The Why

This morning, I ran another 11 miles to count for my Great Virtual Race Across Tennessee. There are less than 100 miles to go. I'm looking forward to finishing. I can hardly wait to finish so that I no longer have this commitment hanging over my head. Oh, sure, I go running alot without a virtual race commitment. And I am finishing this virtual race at east 7 weeks before the deadline. But because it is a "race" I've felt compelled to do as many miles as possible, between 5 and 15 every day depending on whether I work or not. I still get around to lifting weights 2 or 3 times a week, but I have ditched exercise machines for doing miles. I think that the exercise machines offered some advantages which I am missing while engaged in the race. They were working some different muscles, were non-impact and were high intensity. But I feel compelled to get miles done first.

Why is that? 

This map shows me at mile 527, 83%; though I've run another 11 miles since this map was updated.

Aside from running miles and working at Starbucks, I've been attempting to build momentum for my writing project. Just writing this blog is writing.

I've also made a little progress on Jean Paul Sartre's "Being and Nothingness." I like this alot: 

"Consciousness has nothing substantial, it is pure "appearance" in the sense that it exists only to the degree to which is appears. But it is precisely because consciousness is pure "appearance", because it is total emptiness (since the entire world is outside it)--it is because of this identity of appearance and existence within it that it can be considered as the absolute."

Or these phrases:..."The percipi referred us to a percipiens, the being of which has been revealed to us as consciousness"...."the immanence of self in self"...

For one thing, I encountered the word percipiens within the first 4 pages of this book and could not grasp what was meant, but now I do. 

For another thing, whether Sartre meant it or not, the descriptions of consciousness as nothing substantial and pure appearance seem to help me know and deeply feel my own higher consciousness. My total existence as a being and an appearing existence seem to make sense to me and I feel very good pondering and allowing these abstract notions.