Jogging - a way to get creative idea? Nah!

An article on jogging (which has since been lost) made the claim that, wow, every now and then a runner gets a nifty idea while running, a flash, while the brain is being repeatedly jarred against skull. Now this is something about which the Phactor, as an intellectual athlete, knows a great deal, not about running, because the only two reasons for that are if you are being chased, by someone much bigger or really scary, or chasing someone, much smaller and about to get the butt kicked, about this type of blank mind creativity. It takes practice to learn how to allow your brain to creatively drift along such that interesting ideas that your subconscious has been working on can wash ashore onto the beach of your conscious mind like the bit of creative flotsam that they are. Here like a beach-comber of the brain, you must grab these ideas and make an effort to remember them before they wash back out to sea. The key is to avoid distractions, intrusions upon your consciousness that prevent you from noticing new ideas as the bob there at the edge of the tide. Walking to work is good time to beach-comb for new ideas, solutions to problems, and other creative thoughts, because after a long night of working on it your subconscious mind has the most to offer, if you are properly prepared to accept them. Another time is when you relax in your garden with a decent drink, and just watch things grow, the butterflies dance, and the comings and goings of your little bit of nature, quiet except for the sounds of nature; no i-anything within reach, no distractions, and zounds, there it is, an idea. Such ideas are cheap really, once you learn how to get them reasonably frequently, many prove flawed, unrealistic, or impractical, but not all, and after you offer up these bits for a few years, you get a certain reputation for being a creative thinker. And then someone makes a news story out of a couple of runners who have noticed that every now and then this happens while they are running, and that’s news? Ah, perhaps it’s a novelty piece, a runner gets an idea, how quaint, how unusual, how unexpected. How unusual that some part of your mind survives after being numbed into insensitivity by a really boring form of exercise. One wonders how much more often these people would get new ideas if rather than jogging along distracted by the task of avoiding uneven slabs of concrete, tree roots, and dog doo, these runners sat in a garden, in full margarita induced musing mode, and actually practiced thinking?

Gardening and joggers do not mix

A long time ago a previous owner of my estate planted quite a few shrubby dogwoods, and they grew quite well, and as is their nature, the twigs rooted wherever they touched the ground, and they grew quite well, and so on. At present they cover considerable areas beyond the original shrub, and previous encounters proved that removing said dogwoods is a considerable task, one not to be undertaken in just any mood. But this weekend the Phactor got annoyed at the dogwood takeover of a pathway (it disappeared) and their encroachment on firs and newer flowering shrubs. So with only the zeal that a truly annoyed gardener can muster, my fury was unleashed upon the dogwood thicket with loppers and chain saw, and a couple of hours later maybe one-third of the dogwoods were gone, which is a bit depressing, but at least one-third of the thicket was transformed into piles of brush that needed to be dragged to the curb for recycling.

So what do joggers have to do with this? Well, all those piles of brush, load after load, were over 300 feet from the curb. And so trip after trip, pile after pile, the mass of dogwood brush was relocated, and near exhaustion, filthy dirty with sweat, sawdust, and debris, some joggers jogged by all in their neat little outfits, unstained joggers, and barely damp head bands, and as they moved by, one said, "What a mess." Now they were either referring to the Phactor himself, or the tall piles of brush, or both, but either way, my mood was not improved.

Clearly joggers do not garden on any scale larger than a window box and would probably faint at the sight of soil (not dirt) beneath a finger nail. Gardeners don't job because we don't need for any more exercise. Jogging is effort expended where nothing is accomplished except for bounding development of a narcissistic glow of personal accomplishment. Joggers, how about mowing the lawn of some senior citizen in your neighborhood? How about spading their garden? How about raking their leaves? How about finding a senior citizen and dragging his dogwood brush a total of about one-half mile (piles x distance) ? Then we'll see whose sweaties look so nice and clean, if you should last that long.