Discipline and Intentionality

A couple newsletters ago, I remarked how the demand to start anew in midwinter is deeply unnatural. Now that spring has arrived, I’ve been experiencing a low-level thrum of restlessness. Physically, I have outdoor marathon training to look forward to, but that’s not enough to satiate my restlessness.

In my newsletter from the top of the year, I talked about getting back into trombone as an act of desire rather than obligation due to my past relationship with the instrument. More than that, though, it was a way to bring discipline back into my life. I know how to be a musician, how to run reps on a piece to make it sound good. That sort of knowledge of how to structure time is comfortable to slip back into, but it’s not one that serves my current goals and unfortunately trombone isn’t in the cards this year.

It’s disappointing to share, particularly because it’s a goal I shared here publicly. But, returning to trombone was a means to reintroducing discipline into my life along with being a mode of creating. With the former covered by the running, how, then, is the root of the restlessness—the lack of creating—being satisfied? At present, it’s not, but I’m trying to fix that.

A major question running has asked of me is: How do I value my time? At the start of this training block, the mileage is lower and, if I’m just running, it should take me less than an hour. Factoring in the getting ready and post-workout, it still shouldn’t take me more than two hours total. That leaves me with three hours before I should go to bed, and realistically five hours before I actually do. What, then, am I doing with my time?

Hanif Abdurraqib is a writer whose work and thinking I deeply respect, and his writing routine is one I want to strive towards. He’s shared on his Instagram and elsewhere that the discipline he brings to his writing is one born from years as an athlete. In a similar way, the discipline I’m learning to apply to running is a focus I’m also trying to turn towards writing.

Rather than mindlessly scrolling Instagram while laying on the floor post-workout, what would that time look like if I spent it writing? In my last newsletter of 2025, I mentioned wanting to slow down my reading in 2026 and carve out more time for sitting with paper books. Really, I was naming an urge to engage more intentionally with my reading. Even if I don’t spend my post-workout evenings writing, I could be spending that time reading.

Speaking of, I recently read Seasons of Glass and Iron by Amal El-Mohtar and River of Bones and Other Stories by Rebecca Roanhorse, both story collections from giants in the field. For the past few months I’ve been bouncing around various stories. Ideally, the end goal would be a collection, but first I need to get started with getting the stories done, you know? Since I don’t have formal training in fiction writing, I enjoy reading a story while trying to parse the inner workings of it. Of course, the answer here is that I just need to get started on writing myself to figure things out, but I’m always a fan of studying others. More to come on if I’ll be satiated, but maybe by writing again I’ll be a little bit less restless next time we talk.

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