Sometimes, I don’t know where to begin. I have several writing projects that I can attend to, dipping in for the morning to spend a couple of writing sessions thinking about. And it’s work to get started. I’m not currently working with information that will become publishable. For example, I’m waiting on a couple of interviews to take place before I have the raw materials of thought that I’ll use to build my reflections. To choose one of the topics to journal about causes me to hesitate, to “waste time” as it’s often described because time is commoditized.

But just begin.

I’m invited to think about the struggle I frequently experience with exercise. The most difficult “lift” are my shoes. Putting my training shoes on my feet is the biggest step toward completing an exercise. Once they are on, I usually follow through. An exception might be a phone call, which did happen on Sunday late afternoon when Brooke called to update me about one of the children. In general, lacing my shoes is as close to a guarantee that I’ll get my exercise in because lacing my shoes is beginning.

Which brings me to where I am this morning: begin, Michael. I heard it when tapped out the first couple of words.

I’ve been reading an article in the journal Progress in Neurobiology about stress that seems applicable and needs testing to determine if it applies or does not.

“Stress,” the authors conclude, is “the individual state of uncertainty about what needs to be done to safeguard physical, mental[,] or social well-being.” They show throughout the course of the paper how a human can deal with “uncertainty”: attention, learning, and habituation. It’s probable I’ll return to this article often to read my notes, make more notes, etc., but for the moment let it suffice to say that defining stress as uncertainty is valuable in itself. We can do much with uncertainty, namely gather information. Uncertainty is a mental space with feelings that can be addressed. You might think that in a world with abundant information we’d have less stress, but we don’t. It’s possible—though I kind of doubt this can be ascertained and I am certain it’s not worth measuring—we have more stress than ever. Because stress is a human problem even when defined helpfully as uncertainty. Why? Because we must begin.

We must simply begin. As a writer, that means sitting at my desk and seeing what thoughts are released onto paper or screen. The words—they’ve been bottled up until this moment. Free them. Let them wander from your mind through your fingers to the page. They have no rights except for the space that I give them if I begin.

I had to go back and edit “if” to italics. Because it is important to a language nerd like myself. Hang in there with me for a paragraph. I promise I’ll limit myself to one paragraph.

In Greek as well as in Latin, there are constructions called “absolutes” that stand by themselves, often as a participle and a noun together, and they communicate a semi-complete thought. I’m hesitant to say “complete” because they do come out as indirect statements, which are technically not complete sentences. Anywho, these absolutes appear in the Greek in the Genitive case; in Latin, they’re in the Ablative and occasionally the Accusative. The trick to translating these is knowing which absolute it is in relation to the context of the main clause. For example, causal absolutes begin since or because; temporal absolutes begin with when or after depending on the tense of the participle; conditional absolutes begin with if. Because context is the main determinant, they are not terribly difficult to decide upon in general. There are cases, however, where we would argue as Iowa PhD students in the second floor of the Jefferson Building which absolute we were looking at, and often it was the difference between a conditional absolute—translated with if— or a present temporal—translated with when. The difference between if or when something occurs is the difference between a possibility and a probability. It used to be that I would possibly exercise if I put on my training shoes whereas now it is probable that I’ll exercise when I put on my running shoes. The difference? Habituation.

Learning to begin can mature from a possibility to a probability. And for the sake of punning, I’ll add that there are never any absolutes here—something amiss can happen and derail my writing any given day! I could break both of my arms, find myself in a hospital, lose consciousness, or die. But only one of them is guaranteed to happen one day. So let’s stick with the generalities.

As a general rule, I can train myself to begin—just sit at your desk, Michael, open up one of your files, and put your fingers on the keyboard—to the point that whether I write or not for the day is largely determined by the habit of sitting at my desk. This is important for me to realize because I was able to develop an exercise habit. I depend on exercise now because I have been rewarded with the holistic benefits of exercise day after day. And if I can correlate my habituation toward exercise with writing, I will see that I’ve never regretted taking time to exercise, which means I can habituate myself to say the same thing about writing.

I’m grateful I began this morning to write.

On the art of beginning

On navigating lostness