I’ve kind of been cheating lately, posting other people’s poems and quotes without even my own thoughts about them. So here are a few thoughts, quick, before I forget what they are.

Community is hard, but I will grudgingly say worth it. Right now is one of the hard times, but it is a different kind of hard than when there is disagreement or conflict. Right now is when we are all suffering because two of us are suffering. As a community we can be there for them in a way that neighbors or even a church family cannot: We are right here, sharing a backyard and kitchens, steps away if they need to talk. I am happy for that. But when I heard their bad news, it hurt me in a way that a neighbor’s news would not, that the news of most church-family members would not. The worth it part of community is that we can be there for them, and that they and others have been here for me when I needed it. The bad part is the pain. And the disagreement and conflict, and personality conflicts, etc. There is a good part to that, too. But that is another story.

I have not updated you on the sunset times lately, but I am trusting my (mostly imaginary) readers to have noticed that it is getting later and later. Here in Boston the sun set tonight at 7:37 p.m. The muscles in my shoulders that were tensed all winter to cope with the long dark evenings have relaxed.

News about my literary career: I wrote a haiku last month. Let’s see if that little poem can snowball into a productive year for 2011. By which I mean it would be nice to write a story or two again.

But my big news is that I have started running and, more significantly, continued running. It has been 13 years since I have run more than a mile, but I now regularly run 1.5, 2, or 2.5 on the treadmill. I want to transition to outdoor running, but it’s harder for me: It’s so much easier to stop running when all you have to do is, well, stop, than when the treadmill is moving steadily under you and to stop you have to a) make the decision to stop, b) press the down arrow about ten times to get to a walking pace, and c) stop running. Just that little extra effort gives me the time to decide that I am, after all, going to keep running, whereas if I’m outside I will stop before I think about it. Does that make any sense?

Anyway, I have been running for over two months now, and according to MapMyRun I have logged 50 miles! Yay me! I am posting this under Wrestling the Tigers because this is a great victory against the migraines, both in that exercise is good long-term for them (against them) and that I often am running with some kind of migraine or other, or get one after running, but I persevere. Take that, tigers!