The Week I Found Focus and Flow

How a writing retreat changed me and led to better running, too

Come inside my creative cave

I’d like to tell you about something that changed for me last week, which has to do with creativity and productivity. For those of you here mainly for running-related content, hang tight, because I promise these paragraphs have something to do with running as well as writing.

I’m sitting at my desk at home while composing this, and it’s the same sublime workspace as it has been since we finished building this house and moved in five years ago. It’s a wood desk in a second-floor loft facing a bank of windows that look out to Hawn Mountain, which rises like a massive creased wall skirted by aspen groves that stand silvery bare, their budding leaves about three weeks from sprouting.

Between our house at 9,000 feet elevation and the ridge line of the mountain at some 11,000 feet, hundreds of acres of undulating mesa-top pastureland drop down to the pine-covered rock walls of a deep canyon where Deep Creek flows to meet the San Miguel River. New green grass sprouts to color the brown shades of early spring. If I squint, I can make out our neighbor’s herd of black and white horses a mile away, along with elk herds roaming just down the hillside. I also can let my eyes rest on a century-old rectangular sheep barn with a rust-brown metal roof, which I wanted our home’s structure and style to mimic.

The windowsill ledge holds 15 belt buckles I earned at 100-milers and weeklong stage races. Above the window frame, scores of finishers’ medals on thick multicolored ribbons hang from a rod, organized chronologically, each triggering a memory of a race and the year and location where I ran it. To the left of my laptop, four photos of my son and daughter capture them smiling together from toddlerhood to young adulthood.  To the right, a photo of my now-gone parents immortalizes them in front of the cabin across the road where I spent much of my youth. Mom and Dad look relaxed and encouraging—the Mom from 20 years ago, with her teeth and mind still intact—as if they’re interested in what I’m doing.

The running-related memorabilia reminds me that I can make progress and do hard things. The family photos remind me where I came from and what my most important purpose has been—raising and launching my two children, and being their role model.

So my desk is the same personalized, scenic workspace as it was two weeks ago. But my approach to it and behavior while in it have changed in ways that allow me to appreciate the setting more fully and take root and grow in it.

What changed?

I spent last week with 20 other women at a writing retreat in Taos, organized by the inspiring author and coach

Jennifer Louden

(who really knows how to structure and lead retreats right). While there, I worked a great deal on my memoir project and engaged in writing exercises that loosened me up as much as Jen’s morning free-dance sessions.

Writing in Taos, post-run.

But perhaps the retreat’s biggest impact has to do with how I think about and engage with this writing space—a zone I’m now thinking of as my “creative cave,” not “office.” The “cave” image stuck not just because of the phrase’s alliteration, but also because my mind connects it with ultra champ Courtney Dauwalter’s metaphor of a “pain cave,” which she uses to cope and excel in her ultramarathons.

While “pain” sounds, well, painful, Courtney puts a welcoming spin on it. She enters the imaginative cave with curiosity and acceptance, open to exploring what the discomfort might show her and chiseling away at its limits. She works with—and stays with—the tough, uncomfortable parts. She experiences the “pain cave” non-judgmentally, viewing the challenges or setbacks that caused the discomfort to be part of the process, not a result of some failing on her part. She is entirely present and focused during the run. She emerges from the “pain cave” or rough patch of her race intact and resilient, getting to the finish as the winner, stoked and smiling with genuine enthusiasm.

By thinking of my space as a “cave” for creativity, I try to be like Courtney in terms of focus and presence, and I stay with it when I hit a rough patch—butt in chair, I work with and through whatever might temporarily block me. To enhance the focus by minimizing distraction, I’ve started turning off the WiFi on my laptop when I type so that I deliberately work offline. My phone remains downstairs, along with my watch that receives the phone’s notifications, so I don’t hear or feel any ding or buzz from devices.

I even came up with a mantra that I repeat as I start to work in this zone: “I will enter my creative cave, get in retreat mode, and stay with it.”

I have committed to make this space a no-social-media, no-busy-work zone. When I get the urge to check Instagram or Strava (a compulsive habit that the week in Taos helped reset), or when I need to reply to a bunch of emails or pay bills or get sucked into viewing an ultra’s livestream, then I will take my laptop downstairs and do that emailing or scrolling at the kitchen island. The two separate spaces will, I hope, keep the distractions out of the creative crave.

Why didn’t I make this change sooner? In my regular way of working and writing pre-retreat, I would get sidetracked every five minutes by an email or by a notification on my phone’s screen. I couldn’t write a paragraph without shifting gears in my brain. I was always stopping and starting, rarely in an uninterrupted flow. The dopamine hit from each notification—oh goody, some new news … some mention on Instagram … some text from someone who wants to get in touch with me—competed with the steady slow build of satisfaction that comes from concentrating on my project as I bring it to life.

What this has to do with running

On the first day of the retreat, we sat in a circle of chairs and faced a pile of images torn from magazines on the floor in the circle’s center. Jen asked us pick one that caught our eye and write about the traits we’d use to describe it, and the feelings and thoughts the image evokes.

I chose this image of an indigenous man running barefoot and looking relaxed, with the hint of a smile, while another runner in the background has downcast eyes and a downturned mouth and appears to be straining.

I wrote by hand in my journal: “Natural, energetic, stoked, authentic, uninhibited, fast but calm. I want to run and write like him, not like the man in the background: smooth and flowing in my body and thoughts. Being myself. Satisfied, not stressed. Playful, yet powerful.”

I returned to that description—that wish—on my recent runs. What if I treat each run the way I’m trying to practice writing in my “creative cave”? What if I approach each run, as with writing, with fewer preconceived notions of how it should go, and fewer distractions, and more open to seeing how and where it takes me? What if I view each block of time that I have to run not as a scheduled task to complete, shoehorned and rushed between other obligations, but as an opportunity to feel free and to let my mind and body wander?

I experienced that kind of freeing run in Taos when I woke up before sunrise one morning and drove to the Rio Grande. The drive there and back meant I’d have less time to run before the workshop began, but I wanted to explore somewhere new and contemplate the metaphors of the running, flowing grand river and its relation to the deep canyon. I drove to the river for a run with time enough for “only” four miles, and it felt so liberating to let go of the “should” that quantifies how many miles I aim to run and at what pace. I simply got out of my car and ran a trail to experience it, my pace faster than usual to generate heat in the frigid morning air.

The Rio Grande Gorge near Taos at sunrise.

I followed the trail along the gorge, studying the river canyon’s walls and the hues of the sunrise. When I pivoted onto a side path to see a different river view, I came upon a circle made of rocks, divided into quarters. Tears sprang to my eyes because the form made me think about how I’m part of a foursome with my husband, daughter, and son.

I stepped into each quarter of the circle, said their names out loud, and then leaned down to touch the center rock. There, I spotted a tiny message left behind, “Be kind.”

I would have missed all that if I didn’t show up and didn’t open myself up to that new route, trying to run like the man in that magazine image. The run felt creative in its own way.

I set as a new year’s goal (which I also set in past years but did not fulfill) to make my writing practice as much a priority and discipline as my running. I think I’m finally on track to doing that, but with a different take on the word “discipline,” which implies control and rigidity. I’m thinking of “discipline” more as a commitment as well as a field of study. I’m learning as I go.

Enough

One other valuable idea I gained from this retreat is the concept of “conditions of enough-ness.” What would it take to make you feel satisfied, as if you’ve done enough?

Each time I sat down to get into a writing mode, I jotted down what would feel like “enough” in terms of what I wanted to do or create in whatever amount of time I had available. The phrases might be, “1000 words” or “45 minutes offline focused” or a specific scene I’d like to draft or revise. These were bite-sized, achievable aims, unlike my monstrous to-do list that itemizes virtually everything—from the mundane to the lofty—that I want and need to do and would take months to complete. This “enough” fits easily on a Post-It and sets the achievement bar lower, not higher.

I’ve noticed, since I returned home from the retreat and started work in this way (which magically doesn’t feel like work), that I don’t always stop when I reach what I had deemed “enough.” Often I keep going with what I’m writing and creating, fully absorbed, not paying attention to what the small clock in the top righthand corner of my laptop says until something in the practical part of my brains says, “You actually need to stop and shift gears” due to a time-sensitive appointment or task that demands attention.

In this mode, I reach “enough” feeling like I want to keep going. I feel excitement to work on it again, as soon as I can.

It’s magical when a run feels like that, too. It won’t always, but sometimes it can and will.

I left the retreat believing what our leader Jen told us: that the magic of this retreat is not sitting in the week of April 28 – May 4 in Taos, New Mexico. It’s in me.

A web that I doodled last week.

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I hope this post encourages you to sign up for a class, workshop, or retreat that gives you time and support to develop whatever you feel called to learn or do.

I had planned to write another section in this week’s post about finding your voice—and mustering the courage to speak out—based on a public speaking experience I had recently in front of a hostile audience. But then I thought, “enough.” I’ll save that for next week perhaps. Thank you for reading this far.

I hope you’ll comment below on any aspect of this post that resonated with you—such as your workspace habits, your running mind frame, your hoped-for retreat, anything!