I hate writing, but I love having written.
I would never say that.
Having written is just fine—there is a satisfaction after finishing a long or difficult piece—but I don’t love it. And even with the satisfactions, there is also a kind of emptiness at the completion. I’m done is an occasion for melancholy and relief.
But writing? Hell yeah, I love writing. It’s even something beyond love: It’s as if I become who I am, that there is no distance between the being and the doing, that everything comes together in a moment of tumbling stillness. I disappear and am more there than I ever am, less a paradox than a transcendence, a clarity of purpose in which the purpose dissolves into itself.
Working out, on the other hand, yeah: I hate working out, but I love having worked out.
No, I don’t really hate working out, but I don’t really like it, either. I put up with it, because I don’t like what happens when I don’t. I want to be fit and reasonably trim and able to take care of myself, and so I work out. But the weightlifting and the bicycling and the stretching and all that?
Eh.
When I was younger I was fairly active, but I have no idea if I liked workouts or not. Maybe I did, or maybe I just didn’t think to ask whether or not I liked working out. I said I liked running, and, honestly, on my best days I still do like running, but did I really mean it? Did I really like lacing up the Brooks or Adidas or Saucony and wriggling into my jog bra and heading out to loop around the track or the neighborhood?
It’s possible, I guess, but this was probably a story I told myself as a way of crowbarring my sorry ass off the couch. I had an image of myself as more-or-less athletic, so I needed to say that I enjoyed partaking of athletic activities. Even if I didn’t.
Well, okay, I did like playing catch or shooting around, and I do enjoy taking bike rides with friends, but hauling myself on to my bike to lap around Prospect Park or over to the gym? Nope. Means to an end.
It’s good that I don’t hate weightlifting or biking, because I do like what they do for me: Nicer arms, stronger legs, increased endurance—and the sense that I’m not just a slug growing in Brooklyn.
But if I could accomplish all of that by napping? Oh, now that’s something I do enjoy.
AbsurdBeats 