I'm reading five books right now. They're scattered before me on the rubble of my desk -- "rubble" being a loose description of the papers, globe, framed photographs, journals, random CD's, Bible, coasters, broken reading lamp, and dark blue beverage cozy that populate the vast hickory surface. There's "The Discovery of France" by Graham Robb, "The Big Burn" by Timothy Egan, "Manhood for Amateurs" by Michael Chabon, "South of Broad" by Pat Conroy, and Andre Agassi's "Open." I have various degrees of infatuation with each of them, starting with a general disinterest in the florid prose of Conroy (and I was once a huge fan; one can only think that he took too much time between books), on to a compelling fascination with Agassi. His book was written by J.R. Moehringer, who also wrote "The Tender Bar," which I now have to read. All memoirs should be this fascinating.

There is a map of Maryland amid the rubble, a small tome devoted to the "Wit and Wisdom of Abraham Lincoln," a tour book from the Confederate White House. There is a small mountain of transcriptions and press clippings, a cricket ball from a long ago trip to Australia, an inscription that my wife framed for me on our first Christmas together, and a thin volume of Benjamin Franklin's quotations. There is a boarding pass from my trip to New York last week, right next to the ticket stub from Springsteen's Garden show. An old phone which I keep meaning to power up so I can download all the numbers into my new phone. There is an unbound manuscript for The Crusoes, which I keep writing and rewriting, because I know that someday I will get the hang of fiction. There is a National Geographic "Eyewitness to the Civil War" photo book that my Mom and Dad gave me last Christmas, a small coaster from La Flamme Cafe' (6, avenue de wagram, Paris), which was a loud lacquered place that somehow I liked enough to steal the coaster.

There is a bill from World Vision that I need to pay so that my adopted Malawi child can go to school, an uncashed check for thirty-six cents from my insurance company, user's guides to my camera and my phone, neither of which I will ever read, and should rightfully just toss in the trash can. But that somehow feels derelict, so they take up space just in case of some phone or camera emergency makes them instantly valuable -- although I am more likely to experience phone or camera emergencies when I am far from my desk.

Which brings me to the last item. 

To my left, just within arms' reach, is the devil's playground. It is a standard clipboard with a sheaf of individual documents that the casual observer wouldn't bother to read. Some are handwritten, some are downloaded, and one is a sheet of paper with staples in the upper right corner that I plucked off a bulletin board Sunday morning. All are dog-eared from me thumbing through the pages, as I read and reread them in search of the Magic Kingdom. The documents are addictive to say the least; peanut buttter M&M's, In-n-Out French Fries, and Stone IPA twirled into some great mental time suck. I try to refrain, but inevitably I lose myself, reaching over to pick up that clipboard. Next thing I know I have lost fifteen minutes or a half an hour, my mind wandering through the possibilities and predictions on the pages before me.

I am talking, of course, about stats. I study stats like Hugh Hefner studies porn. I memorize names. I know what my runners are doing, and what other runners are doing. I know which teams have cut back on their mileage as they taper, and wonder if they started too soon. I know which teams train through races. I know who's fast, I know who's slow. I know which opposing runners had a bad day or a sick day or had an off the charts day that they may or may not be able to duplicate ever again. I wonder what would happen if each of my runners took twenty seconds off their three-mile time. Or thirty. Or, amazing case scenario, they somehow knocked off a minute.

To be a writer is to know uncertainty, discomfort and a daily search for hope. Life is like that, no matter what you do. In stats, I find certainty and comfort and hope. So I reach for that clipboard. Much of my life is nebulous. Much of my life lacks a sense of presence -- I mean, look at my desk. I sit here for months and not notice the rubble, because my mind is on Mars, solving some story problem. But with stats I am centered, in that way music at the start of church brings me into the building and gives me focus.

To look at a stat sheet is to remember a race, a temperature, a cloud of dust, an emotion. It is a puzzle. In many ways it's like writing a story, which is really just a series of decisions. That's all creativity really is -- what do I want to write about? What's the first word? The first sentence? The first paragraph? The order of chapters -- flashback, straightforward, essays? The secret to being a great writer, I am told, is to always write the truth. And I can tell you from firsthand experience that a day of hard writing is a draining of the truth, wringing every last bit of raw fact from the brain onto the page, so that by the end I am a limp puddle. It's therapy, only with a narrative.

In stats I find purest form of truth. The stopwatch is a bitch, but there's no hiding from that honesty. I can write my best and know that the end result is subjective. But I can look at stats from a race last week or thirty years ago and know absolute truth. Stats don't lie. Stats let us all know where we stand. Stats don't play favorites. In that truth, I find calm. 

I also find the ingredients for success -- and who wouldn't reach out for a thing within arms reach offering that promise? The trick is parsing those ingredients in the most beneficial means possible.  

Writing, of course, is a narrative in words. Stats are a narrative in numbers. To flow from times to words and back again doesn't feel like I'm really sabotaging my writing time. So I give in to the clipboard, even though I've promised myself I won't allow distraction until the work day is done, and I leave my desk to sit in my big chair in front of the TV, ignoring whatever program fills the room so that I may divine the future on those scraps of paper. I look at the runners who finished first and wonder how they got there. I think the same for top teams. Then I wonder how I can get my guys there, too.  

This is what I do when I read those five books, too. And whatever else I read. Who's good? What are they doing? How can I do it better? And, if by chance I feel just a little sharper or smarter than whatever I am reading, I allow myself a moment of self-congratulation. Because without a shard of triumph -- not conceit, but personal validation -- life would feel futile. 

At some point I shut down my brain and return to the present. I struggle to remain mindful, as a yoga teacher once urged me. But that's hard. So sooner or later I am picking up one of those books, or maybe even that clipboard again, to do a Calgon -- and slip away. 

Keep Pushing... Always