How Running Parallels My Art and Everything Else in My Life

I talk about this experience not to brag about a personal accomplishment, but to express how much running has taught me about my art and my life. Yesterday, I ran the San Diego Half Marathon and after having done several of these, I approach them with a bit of healthy trepidation, as well as joy in aiming to accomplish something personally important to me. For everyone who has personally challenged themselves to do something you thought was "impossible" for you, this will ring true for you, I am sure. Running distances is a real struggle for me and I would say I have a love/hate relationship w/ it. So, four times per week or more, I kick myself out the door and on to the road - Sore calves, sore feet, are overshadowed by the mental challenges(which are huge) of getting thru yet another long run.

So many emotions ran  through my brain yesterday as I pushed through physical and mental discomforts to run into Petco Park for the final 100 yards of the race. It is an emotionally overwhelming experience and I can't describe the depth of that joy and feeling of being alive I have at the end of these experiences. I have to say that when I make my art pieces, and the process I go thru, are similar and the range of emotions I feel are the same. As I "slug it out"  through conflicting ideas, and creating those ideas and then failing alot and then "coming out on the other side", I have so much joy and the same kinds of feelings as I feel in a race. I am not an athlete - I don't run to "win" or to necessarily beat my previous "time" but I am clearly reminded that much of making art is persevering, staying with an idea, struggling with that idea, and then sometimes having to "let go" of that idea, even if I'd been working w/ it for weeks. Having faith and inner strength to continue on in the face of little failures, is tough. So many of life's lessons for me are played out in the creative process of making art and yesterday, I was reminded of how running is the same. Today I live to fight another day....