from vacation, someone at the museum stole the Psion.  (I know who it was, but that's another story.)            For years, I hoped my stolen Psion would come back to me, but it never did, and I guess I have to let go of it.

            I had backed up the Psion on yet another computer at work, but Nerd Boys were updating the system, and when they saved my data, they missed that because it was in a folder labeled Psion and they didn't know it was important.

            So, in the space of only a few days, I went from having a nearly completed first rough-draft novel to having only a printed copy of a much earlier draft from months before my two weeks of work.  (There may be other copies extant, but I have not been able to locate any).

            Then, life came along, as it often does.  I met Keith, my mother was hospitalized, had a series of horrible experiences and then died, my aunt died, I had three houses to sort through, a romance and marriage, and so on, so I didn't have a chance to work on mentally retrieving the novel.  All I have left is that early version and my memories, which daily grow dimmer, of what I had wanted to write.

            The novel in question started as a gift to a coworker who liked Stephen King and was kind of preposterous at first.  It had all sorts of crazy, unbelievable events and characters.  For example, the protagonist has amnesia, which is something writing books admonish one to avoid, and I knew that when I chose to include it.  A giant turtle appears in the story.  But I had "solved" the problems created by the strange things I added for my friend.  Only the problem of the "mafia" types remained.  What exactly were they up to?  AND, fiddlesticks, I thought I'd solved that, too.  Only, I cannot remember what I'd come up with.

            I like the characters.

            Is the novel worth reinventing?  Or should I ditch it and go on to one of the others?

            Common sense says, ditch it.

            My heart says, revive it.

            I like to honor my heart, but my heart hasn't given me the key to the mystery that I had, or thought I had, and then lost.

            So, in my writing practice, I'm secretly looking for clues.  I'm hoping they might pop up the way lost dreams sometimes do.  A key on a battered, faded ribbon.