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I’m sat here on a Friday evening with the dog flopped by my side on the couch, and I’m trying to find the perfect essay. I don’t even know what that means, really, but I know a perfect essay when I read it—and of course it changes all the time. It might be an essay on loss or on love, or one that makes me laugh in the way that I need to laugh right at that minute. It has to make me feel something.

I’ve never written a perfect essay and I never will, because who calls their work perfect? I’m sure the authors of the perfect essays I’ve read can spot all of the things that aren’t working. It’s a shame that we don’t get to relate to our own work in the way that others might, but maybe it’s necessary to keep doing that work. What do you do if you feel as though you have nothing to chase?

I’m trying to write an essay right now. One about being an amateur. About doing something for the love of it. It’s hard to write about the things that you love, actually, not least because you don’t always know why you love it. I love anything to do with audio, and I couldn’t really tell you why, it just makes my brain feel good. Maybe I should write about that? I’ll probably write about that.

I went for a late night run this evening. I’m impatient enough that I always jump back into running too long and too fast. I still enjoy the runs, but I don’t enjoy getting injured, and I don’t enjoy that it means taking a break. Today, I decided to reset. I wasn’t going to let my heart rate climb too high. I was just going to run easy, take my time, and feel good at the end. Unsurprisingly, it… worked.

One of the best ways to keep a conversational pace is to have a conversation, and the second best way is talking… to yourself. I’ve been talking to myself a lot lately, but it’s extra useful on runs. If I ever wonder whether I could have a conversation without huffing and puffing, I can just start talking, and not stop talking, and see how that feels. At some point (when you stop talking about running) the introspective think-speaking even gets kind of good.

Tonight I talked about publishing and recounted a few memories. I coached myself on my run out loud, reminding myself why I was running at that pace, where I wanted to get to, and how this was going to help. I’ve done that in my head before, but there’s something about the words hitting your ear that feels qualitatively different. It’s like the placebo of coaching—you know the words are coming from your mouth, but you hear them all the same.

Anyway, a proudly pathetic run. The first of many I’ll do, slowly building up to where I want to be. I love running, and I want to continue to love running, and I’m out of practice. The long roads are the best ones, even if they don’t always feel like it. I should just enjoy the fact that I’m here, and be thankful that I’m able-bodied.

There are days that feel like they barely happened. Today was one of those days, and it makes me thankful for this journal. There have been weeks or months in my life that I can barely remember. That I can’t tell you anything about. That I have no real record of, or at least no record of me having actually lived. I could show you the emails I got or the charges on my credit card, but that doesn’t feel like enough to me. I want to make a mark, even if it’s just a small one. This is that mark, today, and it’s very small indeed.

Today Aneesah made me coffee, I had a lot of meetings, I spoke to my psychiatrist, I forgot about a blood test, I got completely lost in some databases (a strangely hyper-focus activity), I cooked dinner for Aneesah, and I drove her to the airport. I need to tidy up, I just about put the bins out, I didn’t go for the run I wanted to, and now I’m sat in bed, way after I should have fallen asleep, writing this. A day that got away from me. My favorite bit was the car ride, and the 23 minutes that I really got to spend with Aneesah.