{"id":5987,"date":"2013-09-30T11:37:20","date_gmt":"2013-09-30T17:37:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5987"},"modified":"2013-10-02T09:04:49","modified_gmt":"2013-10-02T15:04:49","slug":"good-advice-run-your-own-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5987","title":{"rendered":"Good Advice: “Run Your Own Race”"},"content":{"rendered":"

I hit bottom the summer I turned 36. Part-way through grad school, I took a break to work as managing editor of an outdoor magazine, Colorado Outdoor Journal.<\/em> (You’ve never heard of it. I needed a job.) In May, the publisher pulled the plug on the magazine, but I had already registered for the June annual conference of the Outdoor Writers Association of America<\/a>, so M. and I packed up our VW camper and \u2014 unemployed \u2014 drove to that year’s site, Kalispell, Montana<\/a>.<\/p>\n

At a reception, this guy \u2014 call him T. \u2014 came up and introduced himself. I did not know his face, but I knew his name: he had written several books I admired and was on the masthead of one of the leading magazines.<\/p>\n

As freshmen at Reed College<\/a>, he said, we had been in the same creative writing class. He remembered me. I had totally forgotten his being there. (He dropped out, started writing. I stayed.)<\/p>\n

It wasn’t T’s fault, but in the wee hours one morning on that trip I woke up in the camper and had the nearest thing to a nervous breakdown that I ever had experienced. Everything that I thought I was or would be turned to dust and ashes. I was not suicidal, but I was crushed by an overwhelming sense of failure. No job. Maybe no career. Bills to pay. Taking the wrong path . . .<\/p>\n

Someone should have given me this to read: “Run Your Own Race.<\/a>”<\/p>\n

The best advice I\u2019ve received about surviving in the competitive world of grad school was passed down from a colleague: \u201cKaitlin, make sure to\u00a0run your own race<\/strong>.\u201d . . . .\u00a0 Looking around at your colleagues, there will be people publishing more, teaching more, and people who have more extracurricular activities, or more funding. It can be easy to think you don\u2019t measure up. This self-deprecating thinking ignores strategies that can help make you successful and instead fixates on what\u00a0others are doing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I learned that lesson as writer, too: Be happy about your friends’ successes, and don’t measure yourself against them. Run your own race.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I hit bottom the summer I turned 36. Part-way through grad school, I took a break to work as managing editor of an outdoor magazine, Colorado Outdoor Journal. (You’ve never heard of it. I needed a job.) In May, the publisher pulled the plug on the magazine, but I had already registered for the June […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[137,12],"class_list":["post-5987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-academia","tag-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-1yz","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1090,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1090","url_meta":{"origin":5987,"position":0},"title":"Shrine Haiku #1","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 3, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Deer turds at the entranceto the outdoor shrine --that's who's worshiping?","rel":"","context":"In \"writing\"","block_context":{"text":"writing","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=writing"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":381,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=381","url_meta":{"origin":5987,"position":1},"title":"The loneliness of the long-distance\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 10, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"The loneliness of the long-distance columnistJason Pitz-Waters looks at some of the press coverage that newWitch magazine is receiving and wonders why no one mentions his music column.Ain't it the truth. You shoot these columns off into the dark and wonder if anyone ever reads them.Some years back, I wrote\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1319,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1319","url_meta":{"origin":5987,"position":2},"title":"Wicca as the (Untrustworthy) Other, Again","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 13, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"For environmental news of the West, I have subscribed since the 1980s to High Country News, a biweekly magazine. For the first time since a rancher named Tom Bell started the magazine in Lander, Wyoming in 1970, HCN has jumped on the bandwagon of anti-Wiccan snark. In a blog post\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1232,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1232","url_meta":{"origin":5987,"position":3},"title":"Gallimaufry with Snow","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 22, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Snow has been falling all day, and I am working on a lengthy book review, so here are some links:\u2022 Sannion has the best idea for a New Testament zombie novel, and everyone wants him to write it. Already, I would not look at the book of Acts the same\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"England\"","block_context":{"text":"England","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=england"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chasclifton.com\/graphics\/shrineinsnow.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":9877,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=9877","url_meta":{"origin":5987,"position":4},"title":"“The Importance of Rituals to the Hunt”","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 11, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"I have written a little about the intersection of hunting and ritual, but today I would ask you to read Jeremy Climer's blog post \"The Importance of Rituals to the Hunt.\" Before we go any further, we should define both \u201ctradition\u201d and \u201critual\u201d because people often use them interchangeably.\u00a0\u00a0Although traditions\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"animals\"","block_context":{"text":"animals","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=animals"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/bull-8-16-2015.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/bull-8-16-2015.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/bull-8-16-2015.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/bull-8-16-2015.jpg?resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":511,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=511","url_meta":{"origin":5987,"position":5},"title":"The Dodman's CraftBefore there was\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 11, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"The Dodman's CraftBefore there was an Internet--back around 1980--Mike Nichols of Kansas City published a lively Pagan 'zine. He has been writing and teaching classes on the Craft for decades.Nowadays, as Wren Walker of The Witches' Voice says in her foreword, if you do a Web search on \"Samhain\" or\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5987"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5987\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5995,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5987\/revisions\/5995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}