How life is "supposed" to be, an update on running the reopened Bunker Hill Monument stairs

Friday 11/21/25

When people say, "This wasn't how life was supposed to be"--which usually is in reference to their own lives, rather than some societal condemnation--what they really mean is, "This isn't how I wanted/want my life to be." The former suggests a lack of causality, as if something was inexplicably befouled in the pipeline that was meant to connect A to B to C as if by divine ordinance.

We can almost always see cause, though. The reasons why. I can certainly see all of them for the situation I am in. They make sense and they make sense to me.

We can start with the most basic--a publishing person is what a publishing person is, I am what I am, and a publishing person demands that you be similar to what they are in order to absorb you into their incestuous ranks and consider pushing you forward with their cohorts. I can itemize thousands of others.

I wouldn't say, "This isn't how it's supposed to be," because it makes sense that this is how it is. The issue is instead what to do about that. How to create, or arrive at, a different set of circumstances that is the new "how it is" that replaces what would then be this previous one.

More and more, though, I see people say that line of "This wasn't how life was supposed to be" and stick there, as if they don't even have the option to try for something else. I think you do always have that option, for what it's worth.

Very few people wish to be with someone they know to be inarguably smarter than they are. Fewer people wish to be with someone they know to be much smarter than they are. And fewer people still wish to be with someone they know to be immeasurably smarter than they are, and perhaps no one at all right now in the year 2025 and moving forward.

The same goes with what I just said above for whom people will support, pump up, tout, follow. Very few people will back someone they know to be inarguably smarter than they are. Fewer people will back, etc.

Someone needs to be able to look at you and think, "I could be them." Doesn't matter if they play guitar and you don't. People still need to be able to think, "If I had gotten serious about the guitar when I was fifteen, I could have done what they did."

"If I had a lot of money and followers, I could have a bigger podcast than Joe Rogan. He's not smarter than me."

Whatever it may be. This is the key to success that involves numbers. In other words, to success, unless we're talking about internal success in a life of isolation because you know the self and create the greatest work that no one sees and that's game, set, match, internalized zen, but you can't eat that, you can't live inside of it, you can't drive it around, you can't have many people in your life that way if any, and you will die before you should die because it's not possible to live in the world--which you are still in--for more than a given number of decades, whatever that number is. You will also not impact the world, which is the reason why you live above all others, and all others combined.

Wednesday I arrived at the Bunker Hill Monument with the aim of doing ten circuits of stairs. This was the third day the Monument was open since the government reopened. I had run five circuits on both Saturday and Sunday. My goal has been to fast track my return to where I was in September, Monument-wise, when I was conceivably at my highest level in the nine years I've been running these stairs (though obviously they were closed for a long time with COVID).

I must say that it didn't go well. What's more, I wasn't even the best stair runner in there, and when can I ever say that? There was a woman and who I assume was her boyfriend, and they were both better than I was. They even passed me. I only did five circuits, but had I stayed--they were doing ten--they might have lapped me.

I'm unsure how they were doing such a great job with the Monument having been closed. I haven't seen them in there before either. It's not their regular thing, but they must have a regular thing that is pretty challenging. If I was where I'd been back in September, this wouldn't have gone down like this, but that's not where I'm at yet.

But make no mistake: I'm not going to take any more time than I have to in getting back to that level. My pace was fine in and of itself--I did the five circuits in less than a half hour--but I don't want to be someone who has to step aside to let anyone pass. I don't care what they do, their fitness level, their age.

I chatted for a few minutes with a ranger who is very friendly--she's the one who walked up to me outside after she read the op-ed about my stair running and introduced herself--and her colleague. Told them I was rusty and that I had given myself a deadline of a week for getting back to where I was but that I might have to expand it a bit. The woman said she figured I had other stairs as back-ups, which I confirmed was true, but they're not the same.

You just won't get out of City Hall stairs what you get out of Bunker Hill Monument stairs. Running City Hall stairs will keep you fit, keep the legs strong, give you the cardiovascular workout, and, presumably, help the heart--which is my main motivation in running stairs--but the difference is real. Then she said she'd see me tomorrow, as I guess I probably sounded pretty determined, but the rangers all know my deal by now anyhow.

The thing about stair running is that it isn't like I'm amazing at it or have any special skill for it. I think many people could be better at it and would naturally be better at it. It's that I do it. Consistently.

That's not what most people would do. The two people from the other day? I don't think they do what they do every day. And I know they won't be in that Monument every day. And should I see them in the future inside of that obelisk and do the passing myself, it'll be because I'm consistently out there. In there. You know what I mean. And I believe that's its own special skill.

These hours aren't convenient for me, now that the Monument opens at 1. I never start work later than four in the morning, and lately I've been starting most often around two. By the time I get to the Monument, I usually haven't eaten in at least twenty hours, and sometimes more. That's just what I do--I never eat before two in the afternoon. Why do I do this? Because I feel gluttonous and lazy otherwise. I want to think, create, work, not snack or eat.

I went back to Charlestown yesterday and did another five circuits. Again, something of a struggle. The first thing to resolve right now is to get the soreness out of my legs. Nothing hurts, per se, but my calves have are sore. Somewhat. You want to shake all of that soreness out so that your legs just feel like your legs no matter how many times you're going up and down, or after, or the next morning. That's your foundation. Or half of your foundation, the other half being your lungs. But it's harder to build up the latter before you get your legs to just always feel like your legs.

That takes however long it takes. I'll know when it happens. I have a scratch in my throat with an itch there since yesterday, too. I may be a little sick. The important thing right now is to just keep stacking these days. Once you make the leap from five circuits to ten, and can do ten consistently, you can go to twenty if want to be in there all of the time needed to hit that number, which I'd like to do again before too long.

I was joking with the friendly ranger afterwards about how many tons the Monument weighs and whether she knew, and she told me of some supposed audio evidence of the Monument's alleged ghost who has been known to fire his musket in the middle of the night. She asked me some questions about how many of the stairs I run and if I run them coming down. I said that I do, but there hasn't been a time in all of these years that I haven't kept my hand on the rail coming down because over millions of stairs you think you'd stumble at some point.

"There's a certain grim logic," I said. "I mean, if you came in from work one day and one of your colleagues said, 'Oh my God, you're not going to believe what happened, that stair guy fell and died,' it wouldn't be shocking. It may be the place I'm most likely to perish at the moment. So I try not to consummate the irony."

I told her she should come and do it with me sometime and we can have a low-key stair off, mentioning that no one ever wishes to go with me, but my nine-year-old niece still talks about when we did it together, and the ranger said that that's the key distinction and that she was thirty-three, so maybe after she got back into a gym routine, but I could tell she wasn't interested. I don't have friends, so every now and again--it's rare; I'm almost always by myself--I make an overture with someone, but that doesn't lead anywhere. Things are what they are right now. I understand most of the reasons why, and my plan right now here at three in the morning for today is to keep trying in the ways that I can.