Yesterday morning while running in the Presidio I approached the cutest group of preschoolers headed to the playground. I slowed a little because they were excited to see my dog Jackson, and a little boy looked up at me and asked curiously, “Who are you?” Without much contemplating or allowing myself to sink into existential crisis I quickly replied, “I’m a runner.”

For the past 34 years I’ve run almost every single day. I fell in love with running on the soft dirt of Millbrook’s School Road when I was in boarding school. I ran the New York City Marathon in 4:19 minutes, and finished each of the handful of half marathons I’ve run in under 2:00 hours. I am not terribly fast, but I am steady and strong. Mostly I run coastal trails and up mountains with my dog or a friend. Some of my most meaningful relationships evolved through running and it’s the primary reason I love travel. I’d never go anywhere without my running shoes. I can’t even imagine doing that. I’ve run through the smoggy streets of Chengdu, China, atop the walled old city of Dubrovnik, around Central Park’s reservoir countless times, past Moscow’s Red Square, along the country roads of Quebec and on the beaches of Hawaii. I don’t think of myself as a serious runner, I’m more of a recreational runner but the fact remains: I am a runner, because I run.

The same is true for how I see myself as a writer. I am not an author and I've never submitted work to be published, but I have spent a good deal of time writing in both my personal and professional life. I regularly write journal entries, lists (lots of lists), reports, observation notes, personal letters, emails, lesson plans, poems, essays and a blog. And after a hiatus, I am writing daily again, which I suppose makes me a writer. I write to discover, express, process and reflect. And perhaps, if I am lucky, to inspire, connect, remind or entertain.

Lately I’ve been thinking about decisions, as I’ve had to make some big ones. Earlier this year I made the decision to sell my stake in my business, meta44. Not an easy decision to let go of something I had invested deeply in and cared so much about. But the letting go gave room to recommit to something else I equally love to do. By definition a difficult decision means the alternatives or outcomes of that decision are on par or in equal measure. One alternative isn’t better than the other, which makes deciding what to do difficult. But, according to the philosopher Ruth Chang, who studies decision making, what is important isn’t so much the decision making itself (as the outcomes are equal), but rather our capacity to commit to that decision. By committing, she says, you make reasons for yourself to live in a certain way– it is in the space of hard choices that helps us to understand who we are – they are opportunities to discover ourselves. In decision making the agony exists not in the choosing of two things where the outcome will be unknown, it’s in the reluctance to commit to that choice.

My recent decision to take a writing class and re-engage with my blog creates my identity as a writer, just as my daily decision to go for a run, even when I think I’d rather stay in bed, makes me a runner. Our decisions enable us to create reasons to live a certain kind of life and if you view them as such, they become gifts. I am a runner, so I choose to go on a run. I am a writer, so I choose to write.

It is the act of making and then committing to our decisions, that allows us to figure out who we are and become the author of, if nothing else, our own lives.