I rendered my walk goal as a cube root, expressed in miles. Think of it as a GED test for an exceptionally warm winter Tuesday afternoon. (I did the base number wrong on purpose, just to make the math not be even.) 70° in January? Mother nature must have had a glass of wine.
During this beautiful and energetic walk, I was imagining the most brilliant mathematics teacher. The hair would be in a mess, socks unmatched, and their communication ability equivalent to a horse tapping out Morse code. They probably know everything in the world about math. People looking at them and listening to them would be so distracted by their presentation that they would erroneously conclude that they couldn’t possibly be intelligent.
Which leads me to point out that people can have a surprisingly vast knowledge about something. But those around them don’t appreciate it. Or can’t see past whatever visual or auditory filter that’s blocking them.
It’s too bad y’all weren’t walking with me this afternoon. One of you could have carried the six pieces of chalk I exhausted on the various surfaces around me. We could have shared the music too. It was divine.
Even now I have to double check that it’s not spring.
I climbed a pretty good-sized tree too. But the thicket that scratched and pulled at me that I traversed was much more interesting.
Pretty damn good day.
More than I have a right to ask for, but one for which I’m grateful.
Oof! To burn this bright all the time would be my demise. I awoke at 2:30 this morning, already feeling that sensation of otherworldly lightness. And so I navigated my day at work, my feet boundless. Even after work, both my mind and my feet were creative and I did a few projects as if I were two people, one focused on the task at hand and the other in my head, writing. But the sunlight streamed through my large front windows and the prisms danced and cast rainbows all over me and across the new rainbow light I made today.
So I decided to get 5 miles over my normal amount for the day. I grabbed my keys and headed out, even though I still had on my work shoes from 12 hours earlier. Lord, what a good decision it was. The breeze, sublime, the sun just warm enough, several dogs to stop and pet, and some good music. Though I am unlike most of my contemporaries and enjoy a lot of current music, I opted for ’80s rock. And the very first song was “Sweet Child Of Mine.” I had no choice but to sing part of it, my ears encased in prehistoric headphones. Had someone stopped and said, “You sound terrible,” I would have said, “…at least I don’t LOOK like Axl Rose these days.”
It made me think of my cousin Jimmy. He loved Metallica and copied most of the hairstyles of the band as it transitioned. He would have shaken his head at me and asked me to please stop the screeching. I of course would have ignored him. At which point he would have joined in, his voice equally absent any trace of singing ability.
There’s no doubt I don’t sing well. There’s equal certainty I enjoy a good day. I tend to have a lot of energy. Even when I’m sitting still. It’s why I annoy people and say I don’t get bored. I have to really work at it to feel the sensation.
But I walked and walked and watched the brilliant sunlight grow longer and cast increasingly somber shadows.
I can’t say that tomorrow I will burn as bright. I am fond of saying though, that I can own the moment and memory no matter what.
Maybe there’s a word to describe a simultaneous lightness of being rendered as a chameleon of nostalgia.
I can’t walk forever. And even so the number of days ahead of me is certainly much fewer than those ahead. If this were to be the last photo of me,.. even though I took it myself, it’s fitting. Please don’t “at” me for triggering any possible morbid connotation. Having lived it, no one can tell me that it’s impossible that it might be so.
Earlier, the urge to walk in this beautiful weather overwhelmed me. Erika wasn’t as enthusiastic about the idea, but I sold her with the insistence that once we started walking, it would be both beautiful and enjoyable. My 5-minute Rule seldom lets me down in terms of procrastination and enjoyment. We went to the Carol Scypc Trailhead in Johnson. It’s proximate and like the rest of the trail, it’s gorgeous. For fans of dapper Don Moore, that’s where you’ll likely see him walking his dog Diego.
A couple of weeks ago as I entered the apartment, my cat Gùino overzealously ran in front of me to get to the anticipated plate of cat juice that he knew would be waiting for him. I had to let go of everything in my hands because of the certainty I was going to faceplant. My favorite coffee cup lost the battle with the ensuing collision with the floor. Pieces flew in every direction. On a whim I collected and kept the pieces. When the motivation struck me, I glued it inexpertly back together.
With that in mind, on today’s walk, I took the repaired cup and a piece of wire with me on the walk. The cup is one I made myself, inscribed with the reminder of, “Choose Your Hard.” I owe that one to my cousin Lynette. Her picture is also on the cup. The choose-your-hard motto simply put is a reminder that you’re going to have to put the work in one way or another, either at the front end when it’s easier, or after, when you face the consequences of poor decisions.
When Erika and I were most of the way back, we stopped at the last bridge junction so that I could hang the cup in a tree near the bubbling creek. I think she sometimes grows weary of me telling her how striking she is when the sun hits her face and shoulders. For those of you familiar with the trail, it’s near the spot where two ancient pickup trucks sit at the perimeter of the trail. It’s also where I placed a keepsake watch of mine a few months ago. I hated to let the cup go and sometimes that’s when I feel most satisfied when I part with something. Everything is going to go one way or another. It’s good practice. And I hope that people will look at it quizzically and with enough curiosity to occasionally walk over to it to investigate. I’ve placed dozens of things along the trails and the places around here in Fayetteville. Some obscured, some in plain sight.
A cup, a reminder, and a beautiful January Saturday afternoon.
Was it worth it to venture out and have the experience? Hell yes. Such a simple thing.
The headline is I have covid. None of my symptoms have been unmanageable. I, of course, have had every available shot. Not counting the tranquilizer darts at work, the ones they hit me with when I’m overactive. I would like to say I’ve been taking it easy. But that’s not the case. One of my memories on social media this morning is of me standing in the mirror, taking a picture of my huge scar a year ago. One of my principal complaints, other than being alive still, was that I couldn’t take long walks because of the surgery. Unfortunately, my scar has faded. I don’t ever imagine that I’ll forget the anxiety of waiting for my bowels to start working again. It’s one of those things that’s hard to explain to someone who’s never experienced it.
I woke up this morning around 1:00 and decided that today would be the day for an ultra-long walk. It’s been glorious. With no plan in mind, I set out walking, having decided I would walk until I couldn’t anymore. Even if that required an Uber to get back. It’s been a while since I’ve done that. The days are blazing hot, but the mornings are always filled with a light breeze and the dead quiet of early morning Fayetteville. This city is an entirely different place once all the bustle dies down.
Yesterday morning during a decently long walk, two young people came into my sphere. Against my better judgment, I intervened right on the street on Sycamore. A domestic dispute and a baby were involved. I bluffed the young man involved. He seemed to listen to me. But I thought about them on and off the rest of the day. Lord, to be that young again when everything seems to be a life-or-death situation!
After a few miles, I crested the interstate. I stopped only for a minute to watch the scattered vehicles pass under me. It’s a little bit zen to do that at 3:00 in the morning. That was a handful of miles back, and it already seems like yesterday.
I walked along the road that leads to Mount Comfort, remembering the scarcity of that stretch just a few short years ago. At the outset of the walk, I listened to music, but after a couple of dozen songs, I pulled off my headphones and let the night sounds be my melody.
Recently I got the great news that perhaps my dead cousin Jimmy might have a daughter he never knew about. The possibility makes me happy. Both for the daughter in question and the memory of Jimmy. He would have been over the moon to find out he had a daughter. I can’t help but overlap the memories in my mind, remembering the feeling of finding out I had a sister I never knew about for 45 years. It’s just biology, of course. Family is mostly who we choose. I would love to have all the people who died sit with me in a room with food, coffee, and probably a few shots of whiskey. I shared my massive family tree with the potential daughter. I try to imagine what it would be like to go online and see a full history of a family you never knew you had. Just like I try to imagine my cousin Jimmy laughing in that special way he did when something tickled the crap out of him.
I can almost hear it here in the darkness.
The long straight stretch of Deane Street was deceptive. After crossing under the interstate and traversing the 90° turn, I could see the lights far ahead of me at Garland, and they seemed to be closer than they were. It’s a beautiful stretch of road in the darkness. The small lazy crescent moon, the aura of city lights along the cusps of the horizon, and the ear-shattering chirp of September insects. It’s somewhere around 1.5 miles along that straight stretch. That surprised me. Distance, like memory, is deceptive.
I think I will remember this morning for years to come. I hope it won’t be my last ultra-long walk. But I don’t take my stamina for granted anymore. All of us stand as witnesses to people being surprised by the mechanics of their bodies failing.
Regardless, I will have the memory. And that’s what life is mostly about, stripped away of the exciting intervals.
My cat Güino was unimpressed by my long walk. He demanded cat juice upon my return and then seemed to judge me for being absent for several hours.
This is a piece of motivation. Nadine, if you’re reading this, imagine that I’m an expert and not the goofball you know.
Stress will never disappear from your life. Neither will the obstacles that frequently jump up and surprise you. You’ll always be tired at times and not want to prepare delicious food that feeds your body. You’ll always be tempted to stop at some place quick and delicious on the way home. Given the certainty of those variables, you’ll have to come up with incremental changes. They won’t feel natural at the beginning. Nothing does. Continuity and comfort work for us. But they also work against us when we’re motivated to do something different.
If you want to eat less or eat more healthy so that you’ll look better, embrace it. Anyone who tries to discount the vanity and self-esteem aspect of looking better is fighting human nature. If you think you look better, you will almost always feel better. It will translate to energy and optimism. If you want to eat differently just to be more healthy, that can be amazing too. We all know that the food we eat is the fuel that helps our body protect itself. It’s equally important to know that you can do everything perfectly and still have illnesses and unexpected calamity. As we get older, all of us are forced to confront that.
Everyone who tries something new eventually hits the wall of the reluctance curve. You won’t see as much progress as you would like. Or you will have days where you fail. It will feel like those days of failure far outweigh any progress you’ve made. It’s not true. You have to exercise that muscle of habit. If you do things incrementally, over time, even with days of failure, you’re improving yourself and your habits. There will be days when you will drink an entire bottle of wine and probably eat half a cheesecake too. But over time, you will see that there are simple ways to eat a whole lot of food and be happy with them. It does require you think and plan ahead so that you’re not creating obstacles. Chances are if you’re smart enough and motivated enough to make such a change, you will be able to do it. It will be easy to point the finger at the people around you, because Lord knows they’re going to be eating entire pepperoni pizzas and ice cream while you are choosing better options. At the same time, there are times when you should go crazy and a pizza with them. Because life is short and food is delicious.
Try not to start habits that you cannot do for the rest of your life. Because once you start them and have some success, if those habits fall to the wayside, you’ll start eating unhealthy and put the weight back on. Diet and nutrition is pure mathematics. You have to eat fewer calories than you burn long term. It’s not so much about the individual days as it is the arc of your progress. It’s one of the reasons I advise people to not weigh themselves more than once a week or once a month.
For most of us, if you don’t have underlying medical conditions, no matter how bitter the truth is, most of us can hit an ideal weight simply by changing what we eat. Our bodies have developed over thousands of years to survive. Exercise has its own benefits, ones that overlap into other areas of your life. But you do not have to do any exercise changes to achieve your goal weight. You have to swallow the truth that your weight is nothing more than putting more calories in your body then you are burning. No matter how many calories you burn through exercise, the physical truth is that the overwhelming majority of your weight is diet and daily activity. I can’t stress enough that I am not saying don’t exercise or go to the gym if that benefits you. I am saying that we only have a certain number of hours in a day. If you can achieve your goal without using those precious hours in ways you don’t enjoy, then try to wrap your head around the fact that you can do it without activity that doesn’t bring you joy.
If you don’t have any medical conditions, you can be the way you want to be.
Read the last sentence as many times as it takes to believe it.
Will it be hard for you to eat differently? That depends on how you use your intelligence to learn new ways of eating and stick with them.
Choose your hard.
When we don’t choose, we are pushing the consequences to our future. We still have to deal with them.
You can do it. But everything hinges on you making the decision to invest in yourself.
If you’re happy with the way you look and especially so if you’re mostly healthy, embrace it. Don’t try to lose what you see as extra pounds. You can be happy with that if you have a happy outlook. If it is about your appearance, find someone who loves you. That kind of adoration is transformative for your self-esteem. It becomes easier to see yourself as they do, even if you are plagued by self-doubt.
Whatever your goal is, do not attempt to go from 0 to 60. Incremental changes are best. You can experiment as you go and find the things that work for you and skip the ones you don’t. That is what we’re supposed to do in life. We often skip the second half and forget to remove the things from our life that detracts from it.
Don’t bother with spending money on supplements or anything you have to pay for. It can all be done with delicious food that you like. In this modern age, we have more variety than we ever have. Take advantage of it and use your intelligence.
People ask me what the secret is. The secret is… There is no secret. Simplicity in your life and simplicity in your diet. Eat fewer calories than you burn and live a good life.
It doesn’t matter how old you are or where you’re starting. No one changes until they do. No matter how you got to where you are or the way you are, it took a lot of years of habits to get there. If we thought things could not be changed, it would be a horrible cynical world.
“Are you willing to sprint when you don’t know the distance?”
My manager had me watch a short sports clip. The rest of the clip was good but that pithy last quote resonated. I liked it even though it was sports oriented.
Sprinting is running but not all running is sprinting. It is a commitment to go as fast as you can physically, as much as it is to focus your mind or go blank mentally and let your body do what it needs to.
There’s a lesson in there somewhere. It makes me think in multiple directions.
Just sharing it in case it causes someone else the same introspection.
I’m out walking and exploring a foreign neighborhood. It started from an unplanned walk, one I would never experience inside my little world of the apartment. I’m certainly not killing time. Time can’t be killed, only experienced or passively ignored. It’s racing past. No matter how much you think you know about how fleeting life is, there is an undeniable recognition of it when you get older. Your spirit wants a bite of all of it, but the creature comforts in our residences and the magnetic pull of routine keep us in place.
I was able to pet a friendly duck, one who waddled up to me unexpectedly in a place I would not have expected to see it. I stopped and exchanged pleasantries with an older man in a wheelchair, his faithful little dog and companion begging me for attention. I of course kneeled down and hugged and petted him. The older man laughed in delight. I saw rabbits and birds galore. At one place in a small meadow, the proper word for which is glen, the multitude of birds chirping and singing drowned out the traffic.
When I started, I was surrounded by commerce and restaurants and diners outside drinking and talking loudly. The same occurred upon my return. They too are enjoying the world outside of their homes. It’s nice to see that covid didn’t eradicate our social nature. People are supposed to be surrounded by people. So much of the toxicity in our own heads is the result of our not practicing this truth.
I hope each of you had a lemon moment this afternoon.
Whether you did or not, I am reminded why it’s not wise to take a really long walk wearing flip-flop sandals. I would do it again though.
Fitbit challenge notes…Not the most interesting post in the world, but an annoyance with Fitbit watch challenges…
I’m 55 and once weighed 100 lb more. I compete in challenges with people who are 30-plus years younger than me.
The Get Fit Bingo challenges aren’t fair. My goal numbers are always two to three times higher than the other participants. They shouldn’t use the word “bingo.” In that game, everyone draws from the same numbers. The game does not know who to participants are, nor does it make some cards harder than others.
I finally got confirmation through screenshots that my numbers were two to four times higher than everyone else’s. That’s okay, except they assign a winner. If I walk 150,000 steps, do 400 zone minutes and 500 flights of stairs, and the alleged winner does 1/3 of that, are they really the winner?
I compare it to playing genius-level trivial pursuit while the other participants are playing “who is smarter than a 5th grader.” If they are going to declare a winner, we should be competing on a level playing field.
What’s interesting are the arguments some people use to justify the disparity. They use my level of activity as a reason, saying some people are overweight or don’t walk as much. That’s exactly the point, isn’t it? I don’t get a handicap for being the oldest of all the competitors- and that’s usually the first reason given for such things. That is why we have age categories for so many sports. The varying groups don’t compete with each other.
With Get Fit Bingo, we are allegedly competing against one another for the trophy.
Other justifications given are that I am taking the word “Bingo” too literally. Fit Bit can use another word if they’d like. The rules of Bingo use a clearly set group of numbers. The arrangement might be random, but the numbers themselves are constant. Some people don’t get cards with fewer numbers on them. Everyone is playing the same numbers.
Each participant can choose his or her level of activity. If we are all running a race, each of us runs the same mile. And with other sports, each of us is treated as an equal participant.
That’s why I won’t do Get Fit Bingo challenges anymore.
People were already reluctant to compete with me due to my zeal and dedication in trying to make them earn their wins.
We’re all supposed to be running the same race.
I attached a screenshot. In that example, I am required to walk 97,600 steps and walk 43.3 miles. The other participant? He or she is only required to walk 49,000 steps and complete 18.4 miles.
Whoever finishes first “wins.” How is that a win? We’re not competing evenly.
P.S. Parenthetically Speaking 