The parts I don’t publish

I was about nine kilometres into a run when I noticed I was writing about it.

Not out loud. In my head. Working out how the session would read once it was up. Whether the negative split was worth mentioning. Whether the bit where I nearly stopped was honest or just cheap. The run was still happening and some part of me had already left it to go and describe it.

I don’t know when that started. That’s the part that bothers me.

I’m the last person who should be arguing for less data. I use it in my own training. I build systems to keep it. I like being able to return to what actually happened rather than the version I remember.

But measurement does two different jobs, and I only really trust one of them.

The version I trust helps me do the thing. A training record gives me something to compare. A number can reveal a change I didn’t feel. I use it, make a decision and get back to the work. Nobody else has to see it for it to be valuable.

The other version looks very similar. It’s when the readout starts selecting the activity. When I choose something partly because of how it will look afterwards. When a private experience starts feeling unfinished until there’s a public record of it.

I have definitely picked a project because it made a better story, and told myself it was strategy.

So I try a question: would I still do this, this way, if nobody saw the record?

That doesn’t mean everything needs to be private. Attention can be a useful form of accountability. Showing work can bring people into it. Some things get better with witnesses. I’m trying to notice where the audience changes what I wanted from the activity.

The difficulty is that I usually need to decide before a quiet week makes me go looking for material. Without a boundary, whatever’s nearest becomes the next post. Then the boundary gets negotiated by how much I need something to publish.

I keep a few things off the record. I’m not going to catalogue them. Explaining a private life in enough detail can become another way of publishing it, with a paragraph about privacy attached.

Now the part I’d rather leave out: I can’t cleanly tell you whether this is a principle or a hiding place.

I’ve also had finished writing sit in a folder instead of going out. A stranger deciding whether I’m worth reading feels different from a client asking for a specific piece of work. So a person who finds publishing uncomfortable, announcing that some things shouldn’t be published, deserves a little suspicion. Including from himself.

My best guess is that both are running at once. Some things genuinely get worse with an audience. I also find that a comfortable thing to believe. I don’t think I can separate the motives perfectly from the inside.

The question still helps. It asks whether the activity changes when it’s watched. That’s something I can notice even when my explanation of myself is unreliable.

I’ll keep recording the things that help me train and build. I’ll keep sharing some of them. But I want to have experiences that don’t need a second job as evidence of a good life.

I’d rather keep a few things that are only mine.