- Showing up consistently is the most powerful thing in the world. I learned this a while ago with writing but discovering exactly the same thing with distance running has led me to realise how this is true of pretty much everything. It’s far better to show up consistently, even with lacklustre performance, than it is to wait until you feel inspired and/or see the conditions as optimal.
- Pacing is a really intricate psychological activity. I was really interested to realise that I’m instinctively conservative in my pacing. I assumed it would be the opposite. But starting with a sense of what you can maintain over time before inferring the outcome on that basis is utterly life changing. I formerly fixated on what I wanted to achieve and then just imagined I would magically do it.
- Everything difficult in life should have a victory lap. The upside of conservative pacing is that when you realise you’ve got energy left at the end, it’s possible to come in strong and really luxuriate in the experience. This feels so good in a competitive race but I think it’s more broadly true as well.
- What you feel you can do is pretty radically malleable. You need to understand these limits in order to pace yourself. But if you consistently push them in a sustainable way then what you feel you can do changes radically. I was vaguely annoyed with myself that I just missed my 2 hour target for this morning’s half marathon. Then I realised that even just six months ago that entire thought process would have felt utterly implausible to me.
- There’s something deeply existential about pushing yourself to your limits. The better you get at pacing, the more feasible it is to do this without messing up. I’m fascinated by what happens to the preconscious in this state. If you let yourself free associate all sorts of memories and images surface in a way that can be profoundly therapeutic depending on how you respond to them.
- Falling into rhythm feels amazing. There’s a certain point after about an hour where I find my stride and a deep sense of peace takes over, particularly if the sun is shining. I was really surprised to discover something similar happens with other people, a kind of lowkey connection that comes from the wordless attunement of falling into pace with each other. Everything in life should have a rhythm. Indeed I suspect it does, it’s just hard to find and even harder to maintain.
Raiding the inarticulate since 2010
accelerated academy acceleration agency AI Algorithmic Authoritarianism and Digital Repression archer Archive Archiving artificial intelligence automation Becoming Who We Are Between Post-Capitalism and Techno-Fascism big data blogging capitalism ChatGPT claude Cognitive Triage: Practice, Culture and Strategies Communicative Escalation and Cultural Abundance: How Do We Cope? Corporate Culture, Elites and Their Self-Understandings craft creativity critical realism data science Defensive Elites Digital Capitalism and Digital Social Science Digital Distraction, Personal Agency and The Reflexive Imperative Digital Elections, Party Politics and Diplomacy digital elites Digital Inequalities Digital Social Science Digital Sociology digital sociology Digital Universities elites Fragile Movements and Their Politics Cultures generative AI higher education Interested labour Lacan Listening LLMs margaret archer Organising personal morphogenesis Philosophy of Technology platform capitalism platforms Post-Democracy, Depoliticisation and Technocracy post-truth psychoanalysis public engagement public sociology publishing Reading realism reflexivity scholarship sexuality Shadow Mobilization, Astroturfing and Manipulation Social Media Social Media for Academics social media for academics social ontology social theory sociology technology The Content Ecosystem The Intensification of Work theory The Political Economy of Digital Capitalism The Technological History of Digital Capitalism Thinking trump twitter Uncategorized work writing zizek
Mark Carrigan 