On Practice, Patience, and Persistence / Knitting, Running, and Writing

I have quiet hobbies because I'm a quiet person. For a year now I've finally been learning music, succeeding mainly on the quirky, very simple, Omnichord. Expressing myself through music is scary to me. Me making noise kind of scares me. Drawing attention to myself is something I never consider doing, and when it happens I shrink back into a shell. And, I'm Okay with that. I'm just a quiet person. I'm a lone wolf with a pair of knitting needles.

Music is a challenge I'm amazed at myself for doing at all. I wouldn't have gotten to this point were it not for the hobbies I naturally took up and which have formed who I am now, a person who can do anything if she embraces three things: practice, patience, and persistence.

Practice, patience, and persistence depend on each other. They form a shining circle, a feedback loop. For a number of years I've been writing, knitting, running, pushing myself through each of them (in varying degrees, however) because of the in-the-moment joy they stir up. Here are my reflections on my hobbies. Perhaps you can relate?

Practice

Fundamentally, knitting is performing an action over and over and over. I picked up knitting in the summer of 2005 on a whim. It was trendy at the time, and Target sold a starter kit with plastic number ten needles (which I understand now were of very low quality), pink eyelash yarn (a fad that was a terrible yarn to learn on), and a confusing tutorial DVD. I bought it the day I borrowed my dad's car to distract myself from the commencement of my grandmother's health decline and the angry absence of my brother. The car ran out of gas less than a mile from home. Whoops.

For almost ten years now, I've been learning knitting and I'll never stop learning. There are always many more miles of yarn to manipulate with untried stitches, alternative techniques, and new patterns. And, as long as lace knitting remains difficult, I'll be learning that forever. Cables look hard, but they're actually fairly easy. Lace knitting looks hard and IS hard. Each individual stitch requires full attention, even the ones in rows of straight purls. I've been trying to do the Stitch n Bitch Sweetheart Sweater for a few days now. I've started it over three times, and I'm going to have to go for a fourth now. The full lace pattern occurs over 10 rows and I've yet to complete the round more than twice. My piece looks like the ugliest slice of Swiss cheese you'll never eat. This is how every lace knitting project for me goes. I've never completed a lace project.

A pin-hole photo of my knitting from 2006.

This time, with all that I've been experiencing, I am able to really look at that wonky piece of work and see how much I've actually done at all, not only what I'm doing wrong. I managed to complete one set of the pattern only to get halfway through the next to see that the stitches aren't lining up, and no matter what I do that isn't ripping out the done rows, it doesn't look right. But, I managed to complete one set. I practiced that ridiculous pattern over three times now, and I'm only getting better.

I may not finish this sweater. Maybe I will and it will represent some sort of achievement. And, maybe I'll never wear it. But, right now, it's reminding me how much practice makes a difference. With every new turn at this damn sweater, I get better. With every mile I run, I can breath smoother, with every draft I write I get closer to making a connection with other weirdos out there.

Patience 

You can't practice well on a deadline. Lately, I've felt pressed for time. Deadlines have formed out of my own theories and ifs. My phone isn't on silent, yet it sits next to me and I keep checking it for a call I hope to get in time for...something. The phone utters no peep. True, I'd like to be out of my current apartment and into a cheaper one before a certain time, but it's no tragedy if I'm not, only a struggle if one other thing doesn't happen. etc. Overall, there's a dread in my chest simply because I'm trudging through uncharted territory right now.

When I moved into my first very own apartment in 2006, a fresh college grad, I decided I would become a runner. I bought bad tennis shoes at Payless, neglected warm-ups and stretching, and barely considered a training plan. I was out of breath before I started. That didn't last long. The second time I tried taking it up, in 2010 during my early years living in San Francisco, I made the same mistakes again. Both times I had the urge to jump out and run. Fast. Deep inside, it wasn't out of a desire to be healthier or thinner, to be a winner in some timed race. I had something inside of me that was trying to bust out and would only swell uncomfortably when I rushed into easing this restlessness.

When my husband wanted to get in on the running action, he smartly did his research. We started with the attainable Couch to 5k program and it only got better from there. Today, I'm about a quarter of the way through training for a marathon. A fucking marathon, sons of bitches. And, I WANT do to it.

It's probably going to take me over five hours to complete a marathon. I've finished my last half in two hours and thirty-eight minutes. Most of the my I practice running with music blaring, which gets me in the zone and transforms those miles into minutes flying by. During races runners are encouraged to keep the headphones off for safety reasons, but it's also exhilarating to be aware of the party of thudding feet around you. Even without music, during a good race the miles and the minutes fly by. Your mind becomes still while your body is flying.

Now, maybe half of all of my runs are this Zen-like. Of the half that aren't, I usually want to give up on. It's boring and painful. I'm acutely aware of the damage I'm doing to all the bones in my back, knees, shins, feet. Unable to breath into my stomach while my neck and shoulders constrict like I'm a turtle hunching into its shell. I'm saying very eloquently in my head as I look at the time, "Oh come ooooooon mother fuckers!" Sometimes I finish one of these runs and feel terrible.

So, how did I get to the point of wanting to run a marathon? Patience! Whether I run an eleven or a fourteen minute mile, It takes time to finish one. It takes time to complete the nine mile loop. It takes time to reach the point where you can push through the boring miles and truly want to keep going past mile 13.1. I've always been pretty patient and have been able to tolerate long lines, waits for tables and stuff like that. But I've never been so graceful in waiting for answers to where my life will be in a month, a year, five years. Waiting to know if the other shoe will drop or if whatever it is I'm anxious about today will resolve itself. The difference between dealing with the anxiety of waiting five years ago and dealing with it now is that I can think of the patience I'm forced to face when completing a big run. You'll get there. It will be there when you get there. It will end and you'll have a new perspective after it's over. If it's not what you wanted, then you try next time.

Persistence 

But it's true, practice does make perfect--if you can accept perfection as never reaching an endpoint. I like that philosophy, but I do bulk at it when I think of my writing. I said last week that my writing is like a succulent, growing very slowly. Of the hobbies I'm discussing here, writing is the act I do the least. Perhaps because it's not a hobby. It's my calling. It's just what I do. I regard it the highest inside of myself. It's the most mercurial--an idea burns hotly just before I fall asleep only to be completely forgotten the next time I'm by a pen and paper. It mocks me when I draw blanks, It disappoints. It hurts. I really fucking hate it sometimes.

While I'm persistent in my running programs, working my schedule around miles, and I'm persistent in getting that crazy pattern just right even if I retire by the time it happens, I'm just not quite there in my writing. I can't seem to tame it so that I regularly write. I'm trying now, yet again. Every January I come up with a plan. Every following November I ignore NanoWriMo emails. Maybe going back to school will help, maybe letting go and being wild in my writing habits will if I had a better memory. Maybe I just have to quit bitching and do it.

But, persistence. If I can do it running, dragging my high school gym class self through a marathon, counting every single little stitch in a lacy sweater, I should theoretically be able to complete the writing dreams I've had for most of my life.

In conclusion of sorts, I thought of a cool tattoo idea honoring my hobbies and their virtues. In the meantime, please encourage me to keep writing, even if you don't like this blog. :P I encourage you to embrace practice, patience, and persistence the next time you feel frustrated, anxious, overwhelmed, inadequate. As Counselor Troi says in Star Trek TNG "Decent Part I," "Feelings aren't positive and negative. They simply exist. It's what we do with those feelings that becomes good or bad." Q might consider that "pedantic psychobabble," but I think it's Okay for now. TNG rules.