Tag: walk

The Wandering Hermit: One Step Sideways

   26 June 2024  Leave a Comment on The Wandering Hermit: One Step Sideways

It’s already been a bit of a chaotic day.  Maybe that means the rest will be better.  Although, that isn’t to say my day has necessarily been bad.  It’s just been frustrating so far.  We had some heavy rains last night, so this morning everything was just soaking wet.  I could have walked, but it was so muddy that I decided to let things dry a bit.  So, I didn’t walk until 10am, and only did 1 mile then.  It was already getting hot out there.  I did do a few minutes of running on the porch, but that wasn’t really going anywhere (pun not intended), so I did my old route in front of the house to the neighbor’s driveway three times.  It was a good walk, but it has made me feel off a bit.  It was at the wrong time, it was the wrong place.  It didn’t feel like a step backward; it felt like a step to the side.  I felt like I was in a place I shouldn’t be all of the sudden.  I wanted my routine back!  I’ll have to do a walk this afternoon to make up for the missing mile, and maybe it is good that I had a difficult morning.  I was wanting to test out a split walking schedule.  Of course, I was still wanting my morning walk to be the enjoyable experience I expect it to be, but apparently we can’t have everything we want in life.

My VO2 Max number is still teasing me and just hovering below where I want it to be.  It has improved a lot this year, so I am trying to remain patient about that.  Continuing to do what I’m doing is improving everything.  My issues didn’t occur overnight; I shouldn’t expect to clear things up overnight either.  It takes time to undo a lifetime of stupid decisions.

[Walk #101]

The Wandering Hermit: Walk #100

   25 June 2024  Leave a Comment on The Wandering Hermit: Walk #100

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: People of the Dawn, People of the Dusk

   24 June 2024  Leave a Comment on The Wandering Hermit: People of the Dawn, People of the Dusk

I woke up feeling just fantastic!  I like waking up with so much mental energy, but of course it tends to fade in a couple of hours and I sort of have to regain it later in the morning.  Still, it starts strong.

Last night, I thought I might wake up and drive somewhere to do my walk.  I keep wanting to do that, but I basically burst awake ready to get going and it seems a waste to not take advantage of that energy.  I’ll definitely have to give that a try soon.

I keep thinking about how some people are active early in the morning and others are active late into the night.  Every time I talk to one of my brothers, they’ve been up too late or have a list of things planned to do late into the night.  Dad was always up until 2 or 3am, waking up for his day around noon.  Grandma Fuchs was the same.  But then Mimi, Mom’s mom, would be sitting in the family room each morning before dawn—lights still off, just sipping her Folgers coffee and enjoying the quiet of her own company.  Mom was also an early riser and I guess I’ve just carried on that tradition.  Whether there is an innate difference between people or if we are just adaptable, I’m not sure.  All I do know is that I’ll take the dawn.  It makes me happy.

I’m wondering if I should be looking forward to simplicity after moving or if that is foolish.  Maybe I should be expecting more chaos; at least then it would be more difficult to be disappointed in the outcome.  I find it challenging to not be optimistic, something I’ve seen as a shortcoming.  Optimism isn’t cool.  It’s sometimes a hinderance.  But I would rather look forward to something good and believe it will happen than be down about everything all the time.  Bad stuff is going to happen whether I worry about it or not; it feels silly to go through anything once in my mind before it happens again in reality.  

[Walk #99]

The Wandering Hermit: Breathe It Out

   21 June 2024  Leave a Comment on The Wandering Hermit: Breathe It Out

This morning’s walk felt like walking through someone’s hot breath.  The value of joining a gym feels increasingly apparent.  I sometimes find myself defensive of Oklahoma because of the long Spring & Fall, but I do forget about late June & all of July.  It always comes as a surprise.

I was listening again to The Book of Pride this morning, a collection of stories written from interviews with LGBTQ folks who made their contributions in the past 50 years during the LGBTQ Rights Era.  It’s fascinating to hear their stories, but it had me once again thinking about something I periodically want to sit down and hash out—who are my own life’s “thought leaders” or influences?  What books or poems would be a part of the canon of a book on how to be more like Brian?  I think about doing that often, and wish I would have done it annually.  I would love to know who I thought I was by way of lists in 2002.  What did that guy know about anything?  And isn’t it interesting that my list today would have so many influential health people on it, but only a year ago I wouldn’t have known who they were.  We are all always changing and evolving.  

Meal planning has been going frustratingly poorly.  Justin asked me to help, but it seems like what he wants from me is to tell him that eating junk food will help him lose weight, and there are no restrictions on amounts.  I do honestly believe that it doesn’t matter what a person eats as long as they are mindful of a few key things. 

  1. Calories—It’s been a meme for decades.  I always think about Rhoda Morgenstern on The Mary Tyler Moore Show.  On the show, she was frequently dieting and that dieting consisted of eating fewer calories an moving more.  That advice was true then and it is true now.  That doesn’t mean it’s easy, but it is simple.  Being in a calorie deficit is how all diets work.  Doing it in a way you enjoy is how to make those “diets” into healthy lifestyles.
  1. Fiber—I’ll have to look up some of the research I’ve seen on fiber to bolster my claims here (this is just my thoughts, so I’m not trying to make claims), but fiber has been correlated with positive health outcomes over and over.  And while doctors already champion fiber as important for health, I will not be surprised at all in the future when we find further evidence of fiber’s health benefits.
  1. Water—You need more water.  The fiber needs it to work its way through your body and your body needs water in order to breath most effectively.  We lose a lot of water during breathing, so drinking more water is important for that alone.  Breathing is how 80% of fat is lost, so it’s extremely important.
  1. Enjoy—There is a huge spectrum between mindless binging on junk foods and dragging yourself through the house to eat your bland and flavorless greens.   You never have to give something up unless that thing and you have a toxic relationship.  I love peanut butter, and I don’t understand why every size container feels like a one day supply.  Peanut butter causes my brain to stop sending the signals that I need to stop already.  I’m usually tossing the jar in the trash when I realize I’ve just eaten several day’s worth of calories.  So, I did have to give that up.  For the same reason, I don’t buy my favorite snack: Takis.  Since I started my weight loss, I’ve had them three times.  They are now a celebratory food for me.  And I’m fine with that because my relationship with them was unhealthy.  But I haven’t given up other junk foods.  I still like to get meat alternatives, tortillas, Taco Bell, Burger King…. the difference is that I have control with the things I do eat, and I write everything down.

That ended up getting longer than I expected.  I guess I had some opinions!  I’ve lost 155 pounds, so I guess I’m starting to become one of those people who knows everything.  I should write up a guide to how I did it; I don’t know if anyone would find that helpful or not. 

[Walk #96]

The Wandering Hermit: The Scissortails Exist for Themselves

   18 June 2024  Leave a Comment on The Wandering Hermit: The Scissortails Exist for Themselves

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: Cardio Thoughts

   17 June 2024  Leave a Comment on The Wandering Hermit: Cardio Thoughts

I woke up with a lot of gusto.  My lethargy yesterday had been the result of allergies after stirring up a lot of dust on Saturday, so I was glad that my body had calmed down about that and I would be able to get on with it today.  Fortunately, there isn’t really all that much dust stirring to do; we did that job already.  Most of the rest consists of things that have sat in closets or cabinets, and it will all be relatively dust-free.

My gusto created a wind at my back and while still on the slow side, my pace was very good for me.  I was watching a video over the weekend by John Glaude (ObesetoBeast) in which he was reacting to a video by Anna O’Brien (Glitterandlazers) on her quest to run a marathon.  In her video she was disappointed to find that while she had been training, she was technically walking or power walking, but only is short bursts even breaking into a jog.  She was not running at any point.  John made an excellent point, and one that I needed to hear at the moment.  It is not necessary to run.  It is just fine to walk.  I’m paraphrasing.  What I appreciate about this, and what he briefly explains, is that running is not a superior form of walking.  They are two different types of exercise.  I did actually know this, but I have found myself recently falling into a trap of thinking that if I were better at this, it would be a run.  And that thinking isn’t helpful.

I am interested in learning to run, but not as a replacement for my walks.  I’ve grown fond of my walks and in fact I look forward to them so much that I want to extend them.  I’ve already started to make plans for how life might look in a future where I can walk maybe to a park or in a park, and stop midway to do my journaling.  I love that idea.  Where I currently live, there aren’t places to stop.  It’s for the same reason that my walks tend to be limited to 2-3 miles; that’s the distance from the corner where I live to the next street and back.  I’m not quite to the point where I don’t need a bit of a rest after that distance, but as I am back home by that point I just get on with my day.  If there was a spot to sit just at Yost Rd, I might try going another mile, doubling my total for the day.  In town, that will be more of an option, and one I wouldn’t mind taking.

Prompted by my brother’s concern, I’ve been a little concerned about my heart rate at night.  I don’t know if I would have thought about it much if he hadn’t been talking about it.  I routinely drop to about 38 or 39 BPM, usually just as I’m starting to wake up.  Whether it is a function of my body waking up or I am waking up in response, I cannot say.  But heart rate is something I’ve been working on in general.  I don’t have the luxury of being able to see a doctor at the moment, so I have to treat myself as carefully as I can.  One thing I’ve been trying, and which seems to be working okay, is to do a bit of cardio just before going to bed.  I don’t think it needs to be as strenuous as my morning walks, but a few minutes of jogging in place or a few minutes on the exercise bike.  I just want to get my heart rate up to about 120 BPM for a little while.  I do pretty well with my recovery rate, so it returns to normal pretty well, but on the nights where I have done that—so far—I have not dipped below the 40s.  Of course, that could all be a coincidence and maybe I’m grasping at straws.  But I’ll keep experimenting.  In those final moments before bed, I’m almost always watching YouTube, and I can easily just get up and do some exercise while I watch my video.  

The other metric I’ve been really interested in increasing is VO2 Max, which steadily increased from 27 April to 11 June, but seems to have stalled out.  This morning it had decreased which was pretty frustrating, but I have a lot of allergy issues and I’m sure that is part of the problem.  I’ve become complacent with my allergies, rarely feeling the need to take anything at all because it has felt so much better without the 150 pounds I recently lost.  But it is possible I’m not allowing myself the full potential of my lungs by denying myself the relief of allergy medications.  I do hate being dependent on a medication, but sometimes things just are what they are.

[Walk #92]

The Wandering Hermit: Lightning Bugs & Guilt

   16 June 2024  Leave a Comment on The Wandering Hermit: Lightning Bugs & Guilt

I have a lot of guilt related to Dad.  When I first came to Oklahoma from Alaska, I was in decent enough shape.  I had spent a few years in a retail job where I sat down most of the day, but I still needed to be able to be active.  The first few years, I was able to do a lot of things, from planting a garden that failed to mowing the lawn every week to grocery shopping.  But my health was negatively affected by a cut I got that became infected and I let it be the excuse that let me stop being active and gain a lot of weight.  And when I was just starting to recover from the worst of it, Mom passed and that sent me into a long depression.  And it was doing the same for Dad, only 300 ft away in his own house, but he might as well have been halfway around the world.  It’s true: everyone grieves alone.  When Dad’s health started to decline, and he was diagnosed with cancer, I was a very sick person.  I had no business helping to take care of someone else when I could barely take care of myself.  Dad wanted me around more, but it was hard to walk and hard to get down the steps.  It took a lot out of me to go up to his house that I limited those trips, which understandably bothered him.  I had not yet identified myself as the problem.  My nephew had, and I know he had a lot of issues regarding me.  I can’t blame him; he was correct.  I just wasn’t ready to hear him.  I could have made the changes I needed to make to help out more—help out better.  Would that have meant Dad would still be here?  Probably not.  He died of issues stemming from his cancer, and I doubt I could have lost enough weight to make his cancer go away.  But I could have been there more, and I do feel a lot of guilt about that.

I wanted so much to get my walk in this morning before 6:00am.  It was an arbitrary goal, but I did make it.  And that was including my ridiculous distraction trying to get a good video of lightning bugs.  I’m convinced they know when they are being recorded; they would all be lighting up in chorus, but as soon as I touched the red button there was darkness, except for one slowly blinking—a crumb for me.  That took me out of my walk enthusiasm initially, but I had only just started, so I was able to pick it back up an finished at 5:59am.

My legs are noticeably smaller than they used to be, but plagued by issues.  I think they have a tendency to respond negatively to hormonal changes.  Some days, they’ll be just covered in rashes or in pimples or they’ll be dried out.  I never know what kind of day it’ll be with my legs, and I’m really interested in not thinking about them all the time.  I don’t know if that will ever be my reality, but I would love that.

I’ve been making my housemate Justin’s meal plans, and it’s going fairly well.  He’s not 100% in it, as he still will add this or that to the day, which is honestly fine, but he’s definitely the type to give himself permission for a big thing since he was allowed a small thing.  It’s a different thing doing his meal planning because he thinks of himself as being on a diet which will eventually end.  I’m trying my hardest to make it so sustainable for him that he won’t want to stop, but he does love fast food french fries and if I don’t work them into a meal plan he will just end up eating them anyway.  For next week, I will try to incorporate that.  What I am trying to stress to him is that he can eat whatever he wants, but he needs to track that.  If he wants to mindlessly eat, he needs to eat a different way.  It’s perfectly fine to do that as well, but fast food is not on that plan.

Dad didn’t understand nutrition, and probably intentionally.  I never saw him as old, but he seemed to start thinking of himself that way.  He was never good at eating healthy foods honestly, but in the last few years he seemed to think it no longer mattered what he ate.  He was happy to just eat all the junk food and did.  But that also isn’t exactly true.  While Dad’s actions indicated a sort of indifference to his own life, as well as his frequent statement “I’m ready to go see your mama,” during his first meeting with the oncologist at the VA, things we very different.  It was August 2022, and he had just received the cancer diagnosis.  When we went into the meeting, I fully expected him to not want to fight, but he told the doctor he wanted to live and wanted to do whatever necessary to treat it.  Lifestyle changes are hard, and I was hard on him during those last few months.  But I also wanted him to live.  In the end, he couldn’t outrun cancer like he had hoped.  In the end, it didn’t matter if he had gorged himself on étouffée and apple pies.  But I can’t help but wonder how things might have been different if I had lost this weight ten years ago.  Would my parents have tried out my way of eating?  Would they have been healthier as a result, or was it just too late to turn back the clock?  There are so many things we can never know.

[Walk #91]

The Wandering Hermit: The Day After a Lumpy Friday

   15 June 2024  Leave a Comment on The Wandering Hermit: The Day After a Lumpy Friday

Yesterday started out strong, but I ended up not feeling my best most of the day.  I had chosen to not have any caffeine, and I think it just caused me to be a lump.  I barely did much at all after my morning walk.  I do need to remember that it is okay to have days that are intentionally not productive.  It helps everything settle.  I have plenty of days when nothing seems to get done, but those are typically days when I’m using the mental energy to try and stay busy, but this or that thing keeps getting in my way.

It was another warm morning—foreboding.  I was hoping to move some stuff today, but I’m worried about the heat.   I can’t stay too worried about the heat; we have to get everything out!  I’ll do my best to make the biggest impact I can today, even if that means not taking things to storage.  Brent is going to be here Wednesday?  I’m not exactly sure, but next week anyway and I’d like to have him feel better about the process.  I have thoughts on that, but they aren’t worth exploring.

I tried listening to a podcast this morning, this time The Stephanie Miller Show, something I have listened to at home for years… although not in a while just because I have so needed a break from the firehose of politics.  I enjoy the show, and it had its moments, but I didn’t like it as much for walking.  The most successful bits were story driven, and I think the podcast I choose to listen to in the morning should just be a story.  I think those who recommended audiobooks are on to something.  I haven’t yet tried them, but I will do that soon.  Tomorrow morning I’ll probably be back to music though.

[Walk #90]

The Wandering Hermit: Warm Walks & Good Apps

   14 June 2024  Leave a Comment on The Wandering Hermit: Warm Walks & Good Apps

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]

The Wandering Hermit: The House Next Door

   13 June 2024  Leave a Comment on The Wandering Hermit: The House Next Door

I’m trying to shift my thinking.  A few weeks ago I was happy in my ignorance about my future.  I’ve been there before; sometimes it’s nice to just know that you’re about to let the wind take you and to not be all that concerned with the outcome.  But as soon as I was presented with a plan, I started to settle on it and when it looked like that would no longer be possible, I felt like something had been taken from me, forgetting how recently I had been content to ride the wind.  So, let’s reset and regroup.  I’m not interested in the kinds of stress I was allowing in.  I need to remember myself.

I do not know where I will end up once we sell the house and move on.  And at this point, I’m not sure I want to know.  This morning I was thinking about how much I’ll miss living out here in some ways.  It’s not my dream, and it is very inconvenient to me, but it is nice and peaceful.  We are on the corner of Fairgrounds Rd & Burris Rd.  The house across Fairgrounds is nostalgic to me.  My grandpa used to take us on drives on the gravel roads of Payne County on this side of Stillwater.  We might end up driving through Glencoe or Pawnee or Morrison before returning, but that house was one of the landmarks I remember from then; it’s one of the few things that has been the same for all these years.  Most of the houses out here are much newer.  It was at first a little surreal living across the street from that house.  It’s almost like having an old imaginary friend move in down the street.  It existed in my mind, but I had no reason to drive out here before my parents moved here, so I didn’t know if my memory was real or if it was all a creation of my mind.  It’s not a particularly interesting house.  There’s nothing fantastical or noteworthy about it, but for many years it was just a part of those moments spent with Papa, and more recently it’s where the people with the horses that like to escape live.  And soon I’ll leave this place and I won’t see it all the time.  And I wonder if I’ll still remember it fondly or if it has lost its meaning.

I think walking has been good for me.  Sure, it’s been great for my physical health, but I think it has helped me mentally.  It is often over-emphasized that walking is good for mental health, but it’s not wrong.  It seems to allow my brain to sort things out.  I wonder if there is something unique about the action of walking or is it the traversing of a distance.  I’m going to be joining a gym soon and doing my walking there much of the time; I wonder if I will see the same benefits in mental health or if I need to be out in the world.  I used to do an hour of walking daily at a gym in Anchorage, Alaska.  I wasn’t in the same place mentally when I started, so I don’t know that I noticed any shifts.  After spending years depressed, anything was going to feel monumental, but the walking has helped quite a bit.

I’m not sure what to do to get started with running, but I am interested if it is possible.  I tried it for a minute during my walk, but felt like it was too jarring when I hit the ground.  Maybe I’m just not used to it, but it was unpleasant.  It felt doable in general otherwise.  It didn’t hurt or cause my to not be able to breathe, which had been my primary concern.  I’ll look into it.  It seems weird that I couldn’t just start running.  I feel unequipped.  But I also am slightly amazed that I’m even interested in trying it out.  I keep saying it, but it is true: I cannot believe that one year ago I could barely walk at all and now I want to walk everywhere.  

[Walk #88]