The Loneliness of the Long Distance Poster

Don't Talk About it, Do it.

I’m using the title of a 1962 British film as a pun.

Because the parallels between writing for Substack and the discipline of the runner are similar.

You build the habit and the discipline of something you are going to stay with for a long time.

Also, this is an example of what I’ve referred to in the past as building on top of something.

I wrote a note a couple of weeks ago that resonated with me, and revisiting a little later, I find that I have more to say. So now it’s a post.

In The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, Colin Smith (Tom Courtenay) is a young man from a rural England town who runs as a way to cope with his dysfunctional family. An act of theft sends him to a youth detention center, where his running ability catches the eye of the Governor, who signs Colin up for a race against privileged students from upper class families. The Governor sees Colin as a shining example of the effectiveness of his detention center athletics program.

Through a narrative that explores class conflict and working class philosophy, Colin makes a decision that I won’t spoil here.

Beyond saying that he accomplished a personal achievement in a big, dramatic gesture.

Like Colin, we like to bring drama to personal achievements.

To share in social media the new gym membership we got in December.

Understandably we want to share big milestones with others.

But without doing the work of changing your mindset at a subconscious level, you're just posting content.

And this is why 67 % of gyms are nearly empty by late January.

A goal was declared in the public arena of social media.

But no adjustments were made at the quantum level.

But real change, real growth, happens quietly.

Almost imperceptibly.

It's a quiet yet insistent nudging from within.

A cellular message urging you to pick up the thing you stopped doing because it was too hard.

Or because it brought you unwanted opinions from well meaning friends and family.

It's the thing you're avoiding doing, being or having.

The way to turn this around is to turn pro, as Stephen Pressfield describes it in The War of Art.

“All you have to do [to turn pro] is change your mind.”

To make a decision that you remind yourself of doing every day.

Writing.

Drawing.

Photography.

Entrepreneurship.

There is stoicism in this.

To accept that there are no shortcuts or hacks beyond doing the work.

To do it for yourself. Because you told yourself you would do it, instead of telling the internet what you will do.

To tell what you’re going to do is amateur.

It’s the same as telling of what you might do.

“The amateur is an egotist. He takes the material of his personal pain and uses it to draw attention to himself. He creates a ‘life,’ a ‘character,’ a ‘personality.'”

This is something people do on YouTube and other platforms.

Self-victimization.

Like the person who posts on Facebook about spending 4 hours on the library, but very little of that time is spent in actual studying.

Or the ones posting about the new gym membership to get that beach body.

Make a mindset shift to let your results speak for themselves.

For years I talked about making a graphic novel.

After some time I got tired of this and asked myself: do I want to be a writer/artist?

Or do I want to APPEAR to be a writer/artist?

I shifted my mindset and finally wrote and drew a graphic novel that you can buy here.

What have you been talking about but have yet to do?

A mindset shift rearranges your reality. Make the decision to turn pro

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962) one of the series of films that would become known as the Angry Young Man sub genre of dramatic storytelling. Sometimes referred to as kitchen sink realist drama. It’s a form of storytelling that may be outdated. Great poster design though.