Sticky Notes - I can't sleep.

It's a little after midnight Japan time. I'm on a red-eye 10,000 feet in the air somewhere over the Pacific Ocean. I can't sleep. So, I thought I'd just write to you instead. 

I try to write every day, read every day and sweat every day. When I’m on the road, accomplishing all three these requires a bit of creativity. 

I’ll talk about the sweating here in a moment. But, as for the writing and the reading, I’ve learned to get them done in quick swigs rather than the deep, long gulps that I’m used to back home.

I write and read even when the windows are as tight as the ones that line the sides of submarines.

Because traveling is so wildly unproductive and it's constantly leaving you waiting on something –– baggage to arrive, flights to show, taxis too and from, etc –– it leaves time for three to four 20-30 minute writing and reading windows each day. 

If you can manage to make the most out of these windows, you wind up at the end of the trip rifling through a couple books, along with a laptop full of a good bit of words that you can cut, snip and polish up when you’re lucky enough to get a day where a big gulp can be had. 

Fitting a sweat into these small windows can be more difficult than writing and reading because you have to consider the time it takes to slip on your shorts and your shirt, lace up your shoes, take a shit, down a bit of caffeine to fend off the afternoon lull, track down a gym, check into said gym and then, finally, do the actual activity that calls upon the sweating. 

Because sweating is wildly inconvenient on the road, people who travel tend to return home plumper than they left. To save myself the time and the fuss, I pack my Hoka running shoes everywhere I go and I try and get three to four miles of roadwork in every single day. 

While this doesn’t necessarily allow me to “get ahead” –– because I’m haunted by an appetite as enormous as a Nile Crocodile –– it keeps me in proper shape and form until I have the chance to settle back into my home and fall back into a more intensive workout routine where the pushing of weights and the swinging of fists can accompany the roadwork. 

Running is hard. That’s why not many people do it.

The only way I’ve managed to get through it on a nearly daily basis is by picking a place on the horizon and telling myself that I just have to run to that place. Here's generally how it goes... 

I start running.

My ribs are hurting. My muscles are bitching. My calves and quads are obeying me about as good as a Coyote obeys the call of the hunter. My ears are hearing not a single line of the music playing in my earbuds meant to sidetrack me from the pain. And, I’m miserable. I’m just miserable.

I tell myself: “Alright, Cole, you just have to make it to that stoplight, just up ahead there.” 

And so I run to this stoplight and once I’m at the stoplight, my muscles are bitching a little less and my legs are becoming submissive and my ears are hearing the music clearer and the pain has subsided, some. 

It’s here, where I will tell myself, “Okay, Cole, that was pretty good, now you have to make it to that house with the white picket fence, just up the road there.” 

And so again, I will run to the house with the white picket fence and when I arrive at this place, I’ll find another place and another and another, until eventually, I find my way back home.

When you’re running, you shouldn’t take it one step at a time because there are so many goddamn steps that you’ll lose count, get discouraged and start focusing on how goddamn difficult each step is; nor is it worth taking it one mile at a time because a mile is a very long time even for the gods among us that can run them in under 4 minutes. 

(Think about doing something terrible like chewing railroad nails or running underneath the hot Tennessee sun for 4-minutes straight? That’s a very long time.)

And so instead, when you’re running, you should just run to a place just out of reach, a place you know you can make it to with a bit of mustard and once there, see if you can’t get a little bit further up the road. 

And I think this is true for doing anything painful, really. 

Cheers, 

Cole

P.S. If someone forwarded you this email, you can subscribe at the black button down here 👇🏾

After closing the doors on RAITĀ, I had a bunch of filthy, good-for-nothing procrastinators jerking me off via email, asking if I would let them in last minute.

(For those new to the party, RAITĀ was a writing course inspired by Japan that I taught via email last week actually from Japan, in real-time...)

Well, if you missed the boat, it's turning back around.

I sent out the final lesson today but if you're into binge-watching and want to read all the lessons at once, I'm still allowing folks to purchase the course to have access to all the emails.

Sorry, I'm not queuing you all up in an email sequence or giving you a discount or anything like that; you all shat away that opportunity. And no, this isn't something I'm going to offer for long. The RAITĀ lessons are pure gold and they're not some commodity for folks to pass around like poptarts on a fucking fieldtrip.

If you're not interested in RAITĀ and are tired of reading about it, I sell a bunch of other cool shit too...

* A guide about writing better copy

* A guide about building a freelance business

* A guide about getting what you want with cold email

* A class about becoming a writer

* A book of prose about life

* A book of poetry about love

* A book of short stories about death

* A memento about facing your fears

* A newsletter about writing and life

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