If you do something four times a week for four years, you’ll get better at it. This seems obvious, but it’s something I didn’t appreciate until I started running. More accurately, it’s something I didn’t appreciate until I got better at running.
After the marathon and the epic winter, I was a little tired of the sport. But a bum knee kept me from running regularly in the spring. With the time off, I remembered how much I love running both as an excuse to get outside and a justification for replacing the cream in Oreos with peanut butter. And now my knee is getting better and it’s summer in Prospect Park. After the break and with the heat, running feels new.
There are very few things in life where growth is quantifiable. I think the short stories I’m working on now are better than the book I wrote, but I don’t have any proof. But I just bought a GPS enabled watch, so at least I can gauge my progress in one hobby. And while I don’t have any way to measure my writing, I’ll keep working on it, knowing that with more time, I can’t help but improve.