The Wandering Hermit: Sleeping All Day At Home

Brian 16 July 2024 Leave a Comment

I nearly didn’t get my walk in today! That would have been upsetting.

It was nice to be home, but I was enjoying my visit with family so much that I didn’t want it to end. All good things, I suppose…

I did a nice evening walk. It was still a little too warm, but I needed to get the steps in. I had slept all day. I felt energetic the entire time I was in Canute—I woke up early, slept fantastically well, felt like I ate enough. Then I get home and slipped right into a coma. I guess I was just holding it together with hope and nostalgia! Or maybe it is the allergens in Central Oklahoma that when reintroduced made me feel like I always feel, fighting an uphill battle! Still, it is always nice to sleep in familiar surroundings, to have your own food in the fridge, to have all the sounds you expect in your home at night. All of that.

I’m looking forward to doing a lot more travel, but I don’t imagine I will ever tire of just coming home. It’s such a wonderful feeling.

[Walk #125]

The Wandering Hermit: Kameoka Trail by A Sliver of Moonlight

Brian 10 July 2024 Leave a Comment

So, I got out of Glencoe for a morning walk. I went to Stillwater and walked Kameoka Trail & Couch Park. Neither is lit, so actually it ended up being a bit too dark with all the tree cover. It was still nice, but my pace was slow as I needed to keep checking where the path was going. Boomer Park would probably be a better one to walk early in the morning, although I don’t remember it being lit either. I may just have to save the parks for afternoon/evening walks. Either way, it was so nice to be in town. I miss traffic and people jogging and trucks loading stuff. I just do. There is a quiet I love about living among trees, but I’m at a place in my life where I need the sounds of humans around me more.

[Walk #118]

The Wandering Hermit: Nobody Plays the Trombone Anymore

Brian 7 July 2024 Leave a Comment

I watched To Kill A Mockingbird this afternoon. I know it’s sort of an idealized version of a small community, but it made me long for things as they must only have seemed in my mind. I felt nostalgic, but in ways I’m not sure were real. I can remember talking to neighbors as a kid, riding my bike down to Rosewood Hills Shopping Center, going into stores to buy candy. The community size hasn’t changed, but it felt much more alive—teeming with people. I do assume it was my imagination or a combination of imagination and memory, but I was reminded of something that seemed nice at the time.

And I don’t think I am just making that up. We lived three streets from my grandparents’ and their house was as close from school, so sometimes I liked to walk there instead; afternoon TV felt different there in ways I cannot articulate. The best I can do is to say that it was as if the afternoon’s dust particles were still suspended in the beams of sunlight coming in through the windows and the house was both quiet like it was on days when you were home sick, and also loud like Christmas. I’d see several neighbors in the few street’s walk there. And next door, there’d be trombone music spilling out of a bedroom window, which we’d hear as we walked through the backyards of the fenceless neighborhood. Whoever was practicing never did seem to get very good at that instrument, but it didn’t matter. That music was just part of some of my days, and a part of the neighborhood. You don’t hear those things anymore, or at least I never do. Maybe I need to be a kid walking through other people’s yards, but I don’t see people outside of their homes as often. Even the parks feel a little lonely.

To Kill A Mockingbird shows as much of a negative to that as it does positives of course. The whole premise of the story is how a small town can be filled with small minds, but I still came away from it feeling like I had lost something.

I don’t know if that feeling persists everywhere. Even in my other grandma’s neighborhood, as a kid I would see everyone doing things outside. I’m going to be visiting there soon. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to get a sense of it, but I’m fully expecting to find that people are shut up in their homes, devices in hand. I think change is good, and I think having computers always in hand is a good thing, but it’s sad to have a sense of loss when I think about community. But maybe it’s just me.

[Walk #115]

The Wandering Hermit: Preparing for the Rest of Summer

Brian 29 June 2024 Leave a Comment

It’s entirely too warm; the next month is going to be rough if I base things on this morning. The watch told me it was 79ºF, which is already too warm for me, but the gravel was still radiating heat from yesterday and so it felt a little like standing in front of the dryer while pulling out clothes. It’s not exactly unbearable, but it’s a lot of heat coming from unusual angles.

Speaking of clothes, sorta… I’m in the midst of a plateau at the moment. They happen; in fact, they happen a lot. But I break through them eventually so I’m not stressed about it. I wanted to wait until I was down to 250 pounds before I got some new clothes, but it seems like I’m just inching my way down to that, so I broke down and got a few shirts, a couple pairs of shorts, and some leggings. That should do for the summer; I am still hoping to get some stuff that fits better later this year. Some people have been bothered by my threadbare shirts and ripped sweatpants. Those things don’t bother me, but I am honestly annoyed by the fit of my clothes. It is definitely past the point where I like how everything just hangs on me. That was a nice reminder of progress, but it can be annoying, especially pants that never want to stay up.

Yesterday, I went from being mildly under the weather to fully feeling sick and then better by the time I went to bed. I’m still feeling it, but my body seems to be handling the threat pretty well. I’ll probably spend the day hydrating and not doing a whole lot. I always have a lot to do, but I don’t want to push myself and then end up getting sick. That’s far less convenient than taking things a little easier for a couple of days.

[Walk #105]

The Wandering Hermit: Walk #100

Brian 25 June 2024 Leave a Comment

This was my 100th walk! It’s hard to believe I’ve done so many. I decided to start doing a daily walk 1 April 2024, but it was rainy and so I officially started on 3 April, doing half a mile on a good day. It wasn’t until 7 May that I finally started walking past the bridge that crosses over the creek and started walking up to the neighbor’s house and back. On 11 May, I walked to the next road down, a mile away. 19 May, I crossed Fairgrounds, the cross street I live on, walking down a bit and back to the neighbor’s house. Since 28 May, my habit has been always to walk to the next road from here, in any direction, and back. That makes the walks 2-3.3 miles, depending on the direction I go. This morning, I did 4.32 miles, walking East to Prairie Rd, North to Yost Rd, West to Fairgrounds Rd, & South to Burris Rd. That is a little unusual because I was doing it to celebrate 100 walks, but I felt great afterward and was not short of breath or overly exhausted. What I’m not trying to be cautious of is not continuing to increase the distance for no reason. 3 miles feels really good. 4 was a nice amount this morning, but I had started constantly checking my watch at about 3.5 to see when it would be over.

This is all probably painfully obvious to people who are already pretty active, but I started at not being able to walk out to the car without having to stop to catch my breath. Being able to do any of this seems remarkable to me. I’ve been thinking about my next steps. Like I said, after 3 miles I was ready for the walk to be over, but it wasn’t because I was overly tired. I was bored. So, it might behoove me to add an evening walk as well. That would definitely be easier on joining a gym. I like the idea of walking 5:15am-6:15am & 5:15pm-6:15pm. It is so hot this week, that I don’t think I’ll be able to test that out though. Maybe I’ll try running in place with a fan blowing directly on me!

I’m proud of myself. I didn’t know if I could do it, but I was determined to try and feel like I finally figured out something I wish I had learned 20 years ago. I could dwell in that regret, but that won’t actually alter the reality of my life. Instead, I’ll take that knowledge and make a future from it.

[Walk #100]

The Wandering Hermit: Careful! Don’t Bully Yourself

Brian 23 June 2024 Leave a Comment

I was talking to my brother after yesterday’s morning walk. I mentioned that I tried to take a photo on every walk, just as a part of my recent practice of having daily habits, but that as it was my 97th walk since I started I was out of things to take a photo of. This morning, I decided that was a silly thing to say. It was a silly thing to think in fact, so I found a huge number of things to take a picture of today and I didn’t go far out of my way. I did slow my pace, stopping frequently to get a good shot of a particular plant or the right angle of the road. And it was a nice relaxed morning. I’m positive that not every morning needs to be about my pace & speed, but I still tried to make up for that by going a little bit longer than usual.

During a recent video by Mike Pridgen (Mike Needs a Plan), he reminded his viewers to avoid self deprecating humor about themselves. I’ve been thinking about that; I don’t know if I 100% agree, but I think I’m much closer to that than I used to be. One of the traits I value most about myself is that I don’t take myself too seriously. I think there is a difference though between acknowledging the silly things I do, an laughing about them, and taking shots at myself that are unwarranted. It’s a nice reminder to not tear myself down. I’m definitely guilty of that. I find that the older I get, the more I appreciate things that are deemed corny in youth. I like being positive. I like being happy.

The temperatures are going to be intense all week. I haven’t lost my commitment to not having excuses for my daily walks, so it’ll be interesting to see how well I get on in the sweltering heat. I do normally walk early enough that it isn’t too warm yet, but it was 74ºF/23.5ºC this morning and while it didn’t feel as bad as yesterday, it was still warmer than I would have liked it to be. It wouldn’t be so bad if I stopped complaining about it!

[Walk #98]

The Wandering Hermit: Never “Give Up”

Brian 22 June 2024 Leave a Comment

I’m feeling motivated this morning! It’s a good place to be. I woke up a few minutes early and went ahead and did my walk. It almost feels absurd to be out before 5am, but I like the early morning hours.

This is a little preachy, but I was thinking about a concept that frustrate me, “Let go and let God.” What a convenient way to take no responsibility or accountability in one’s life. It’s interesting that people who tend to adhere so strongly to this idea from the Bible (Ephesians 3:20) aren’t so generous when it comes to the lives of others. They don’t just let God’s will be when it doesn’t align with their beliefs. So, it strikes me that they don’t actually trust in some sort of divine order of things, but that they don’t want to grow up and take responsibility for their lives. These are the cherry pickers who will find the contradictions and seize on them, hanging up decor with convenient quotes. But they forget Galatians 6:5 “For we are each responsible for our own conduct.” Or worse, 1 Timothy 5:8 “But those who won’t care for their relatives, especially those in their own household, have denied the true faith. Such people are worse than unbelievers.” This concept already lives in the English language in the term giving up. “To give up” was, and I would argue still is, “To give up to God.” And I’m not interested in entertaining moral justifications for giving up. This train of thought frustrated me in the first place. I don’t want to spend this much mental energy on people who annoy me, but these people spend a lot of their own physical energy trying to annoy people I care about. It’s hard to not get frustrated with them.

Today is our local Pride event. I’ve never been, which is ridiculous and I don’t really have time to go today. However, I’m making the time to go and at least check things out. I’m looking forward to it and hope that next year I just make the time and go with an open schedule!

I’ve been a little more relaxed on my walks for the past couple of days. I’m trying to not overdo anything. When I really push myself, I feel that all day and I don’t want to create any issues that will cause genuine problems. So, I backed off a little. Walking 7 days a week isn’t even completely necessary from my understanding, but as long as I’m choosing to do that I’m not going to try and beat myself daily. Steady progress is best, and that always happens within a range that just trends in the right direction.

I had started using Cronometer to track my food, but I’m far less likely to enter things in than I was to just write them down. I may need to go back to the notebook. I’ll give it another week and see. I like the nutrient breakdown from the app, but I tend to remember the handwritten tracking better.

[Walk #97]

The Wandering Hermit: 2×7 or 5x?—It All Depends

Brian 19 June 2024 Leave a Comment

I woke up at 4:50am, but I didn’t get up for my walk right away since it looked like it would be rainy and I thought I’d let it pass first. I should have just gotten up and done the thing. I prefer walking as early as possible and it never did much more than drip here and there, which was still happening when I gave up and decided to get started.

Brent (my older brother) finally got an Apple Watch, and of course on the first day he used it he got in a 5 mile walk. I’m not sure if he is being competitive. He knows I do 2 miles every morning, but if he is then he forgot that I am not competitive at all. My m.o. has always been to compete enough for you to feel like your win was justified, but I’m not interested in beating you at whatever it is. If my walks make Brent walk a little more than me to show me up, then I stay that is great. In that scenario, I am doing what I can to help.

I still haven’t figured out an afternoon workout, but I could just be doing more walking in the afternoon. It’s too warm for that at the moment unless I go ahead and join a gym. I don’t want to lose myself though; I fear a little that a gym environment would so take me out of the world as to make me start not knowing who I even am. Of course, nobody said I can’t still do my morning walks outside. And nobody said a gym is even required. When I belonged to one before, it was motivating because I didn’t want to waste the money each month, so I’d go just enough to make it feel like I wasn’t doing that—3 or 4 times a week. I think I feel the same now. It could also be a goal for getting down to 250 pounds—that’s only 17 pounds away. That would also give me some time to decide if I can really afford it.

[Walk #94]

The Wandering Hermit: The Scissortails Exist for Themselves

Brian 18 June 2024 Leave a Comment

The wind blew like an hyper child this morning. There were gusts that caught me by surprise almost enough to cause me to lose my footing. I love the wind, but something about the warm air moving that quickly unnerves me a little bit. I think it’s possibly just the knowledge of the extreme heat to come, or maybe there is something inherently mischievous about warm winds, a sentience I can perceive. I prefer a bit of cool air rushing at me.

During my walk I could hear the scissortails chirping in the field on the south side of the road, and my instinct was to say to myself Oh! the scissortails are serenading me on my walk. But then I remembered Alfred Russel Wallace in Papua New Guinea. He had seen the many species commonly known as birds of paradise and remarked:

“I thought of the long ages of the past, during which the successive generations of this little creature had run their course year by year of being born, and living and dying amid these dark and gloomy woods, with no intelligent eye to gaze upon their loveliness—to all appearance such a wanton waste of beauty. Such ideas excite a feeling of melancholy. It seems sad that on the one hand such exquisite creatures should live out their lives and exhibit their charms only in these wild inhospitable regions, doomed for ages yet to come to hopeless barbarism; while on the other hand, should civilized man ever reach these distant lands, and bring moral, intellectual, and physical light into the recesses of these virgin forests, we may be sure that he will so disturb the nicely-balanced relations of organic and inorganic nature as to cause the disappearance, and finally the extinction, of these very beings whose wonderful structure and beauty he alone is fitted to appreciate and enjoy. This consideration must surely tell us that all living things were not made for man. Many of them have no relation to him. The cycle of their existence has gone on independently of his, and is disturbed or broken by every advance in man’s intellectual development; and their happiness and enjoyment, their loves and hates, their struggles for existence, their vigorous life and early death, would seem to be immediately related to their own well-being and perpetuation of the numberless other organisms with which each is more or less intimately connected.” (from The Malay Archipelago, 1869)

I thought of that and how these Texas birds of paradise have no use of me, no urge to sing for me. In fact, on many mornings they might wish I would not disturb their courtships, and they would be correct. They are a decent enough example of a bird that is not necessarily harmed to a great degree by the presence of humans, but neither are they particularly helped. I’ve adopted the image of a scissortail as part of my own business because it is a part of the place where I live, a native part of the ecosystem—evolved to thrive here, and I have a lot of respect for that. So, it’s lovely to hear them chirp to one another at dawn, but I should know my place and stay in it.

My pace continues to improve. During the second mile of this morning’s walk, I was just under 20 minutes per mile, which is my quickest yet. I was stomping down the street for sure, but I never felt like I was overdoing it or racing. I just felt confident in my stride and walked as quickly as I was comfortable. I went to Brush Creek Rd & back, an the only issue with that route is how flat it is, the flattest of my paths. It’s hard to get my heart rate up consistently on the one, but I didn’t have that issue this morning. I thought I had; the strong winds kept my shirt dry, so I was surprised when I finished to see that my heart rate was about the same as yesterday’s when I was just drenched in sweat. That quick pace probably helped.

Protein shakes. What do I do with a protein shake. So, Justin doesn’t love vegetables as much as I do, so an easy way to address that has been to add protein shakes to his daily meal plans. He seems to enjoy them. But I’ve been trying to have them as well (because I won’t ask him to do anything in a meal plan that I won’t do) and I cannot seem to get them to taste quite right… or maybe this is what they always taste like and I just can’t handle it. I enjoy premade things like Soylent or similar products, but mixing protein powder just doesn’t do it for me. I want it to do more for me though, so I’m going to keep trying to find ways to make it work.

[Walk #93]

The Wandering Hermit: Warm Walks & Good Apps

Brian 14 June 2024 Leave a Comment

This morning was beautiful, but a little too warm for as early as it was when I set out. It was a warning to keep the A/C running and stay inside today. But it was an invigorating walk, and it ended with running into Justin who had decided on his own to go out and walk. He was doing the area between the mailbox and Fairgrounds Rd, back and forth. I’m not sure how long his walk was, but I was so proud to see him out there doing it without my prodding or involvement. Good job, Justin!

Why didn’t I do this sooner? I’ve been craving a system to do my journaling and to keep track of everything in a centralized way. For a long time, I used Notes to do everything. It’s still full of writing and links and notes to myself. But Notes has limitations and as I started adding things like a daily health log and a journaling habit, it became increasingly clear that I needed something that could handle that information a little better. I worry about using third party apps and blogging websites. They are often better, but they also have a habit of shutting down and leaving the users with no place to go. It’s annoying to have to rebuild a following. That’s why I started my own websites years ago, and I still think they are the best place for my thoughts, even when the readership is low. But they aren’t the solution for my daily needs. I’ve been using Day One for two weeks now, and so far it is nearly perfect for most of what I do. There are some significant things it cannot handle, but I also understand why it has those limitations. Primarily, formatting is extremely basic on Day One, lacking even the ability to center text. For 99.9% of applications, I imagine that is fine. For me, a writer who likes to play around with justifications and spaces, it is a hinderance. But I still have my trusty TextEdit to use, and pairing the two is fine for now. I don’t love that the work I already have will have to be formatted incorrectly or not added to the compiled journal, but it is what it is. No app is perfect; this one is just better than the others I’ve tried.

[Walk #89]

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