Points of failure: Rushing back
- 1 hour ago
- 2 min read
My left knee has been hurting all month.
The pain started while touring in Canada. I'd made plans to wake up early and run with a friend who had housed us for the night. It was a glorious five mile lap in the western prairies. I smiled the whole time as we rounded a lake, the Rockies saluting us in the distance.
I felt an all-time runner’s high on that morning, but the next day the pain started and it hasn’t stopped since.
In all honesty, I would be healed by now, but once I returned to Chicago I jumped the gun. I put my running shoes on and hit a forest trail on one of the first warm days of the year. I knew it was dumb as I pulled into the parking lot, but after a long winter I was anxious to move my body in the sun.
Days later I couldn’t walk upright and had to pay a visit to a doctor.
“You just overdid it. X-Ray looks fine, everything is in place. You need to give it time to fully recover.”
My eagerness to make things work before they were ready created a bigger setback.
While nursing my leg, I sat down to interview one of my favorite authors about his thirty-year career. He told me how it took ten years for his first book to get published. Sixteen books before he made the New York Times Bestseller list. He told me about the Pulitzer prize, how he almost won, but ended as the runner-up.
“What did you do after that?” I asked him
“I let myself despair. Then I got to work on the next book.”
Thirty years tolerating painful rejections and setbacks, waiting decades between wins, and there I was, not being able to give my knee two weeks. After listening back to the interview, I recalled something I say often: how you do one thing is how you do everything.
The parallel was hard for me to miss. I rush things.
As someone in pursuit of a creative living, I am always asking myself if I am doing the right things, and enough of them to move things along faster. I am constantly feeling behind. I get nervous because the color of my hair is changing seasons, and I’m still trying to find my path.
But art, like healing, cannot be rushed. They are unbothered by my plans.
Even with my injury, I don’t regret my run on that morning in Canada. What I do regret is not allowing myself the time to let things lock back into place. My impatience after a stumble has always worsened situations; it’s made me sign bad deals, work with the wrong people, gotten me injured and has burnt me out.
I’m ending May well on my way to recovery, and with the knowledge that the life I want is always worth running full speed towards, but when something doesn’t feel right, don’t strain. Stop.
