A man, sitting in the shower, wincing in pain, because he’s chafed along his groin and the water, no matter how cold he makes it, burns his skin in an almost chemical way. He’s never felt chafing before. He doesn’t know what he expected it to feel like but he certainly did not expect this. It’s not unlike trying to revive frost-bitten fingers or toes. He’s sitting on the shower floor because on the bottom of his left foot is a blood blister the size of a street taco. He didn’t discover the blister until he was completely undressed. He pushes one end and watches the blood move inside the pocket of skin. It doesn’t hurt as much as it feels bizarre. It reminds him of jello. He wants to eat, but the idea is so exhausting he feels nauseous thinking about it. He could close his eyes, but the adrenaline of having finished is still there. He’s just run 26.2 miles. He’s terribly sore, a useless father, but wildly happy. For a moment, he cries in the shower, his second bit of weeping of the day.

I awoke early and arrived at Bill’s house around 6:30 in the morning. He only lives five minutes from the start and finish of the race and we decided it made the most sense for his wife to drop us off, rather than worry about parking and such. The evening before, I ate an entire helping of pad thai and even had a couple beers, despite reasoning with myself that I shouldn’t. No regrets. My sleep was a collection of forty-five minute naps. I awoke with an alarming amount of energy, and my morning coffee only served to send me into overdrive.

When we started running together, Bill introduced me to “warming up” before each race. The first couple of races I’d done without him, I did not do any warming up. I stretched a bit and bounced up and down to loosen my muscles, but Bill does things differently. Correctly, you might say. For instance, when we ran the 10k together—my first race after my foot surgery—we probably ran two miles before the race ever began. This was about getting our heart rate up, he said. You don’t want to go 0 to 100 too quickly in a race. I’d never really considered this idea, but it tracks, I guess. I tend to run better if I’ve warmed up a bit.

When Bill’s wife dropped us off for the marathon, we had about five minutes before the start of the race, which meant we had no time to warm up in our traditional way. There was enough distance between our drop off and the starting line that we ran our way there, but it was nothing like the usual bit we do together. We had to weave around several masses of people and navigate our way to the starting line. We reached it, found our pace guide, and proceeded to jump up and down, retie our shoes, and discuss our approach.

A more serious runner than myself, Bill knows what kind of nourishment to carry with him. CLIF makes these energy gel shots that pack about 100 calories into one pack, including some sugar and caffeine. The idea is to take one before you need it, which is a difficult sort of proposition. When I ran the half marathon this past December, I took one about eight miles in. According to Bill, that was too late. So the plan for the marathon was to take one every five miles or so, which meant I had to carry five gels on my person for the duration of the race. I don’t know if you’ve seen a pair of running shorts before, but there’s not a lot of storage there. With my phone in my armband, I held three gels in one hand, and two in the other, and ignored the premature thumping in my chest.

The weather was an absolute nightmare. Cold. Misty. Windy. Wet. You might think, at least it wasn’t hot, but I would’ve preferred hot. Something to evaporate the sweat off my body. Instead, the sweat just pooled with everything else, adding pounds to my shirt and making it more miserable to move. The wind was so bad that about thirty seconds into the race my hat was blown off my head and back towards the crowd. Fortunately, a lovely someone scooped it in stride and handed it to me. I kept it on backwards the rest of the race.

The first five miles of the race are mostly a blur. The first two miles are about everyone separating themselves from the pack. I remember feeling excited, knowing that now that we’d begun, there was no turning back. Once you reach mile five, that’s around when everyone seems to find their individual paces. Fewer people pass one another. So you settle in, and build a little unspoken camaraderie with those around you. Or, in the case of Bill and myself, you make a real friend.

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Another record, but still six miles short of what I’m going to do in a week. I guess this the part of the book where I reflect a bit on this journey. After all, almost a year ago (about three days shy), my wife and I transferred our little embryo into her uterus. In two days, she’ll be starting daycare. I’ve been telling myself I’m ready, maybe to be the rock my wife needs (because she is NOT ready), but I’m not sure I’m ready either.

Around this time two years ago, I registered for my first race. I’d been running with real intention for about a year or so, and for the first time since high school or so I was running more than four miles at a time. The race I signed up for was a 15k, which is 9.3 miles. The whole thing felt absolutely daunting, but I registered anyway, for some of the same reasons I started this project. I wasn’t prepared for how expensive it was, how official the expo and packet pickup would be. My only expectation had been to show up and run, but I learned quickly there was a little more to it.

The concept for 100 Words Per Mile has been mulling around my head for some time at this point. I’d realized that even after my shorter runs (less than a mile even), I had a renewed energy to sit and write, and even if it wasn’t any good, I’d at least get something on the page. It was all a bit manic, but that was okay. My mania has never hurt me—even though it’s annoyed some people. When I registered for the 15k, the desire to write this project grew stronger, but I didn’t have faith in myself to pull it off. Nonfiction wasn’t interesting to me, especially when I wasn’t sure there’d ever be a reader. I’m a reader-conscious writer, which could be a shortcoming of mine, but it’s a hard thing to shake. Nor have I ever really engaged with nonfiction or memoir before. Frankly, and I’m sure I’ve said some variation of this, it seemed ego-centric in a time when I was battling my own ego.

When I think about that race, I think about how much of an amateur I was. I didn’t own a pair of running shorts or a proper pair of running shoes. I had my number pinned to the chest of my shirt, until I saw everyone else pin theirs to their belly or shorts. Because I’d driven alone, and I didn’t want to rent a locker, I ran with my keys in my pocket. They dug into my thigh, especially as I crossed a couple of bridges and sprinted towards the end. Going into the race, it was my intention to take breaks. Maybe walk a bit every third mile or so. Little did I know what I’d feel. I didn’t stop once. I got frustrated when people passed me. I cleared my desired time handily. This race was huge for me.

Afterwards, I didn’t hang around. My wife met me at the finish line and I was happy to leave right after. The man who ran that first race couldn’t have predicted what the next two years held for him. It was a simpler time, just on the brink of disaster.

For example, I spent the entire rest of the day drinking with my wife and her cousin. We bar hopped, did tequila shots with a Costa Rican bartender, got wild watching college basketball, and took blurry selfies we still share from time to time. At one point, we made a brief stop at home to change and recharge before going out again. But as we were playing with the dog, my wife fell backwards, cut her head open on the corner of our wall, and like that, the night was over. She repeated, “No more monkeys jumping on the bed” for about an hour. Holding a paper towel to her head, listening to her behave so foolishly, is one of my favorite memories (though at the time I was a little terrified).

Then a week later, Tom Hanks and Rudy Gobert tested positive for COVID-19, and the whole world changed. I called the NCAA customer service line to let them know I was sad about March Madness getting cancelled. The operator on the other line sighed and said, “Me too.” Basketball, baseball, bar hopping. A lot of my everyday life simply disappeared for months at a time. We went from working in an office five days a week to working from home indefinitely. For a moment, I was even scared to run, worried that I’d breathe something exhaled by a passerby. This resulted in more money spent on baseball cards, a lot of day drinking, and a love affair with the FX show DEVS. Frankly, this was a great time for me, and against the backdrop of the hundreds of thousands of Americans who would eventually die, it’s a weird time to reflect upon. My wife and I have so many positive memories of them, which feels like just a savage and bizarre thing to say.

Five months after all that, I started this project in earnest, and it’s all thanks to my lower percentage of well-shaped sperm. No one thinks they’ll need reproductive help. As I mentioned before, I was scared into thinking the opposite, that any instance of unprotected sex would result in pregnancy. This mistaken sense of ease is probably an ingredient of the stigma, and the shame some might feel if they are struggling to get pregnant. Shame is driver of a lot of ill-advised behavior. Shame can even beget shame can even beget shame.

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I left for this run while my wife and my daughter were both asleep. In five days, our little girl will begin daycare and my wife will return to work. The run was quiet. I didn’t bring my headphones and I don’t remember much of what I thought about, other than how quiet it was. Serenity is hard to come by, and it seemed especially difficult today.

I’ve been thinking about “peace of mind” and “happiness” and what it is that any of us may be pursuing on any given day. For instance, there’s an argument to be made that survival of both ourselves and as a species in coded into our DNA, and that every decision, no matter what it is, is related to the pursuit of survival. We eat, we fuck, we sleep, we repeat. Everything else in between is a different form of time murder. This feels a bit cynical and not the least bit romantic, but I understand the desire to classify things this way. When we reduce ourselves to animals, we cannot be prosecuted for acting on our animal instincts, yes?

But we are something more than animals. We do pursue happiness, I think. My claim to you from the very beginning was that this entire project belonged to my pursuit of happiness and my quest to be “better.” A happier me is a better me is also a version of me that will survive and keep the species alive. Especially now that I’ve managed to reproduce (go science!). I think what I’m stuck on right now is happiness vs. Happiness and the differing values of each. Lower-case happiness is matter of immediacy (I want to do that thing so I am going to do that thing). This could tie into my collection of baseball cards, or my drinking habit, or even when I feel a real itch to run. But capital Happiness is a more all-inclusive, umbrella state of affairs. Even if I feel lower-case sad, my life may still be a Happy life. Does that negate my lower-case sadness? I don’t know. I don’t know why I’m writing about it now.

This is the kind of intangible, macro-level bullshit that can get me spun up sometimes. In the same way that running 26.2 miles can feel soul crushing, I have to avoid looking at my life in too much of a “Big Picture” sort of way, and just let the routine of each day carry me forward. This is all one step at a time, one mile at a time. I think I just feel a little bit helpless today. That this project, and this pursuit is coming to an end, and that I will once again have to find another way to take a step forward.

Honestly, I’d like to get completely wasted and sweat myself sober on the dance floor. I want to close my eyes, give a DJ permission to direct me, and escape. This means something else is bothering me, but I don’t know what it is. I’ve become pretty good at recognizing my own behavior, of stifling a pattern before it starts up again, but that’s because upon reflection I could pinpoint the source of dysfunction. Could be stress at work. Could be something my family did. Could be I haven’t read or written in a while. At the moment, it’s none of that. Just the hovering cloud of static pulsing about in my chest. That’s your heart, idiot. Okay, maybe I just need to lay off the coffee a bit.

I am Happy, though. I may not feel happy right now, but it will pass, and giving myself some space to feel this way is probably all I need. I’m a fixer, but a fix is not what I should be looking for right now.

A longer run is coming. Maybe I’ll have something ironed out by then.

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Eighteen miles! Just as my in-laws arrived in town—and thank god they ordered pizza! There was a time where breaking my previous records meant running one more mile. This time I’ve run three more and all three were part of an extensive retread. It was both awful and exhilarating. When I reached the thirteen mile mark—half marathon territory—I was surprised by how full my tank felt. Miles thirteen through fifteen actually felt like a breeze, and then I hit a wall about half a mile after that.

There was a lot on my mind during my run today, a lot of doubting myself, or at least, doubting my choices and priorities. This has been one of the harder things about growing older and becoming a parent. To what extent do I pursue my own happiness, and am I capable of amending what makes me happy? I’ve written plenty about baseball cards, running, getting pregnant, writing, and building my bar (which has come along very nicely), but some of this stuff really pulls me away from my wife and my family. As you can see, I ran for two and a half hours today, all alone. Is this an ideal path for me?

This is probably going to turn out to be a bit of empty rambling, more philosophical than earnest. The running has revealed a runway to peace for me. The baseball cards have given me a material measurement of fun. What’s going to happen when I find time to read again. Or, will I find time to read? I know time will open itself to me once this marathon is over with. The question is, what will be the best way to spend that time? Does this all sound trivial and pointless to you? Maybe that’s my point. It’s difficult to be intentional in a trivial existence. This whole exercise began as a pursuit to be good, but now I’m not sure what good means in this new life I’ve built. Are my distractions just a more palatable version of my previous distractions? Am I still seeking escape?

Again, let me apologize. I’m in a bit of a funk right now. Could be I need a cookie or a beer or some other pick-me-up after running eighteen miles. Actually, let me go grab another slice of pizza.

Like writing a novel—or writing in general—the battle between monotony, discipline, and delayed gratification that comes with running is unavoidable. Just as it feels about 40,000 words into a novel, this stretch of marathon training is starting to feel like wasted time. Sure, I’ll come out having accomplished something, but considering the time and effort required to accomplish that thing, does it matter if I don’t do it well? After all, I wrote a novel, and it feels cool to say I did that, but as of writing this bit here, nobody seems to want it. Was the project worth the days of homework I assigned myself?

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I spent my morning trying to get my daughter to roll over. She has a favorite toy: a rattle that changes colors when tapped or shaken. The hope was that if I lie her on her back, place the rattle just out of reach over her shoulder, then she would roll over in her attempt to grab it. There were moments when it seemed like she was ready to reach, but ultimately, the attempt failed. We eventually moved on to relaxing next to one another while I read The Very Hungry Caterpillar aloud and she touch the pages as if she were going to turn them.

I’m trying to strike the balance between pushing my daughter to exercise and develop those skillsets, while also just sitting back and allowing her to be a happy baby. Everything you read is about early development and how getting a head start on everything will pay dividends down the road. The sooner she rolls, the sooner she crawls, the sooner she walks, the sooner she plays, etc. Dad just wants to play! I think I’m doing a decent balancing act so far, but I’m already acutely aware of how differently my wife and I parent. Tummy time is my job and singing to her is my wife’s job. We didn’t choose either one, it’s just how things came to be. Sometimes I sing to the baby, and sometimes my wife engages in a little bit of tummy time, but our roles have defined themselves naturally and I really appreciate how easy it is to do this with her.

We’ve added more to the baby’s corner: a bookshelf of her own. This doesn’t negate the work we did to clear my shelves; instead, it provides more space to litter our living room with baby stuff. I know litter is a bit of a pejorative verb but I don’t mean it negatively. Baby stuff is thrown about our house and must be picked up regularly each day. Litter feels appropriate here.

The corner has proven incredibly effective, though. This is where I failed to coax the baby into rolling over. It’s also where we do tummy time, and “read” books, and relax on the boppy. When I have to run to the kitchen to warm a bottle, it’s where I trust the baby to hangout and remain. I’m fully aware that her immobility is a bit of a blessing, because everyone tells me the moment the kid can move on their own, there’s no turning back.

I’ve picked up a bit of an annoying habit, and as aware of it as I am, I can’t quite tell if my wife is actually annoyed by it. While she sleeps in and the baby and I have all these adventures, I try to record four to five minutes of whatever she’s doing. For instance, had she actually rolled over today, I would have had video evidence to show my wife when she joined us later. The baby doesn’t do anything spectacular (unless you’re her parents, to whom everything is spectacular) and I insist on putting my phone in my wife’s face anyway. The baby is awake, in front of us. We could happily experience this real life version of her in the present, but I want her to watch the four minute video I recorded this morning. I just want to share the dumb bit of joy I experienced while she was sleeping.

I know. I’m working on it. The human moment when you are consciously doing a thing you wish you wouldn’t do, and yet, you can’t seem to stop yourself anyway. Is there a name for that? Is it literature?

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Woof. Today was a new record for me, and yet, I still have to figure out how to run ELEVEN more. Marathons are absurd. There was a time in my life when running ten miles was out of the question. Now, I’m supposed to run twenty-six? Do I hate myself?

Now that my runs are getting longer, there is some navigational gymnastics that needs to be done so that I don’t run too far from home. Traditionally, I try not to cover the same path twice, this way I avoid monotony and my run remains interesting. The baby mucks things up, though, because I don’t want to be more than four miles away from the house at any given moment. This requires come compromise, and so today I found myself retreading a few roads.

We’ve slowly been transforming the house into something a little more accessible for her, including an entire corner in the living dedicated to the baby. There’s a pink rug, the long mirror that used to be in her crib, what the people call a “baby gym,” and a basket of stuffed animals. It occupies the same space where we kept the Christmas tree. When we took all of our Christmas stuff down a couple weeks ago, we decided to take advantage of the blank canvas, and it’s worked tremendously.

The baby still wakes up every three hours or so and because it’s easier to grab her from the bassinet and breast feed, my wife tends to take most of the night shift. But when 5:00 comes, it’s my turn to take over with the bottles we prepped the night before. Thanks to our baby’s new play corner, the hours in which it’s just us have been extra fun lately. She rolls over, she makes silly faces, and she’s begun to reach for and grab the little rings that dangle from her baby gym. Maybe reach is a reach. She swings her arm wildly and occasionally makes contact.

In addition to her new corner, my wife has recently cleared the bottom shelves of our large bookcase. This was met with a little resistance from me—I really love my collection of books—but I was long due to get rid of a few. My wife handed me a box and asked me to fill it with the books I’d like to donate or sell to a used bookstore. This turned out to be an easier process than I expected.

I started with the literary magazines. All the New Yorkers, the Missouri Reviews, the Ploughshares that had collected there from contests or submissions or expired free trials that had gone unnoticed. (If you’ve watched The Good Place, Michael has a hysterical joke about New Yorkers piling up with no end in sight.) Then there were the books I didn’t actually love, or the advanced review copies I was holding for some reason or another.

Finally, there were the books I was afraid to admit I didn’t like. A part of me believed that removing these books from my library would be a failure of some sort. I couldn’t or didn’t want to finish them, but I convinced myself the timing was right—you’re either going to read Infinite Jest or you’re not.

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Good news: my wife and I found a daycare she is comfortable with! We’d actually toured it once before, but felt it was a bit out of the way at the time. But they graciously gave us another tour, miraculously had an opening for next month, and did the most important thing: impressed upon my wife the feeling she’s been searching for.

Admittedly, I left with that same feeling, too.

Our baby is starting to move with real intention. The rolls are becoming more frequent. She reaches for things she wants. I mean… she wants. This might be why the visit with our new daycare was so impactful. She’s becoming more and more of a unique individual. We’re just now getting to know her. It’s making every experience all the more precious.

I don’t want to be the kind of parent that puts too much stock in the small things­—such as how a three-month old reacts to a stranger—but it did matter to us that she seemed to smile and enjoy herself in the hallway outside her future classroom.

We weren’t allowed to enter the classroom yet due to COVID-19 restrictions, and every staff member was wearing a mask, which was a little bit deflating. My wife especially wants a teacher who’s going to give our girl the cheer and warmth she receives at home. If our daughter can’t see these teachers’ smiles, will there be consequences? I know this will be the standard for the foreseeable future, but I can’t help but project my own imagined experience, and think about what it might feel like for all these masked strangers to pick you up at any given moment. It must be alarming, to know your parents have noses and teeth, but your caretakers do not.

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Another half marathon, and this one felt pretty good. My body can be a fickle thing, doing its best to convince me that I have no more than two miles in me yet continuing to move with very little hesitation. Is it muscle memory? Is it will? I don’t know. The more I run, the more of a mystery the body becomes for me.

Our daughter has started to really refine her motor skills. She will roll from her belly back to her back, and she can hold her head up pretty well during tummy time. When she finds herself really engaged with her toys, she’ll even talk to them, making vague vowel sounds as she does so. We’re not sure how much is intentional communication or basic sound exploration. She doesn’t seem too aware that she’s the one making the sounds, but I’m a firm believer she’s a lot smarter than she’s letting on.

Recently, my wife and I made a short road trip to go watch a basketball game. I’m a huge NBA fan and my Christmas gift from my wife this year was two tickets to go see the Washington Wizards play the Magic in Orlando. This, I thought, was wildly generous of her, because that means we’d be leaving the baby with someone else (it turns out my mom was in on this) for eight to ten hours. I cannot emphasize how surprised I was by this.

Now, I trust my mom to take care of her granddaughter. There’s not a doubt in my mind that she is a wonderful babysitter—but the new-parent anxiety doesn’t just melt away. The three hour drive there wasn’t too bad, but the moment the game started, we were already complaining about the lack of photos provided by my mom. My wife didn’t voice it, but the separation was a breeding ground for paranoia. Was she okay? Would anyone tell us if something was wrong? Could they be at the hospital right now?

Absurd, but this is all thanks to a heightened amygdala.

The most interesting part of the drive was having my wife in the passenger seat again. Ever since we had the baby, one of us has sat in the backseat with her, just in case something came up. But it was just us now, so we held hands, and briefly remembered what it was like before we became parents.

I couldn’t really drink because we were driving right home and I couldn’t go for a run, so I had to find a way to let go. Thankfully, our seats were good, and I managed to disappear into the game a little bit. We’re probably years away from bringing our little girl to one of these, but I’m already excited about the prospect. Parenting, for me, is already about sharing all the things I love about the world. Books, sports, art. One day, we’ll share beers. I’m trying to be patient about it all. The newborn version of my daughter is already gone forever. She’s wearing three-to-six month onesies. It’s fading fast—but I’m still excited for the future.

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I thought this project was going to feed me creatively, but it really hasn’t. There are other factors, of course, such as fatherhood and the frequency with which I’m running. But I’m still a little surprised I haven’t written more fiction. I have a novel in process, story ideas, and a young adult thing I’ve been tinkering with. I’m just missing the passion for all of them.

My baby brother and I’ve been speaking a little more regularly lately. I’ve figured out how to keep money in my Connect Network account so that there are no barriers when he calls. We’ve even managed to video chat a couple times, but that’s a lot less reliable. He’s almost two months into his sentence, and the difference in his voice and his skin is almost unbelievable. We’re able to have conversations, the kind that pass without any dead air, and I’m just so happy that he’s in a situation in which he’s getting better, even if that situation is jail.

Sometimes, he calls me on my runs, and we talk as I huff and puff in his ears. Fortunately, training is all about finding a rhythm, of getting my heart rate up, but steady. He laughs when I complain about the blister on my foot. He doesn’t understand why I don’t just stop, nor does he understand the irony of his own words.

Earlier in this project, I made a comment about my brother’s sentencing, that this was the “punch in the face” he needed from life. Well, he was recently punched in the face by another inmate, a disagreement over a card game or something like that. This was all told to me through the family grape vine. That’s why I answered on my run today, because I knew he needed me. He wasn’t allowed to talk about it, but he told me that he was okay and that he was glad I was able to make the time to chat with him.

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I sucked it up and ran a lot today. We also started looking at different daycares.

I may have mentioned once or twice in here, but my wife and I don’t fight. We sometimes bicker in a playful way, but we’ve never really gone at it. If she’s upset with me, it’s been for good reason, so I do the work to mend it. If I’m annoyed or bothered by something, she’s pretty emotionally tuned in that we iron out the wrinkles right then and there. I owe a lot of this to therapy, if only because it gave me a lot of the vocabulary I was missing when it came to my own processes. Even though I only met with a therapist a handful of times, that bit of insight and mindfulness has been invaluable to my marriage.

Perhaps that’s why this daycare conundrum wasn’t worse, but it was definitely our first bit of a battle as parents.

My wife has started feeling uneasy and apprehensive about sending our daughter to daycare—which is all reasonable and natural, of course. So, she’s recently brought up the idea of looking around at other daycares, just to be sure. We’re only a few weeks away, so I was a little frustrated that she wanted to make the change now. There likely isn’t any availability anywhere, and if we’re being honest, I’m just tired. The idea of calling/emailing around, making appointments, and visiting daycares all over again sounds completely exhausting.

The way my wife has phrased it, she wants our daughter to meet the teachers and see how the teachers interact with her. She’s looking for a feeling, some kind of reassurance, which makes sense but the cynic in me doesn’t believe that feeling exists. I feel like this is simply a hurdle we have to face together, and that eventually we’ll get used to it.

This all stems from a philosophical difference between me and my wife. It’s something I love about her, because really, it makes me a better person to be around it.

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I registered for a marathon today. Holy shit. Here we go.

My dad and my stepmother flew into town today, which got me really excited because when I think about the models for my marriage and now my journey as a parent, it’s those two.

My mom and my dad split when I was about six years old. That’s what happens when you meet in November, get pregnant, and marry in September. Honestly, I’m surprised they made it as far as they did.

I was about seven years old, I think, when I met my stepmother for the first time, which means she’s been a part of my life for over twenty-five years. When you consider she and my dad’s relationship in a vacuum (i.e. post-my mom), it’s the closest thing in my life that actually mirrors my current experience.

While my dad was only twenty years old when I was born, he was about to be thirty-one when my sister was born, which is much more comparable to my current situation. My dad and my stepmother only had the one girl, and because my brother and I lived with our mother most of her life, my sister was essentially an only sibling—a future I anticipate for my daughter.

Now that I’m in my thirties, my entire perspective on my parents’ lives is wildly different. Growing up, I would’ve considered my sister and I closer, if only because we were our father’s children. We were subject to his rules and whims. That was our shared experience. But ten years is a large age gap to overcome, and I’m probably closer to my stepmother than I am my sister now, because the shared experience with my sister is gone.

Weirdly, my daughter had her first real fit after my dad and my stepmom visited. I don’t know if she was overstimulated or was experiencing her first bit of gas trouble, but she cried with a ferocity she hadn’t done before. Not even in the moments after her birth.

I’m feeling nervous about the marathon. I only have about six weeks to really prepare, and while I ran the half marathon well, that took quite a bit out of me, and this one is going to be twice as long. The attention and commitment it’s going to require of me is only going to be compounded by the fact that my daughter will only be three months old when I race. It’s going to take me almost four hours—maybe longer, but hopefully not—to complete a marathon. That’s four hours I’ll be away and a large window to leave my wife to fend for herself, especially first-thing in the morning.

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We’re visiting my in-laws for an entire week. So my wife and I get to experience sleeping in together again.

Last week, our daughter was given her first vaccine shots, and as much as I prepared to console my wife during and after, I should’ve spent time preparing myself for my daughter’s cry. I knew she would, and I knew I wouldn’t like it, but this cry was different. This cry was pain.

Were we not navigating a pandemic, I probably wouldn’t have thought much about vaccinations. They are pretty standard, and have been my entire life. The existence of anti-vaxxers wasn’t something I’d considered until I read about them in college. But now, as politicians have politicized a pandemic (and by extension, vaccines), it’s hard not to consider the vaccine “debate” as my daughter is getting cocktails injected into her thigh.

At the very foundation of it all, I guess I’m just a trusting person. It’s why I give money to the homeless woman by the grocery store. It’s why I believe my boss when he says a raise is on the way even though it’s been a month. I’m an optimist by trade, which is nice, because it allows me to relinquish control.

If a doctor and a scientist insist that vaccines are not only safe, but also responsible, then I trust them. Doing my own “research” isn’t going to yield anything more substantial than the education one receives in years of medical school.

Suppressing my ego has been a positive exercise, both for my mental health and the strength of my relationships with other people. I think our need to prove institutions wrong, or to “out” the big bad, is a symptom of an inflated sense of self. Consider the neuroticism that’s risen in the age of social media, and the mob mentality of cancel culture to go with it. But also consider the power one must feel when they take someone down, or expose them, or ridicule them. I bet it’s intoxicating.

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I decided one more short run would be a good idea before the half marathon on Sunday, if only just to shake any rust off and ensure I’m ready to really run. A year ago, my plan was to simply finish the thing in a timely manner. Now that I’ve run one, I want to beat my previous time.

I’ve been talking to my baby brother a lot. Almost daily, in fact. He has access to tablets that allow him to video chat or send text messages (all for a price, of course). It’s bizarre, to think about how much we speak now, and how all it took was his going to jail.

At this point, he’s the most sober he’s ever been. You can see it in his eyes, hear it in voice, see it on his skin. According to him, he’s already putting on weight, but still weighs less than I do.

I’m hoping the sobriety is a revelation for him. I know that when I’m in the throes of an addiction (even something as small as baseball cards), everything starts to slip away from the periphery. It can consume you, alter your decision-making on a fundamental level, and cause you to do things you wouldn’t normally do.

I’ve never done drugs the way my brother has. I can’t imagine what kind of narrow-minded space he’d been occupying before going to jail. That, compounded with the fear and inability to face the realities of any given situation—it’s no wonder he ended up here.

By the time gets out, he’ll be at least a year sober. A drinker myself, the most I’ve gone without alcohol has probably been a few weeks, and that was a couple of years ago. I stopped drinking to see if it would make a difference for my sperm. The motivation for me to put down the bottle was clear and necessary, and yet, it was still a struggle for me.

I had to drink those dumb non-alcoholic beers just to placate me.

A friend of mine is approaching his two year anniversary of not drinking (though he still enjoys edibles here and there), but the not drinking has been huge for him. He went from one of those wallowing, self-pitying depressed types to someone who is not only married, but the legal father to his wife’s daughter. He just put a down payment on a house. My guy has really turned things around.

The world feels less and less forgiving. My little brother is a good kid who fucked around and fell too deep into an escape. We’re all looking for an escape. I just hope that after he serves his time that someone will offer him the forgiveness he not only needs, but will deserve.

Shame is a powerful deterrent, from both misbehavior and happiness. There are people who’d entered and exited my life who probably think the worst of me, and those people have every right. But if only they knew the shame I carried with me, maybe we could make amends. Maybe I could make amends with the entire world.

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I managed to slow my pace a bit today, but more importantly, I felt really good. I’m more and more confident I’ll finish the half marathon in a timely manner, especially since I think I could’ve kept running for a while after today’s run.

Funny enough, I haven’t written much about Christmas yet, despite how important it’s been to me this year. I was reminded because I left the Christmas lights on during the day time, so when I returned home from my run, the twinkle and glow filled me with a kind of joy that I always seem to be chasing.

Every Black Friday, my wife and I decorate the house for Christmas. She places knick-knacks and snow globes and other décor inside the home while I take out the ladder and hang the lights across our roof line. This year I managed to get the icicle style lights (something I’ve always wanted), which gives our house a fuller and inviting glow at night. Then, in the evening, we hang ornaments on the pre-lit tree while we watch The Family Stone and The Holiday.

We used to buy a real tree each year, but the first Christmas we spent in the new house ended with hundreds, perhaps thousands, of new friends: baby stick bugs. We tried to save most of them, but I was forced to murder many with the vacuum. So to avoid that kind of anguish again, we bought a fake tree the following year.

In addition to the icicle lights, we also have a new addition this year: our daughter’s stocking! Adding hers above the fireplace was one of those moments that felt more bizarre than actually becoming a parent.

Each morning I takeover so my wife can sleep, my daughter and I listen to Christmas music while she does tummy time in her crib. There’s a playlist on Spotify made up of all the pop Christmas songs, including the likes of Mariah Carey, Michael Bublé, and Ariana Grande. While the music plays, I drum on the crib and my daughter gives me what is starting to feel like a true smile. Her favorite (which is probably just my favorite because of how fired up I get), is actually a duet by Gwen Stefani and Blake Shelton. I don’t even listen to either artist, but that song makes me feel warm. Especially when I’m hanging out with my daughter.

When she gets bored of the crib, we move to the living room, where I change her into her new outfit for the day and let her play under the tree. She enjoys the blinking lights and the dangling ornaments, and I enjoy watching her chase her curiosities. She’s the greatest gift, and we still have eighteen days to go until Christmas.

I’m not a religious person (have we spoken about this yet?), so the “true” meaning of Christmas means nothing to me. It’s the only Christian holiday I celebrate (unless St. Patrick’s Day is some kind of Catholic thing) and I don’t do it for Jesus. I do it for the aesthetic. Lights, gifts, music, cozy clothes, colorful décor—Jesus really has nothing to do with it. I’m sorry if that’s offensive. I just mean to say, that the tradition of celebrating Christmas doesn’t require you to be Christian at all.

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I was supposed to run slow today, and I really tried, but when I’m alone, it’s hard not to run a little bit faster. I’m worried this is going to hurt me in the long run.

When Bill and I run together, he paces us somewhere around 9:30 to 10:00 per mile, which is really slow for me. But when we’re doing that pace together it wear on me so much and by the end of a long run I feel like I’ve barely run at all, which I think is the point he’s been getting at.

Today I ran at about 8:20 per mile, which is a good pace for a long race, but much faster than what I set out to do. Even funnier, my phone updates me every mile on the pace I just ran, so after the first mile my phone said something like 8:25, and I made a conscious effort to slow down the second mile. When I finished that mile, my phone said 8:12!

So no matter my effort, I ran faster anyway.

The good news is I feel plenty ready for the half marathon in ten days or so. Despite the foot surgery, I’d like to beat last year’s time, and I’m feeling pretty hopeful about it.

My wife has had a really fortunate road so far when it comes to breastfeeding. Our daughter latches with no issue (unless she’s crying so hard she can’t get her mouth on the nipple), and her production has been sound enough that we’ve been able to start freezing four to five ounces at a time. With daycare coming in only a couple months, it feels urgent and imperative for us to have some sort of supply, because who knows how much my wife will pump once she starts working again.

We’ve got a nice stack of frozen bags in the freezer, and now we’re wondering if we’ll run out of room. I found a nice set of plastic baskets at BJs and I was able to use them to organize the breastmilk a bit because it was getting in the way of breakfast sandwiches, small pints of ice cream, and Pedialyte popsicles (which are for us, not the baby).

The degrees with which my life has change are not actually all that substantial on their own. My wife and I had been early birds before our daughter arrived and we didn’t spend many nights outside the house. We are clean people, but only in spurts. We’re not afraid to let clutter gather for a few days before picking it all up in one fell swoop. Having a baby really kind of fit in with all of that.

But the degrees do add up, and when the bottle isn’t screwed on tight so the milk spills all over your hungry baby, and you have to warm up a new bottle but it takes some time, and your baby is hungry so she starts crying and your wife can’t sleep in like you promised because the baby is crying and not only is she still hungry but her entire outfit that you’d just changed her into is soaked …

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Bill stopped by for another lunchtime run today. We have a race coming up (the half marathon for me, the full for him) and we started talking about a full marathon coming up in February. It’s a bit of a wrinkle in his schedule, but he said if I wanted to do it, he would do it with me.

The full marathon I want to run would be in February, giving me about two months to train and prepare for it. I’m already feeling good about running the half in a couple weeks, but the question becomes: can I double that in just sixty days?

I’m not sure I can, but I told Bill I was in.

My daughter’s neck strength has already grown tremendously. She can’t quite hold her head up by herself, but she has brief moments of control here and there. My wife doesn’t like it too much when I give our little girl opportunities to try things out—and maybe she’s right. I don’t want to be the dad who pushes my kid too hard, but it’s hard not to feel a little validated when she does things that feel extraordinary for her age.

One of the new developments that’s been confirmed by a recent visit with the pediatrician is that my daughter has a strawberry birthmark, just like her mother. By strawberry birthmark, I mean a hemangioma—a cluster of extra blood vessels that form what looks like a strawberry on her skin. My wife’s appeared and grew along her ribcage on the right side of her body. My daughter’s is in the same place on the left. Not only that, but my daughter may have a second hemangioma on her back!

Supposedly there isn’t any evidence to suggest they are genetic, so it’s really just a lovely coincidence. My wife’s strawberry has since faded since she was younger, leaving behind a small patch of skin that looks lightly scarred. I’m really attracted to it, in a “this is uniquely you” kind of thing about her. Sometimes, like during the colder months, I forget about it. Or if our showers have been mostly separate—like now because we need eyes on the baby—the memory of the strawberry will fade until I see it again. Then, when I do, I feel joy.

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Today, I overbooked myself by accident. I met up with a writing friend for breakfast before doing a lunchtime run with Bill.

But that’s not what I want to write about. Yesterday my baby brother was sentenced to sixteen months in prison.

In short, the judge’s hands were tied. My brother pled guilty (“in his best interests” was how it was phrased) and the judge had to sentence him based on the crimes he pled guilty to. I’m happy he is being held accountable, but I’m worried as hell for him going forward.

The bit of grace the judge showed my brother was that he withheld adjudication. So even though my brother will serve time for the two felonies he committed, he won’t leave prison as a “felon.” When he applies for jobs and tries to move on with his life after, he won’t have to answer for the felonies specifically, only the time served in prison.

He’s also being sentenced as a “youthful offender” since he was only nineteen when the crimes were committed and he is only twenty now. This means he won’t be in a prison with grown violent offenders, but rather people closer to his own age. This can be both good and bad. From what I’ve already read, the youthful offender facilities can be worse, if only because the younger inmates feel more compelled to prove their toughness, whereas an older inmate might be more inclined to keep his head down and serve his time quietly.

I’m feeling a lot right now, and it’s all a little messy. I’d like to visit him, but I can’t because of the pandemic. When the judge sentenced him, we didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye, really. Just one quick glance. One mouthed I love you and then he was gone.

Later that same evening, I received my booster shot and my flu shot.

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I’ve been thinking about this pandemic-baseball novel I drafted in 2018 and the kind of dread that fueled that book. I don’t know that I’m capable of feeling that kind of dread ever again. If I hadn’t written that novel when I did, I don’t think it would have ever been written. This is bizarre to think about, but it’s an artistic philosophy that can get a little metaphysical.

In short, this is what I believe: the words I write today could only have been the way they are written today. Any other day, I will bring something else to the page with me, ultimately influencing the the rhythm of my sentences, word choice, tone, mood, genre interests.

In long, there are infinite versions of the work we create, well before we even get into the editing/revision process. Similar to string theory, or whatever the “multiverse” is, every time we decide to write or not to write, we’re choosing a different version of whatever story we’re telling.

This isn’t unlike my wife and I’s struggles with infertility. Our daughter was born almost four years to the day from when we miscarried. Who knows who that child would’ve been, what kind of parents we might’ve become. Four years is a long time, especially when you’re measuring your late twenties to early thirties.

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I was right. Last week was the final run before my baby girl was born. Earlier this week, our daughter joined us in the world and a few days ago, we brought her home for the first time.

On Wednesday, around 5:00 pm, my wife’s water broke. We weren’t entirely sure. She’s been peeing a little here and there when she sneezed, but we’d just finished watching a show and when she stepped out of our bed, she found a wet spot. She stood up, removed her underwear, and I saw the thinnest sort of trinkle, as if a faucet hadn’t been turned off. What else could it have been?

Fortunately, we had our bags packed ahead of time, so I threw everything into the car and we mapped out the quickest way to stop at a Wendy’s before we headed to the hospital.

When we arrived at the hospital, there was about an hour between our arrival and confirmation that my wife’s water had broken. In that time, my wife’s contractions went from about ten minutes apart to three minutes apart. We sent my in-laws a message and soon we were checked into our room.

This was about 7:30 pm.

Despite the escalation in contractions and effacement, my wife’s dilation moved slowly and was only about three centimeters when we got to the hospital. Four hours later, my wife asked for the epidural, but because she was experiencing back labor, it wasn’t as helpful as it could be.

I am not the best scene partner for an epidural. My wife never saw the size of the needle, but I guess my eyes gave it away.

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It’s funny. On my own, I just can’t seem to push myself. But when the competition arrives, I find a gear I didn’t know was there.

Also, my wife lost her mucus plug!

I signed up for this 5k after my encouraging performance in the 10k. I didn’t think I could break 22:00 in a 3.1 mile race, but thanks to a (perhaps ill-advised) fast start, I succeeded and made it possible to qualify for the same starting group in the 15k as Bill.

But honestly, all that is boring because my wife lost her mucus plug!

I’d been reading up on signs that labor is near (contractions, bloody show, mucus plug) and wasn’t sure this was one we’d get to experience. Some women never notice it, or it doesn’t even happen until they are already in the delivery room. My wife felt a discharge kind of work its way out, and because we are grossly intimate, she really wanted me to see it.

And voila! We’re anywhere between hours and weeks until labor begins—ha!

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