What’s been going on in May?
🚲The big news in my life isn’t really fitness-related. It’s my first month back in the dean role after research leave. The bad thing about that fitness-wise is no time for weekday long summer bike rides or random classes at the fancy gym. I’m sometimes jealous of retired friends with lots of time to train. The good thing about being back in the office is that I’m a fan of routine and schedules, which helps with fitness, my day job, and getting other things done, like reading and writing.
📅I’m at 158 workouts so far in 2025. There are 219 days left in the year. If I work out every day in 2025, I still won’t hit my goal of 400 workouts. It’s not so easy to do that it turns out, without twice weekly physio. Oh well. I’ll reassess when we get to July 1, the halfway mark.
🚶A very cool thing about life with new knees is that I am walking lots. I’m walking with Cheddar, yes, but also when I go away to conferences, and when I’m staying in Toronto. I’m really enjoying my ability to do this.
🏊 Swimming: I’ve been swimming a few times before aquafit classes but I haven’t yet executed my plan of lane swimming at the Y. You can sign up for adult lane swim with a lifeguard/instructor who gives stroke improvement advice. I have all the details. It fits into my schedule, but I likely won’t get going on this plan until after the Canadian Philosophical Association meeting in Toronto in early June.
😴 Sleep has been going very well. I love a regular schedule and going to bed early. In the last month I slept at average of 8 and 1/2 hours a night. Zzzzz.
🏋️♀️🩹💪 Physio: I’m back at it! Not twice a week, not once a week, just once a month to check in and ensure all is going well.
⛵ Sailing: We’re definitely behind with sailing. We haven’t even rigged the snipe yet. Yikes. Sarah is super busy at work. Wish us luck!
🚴 Biking: I blogged about revising my annual distance goals to something reasonable, 3000 km a year instead of 5000. But with this extra cold and rainy spring I’m not even on track to meet that. I’ve dropped my goal again, to 2500 km. Again, I’ll re-evaluate at the end of June if I’m still struggling.
📚 Reading: My favorite book so far this year is Playworld.
But I’m behind with my 2025 reading schedule. For a while I was so upset about what’s happening south of the border that I couldn’t finish any of the books I started. And then I read a couple of not-so-good books. They’re all reviewed over at Goodreads.
📝📖 Writing
Finally, I have been writing! I’ve finished three things, and some of them are even out there to be read.
I presented a short commentary on Serene Khader’s book Faux Feminism last week in Montreal.
My commentary on Kate Manne’s book was published in the APA Studies on Feminism and Philosophy. See Sam Wrote a Thing about Kate Manne’s Unshrinking.
And finally I wrote a piece for the first-gen philosophers blog. You can read it here.
🌸 Other stuff: I’m also seasonally confused! It feels like fall. That’s partly the weather but also because we had some New Zealand summer followed by the start of fall there. After Orientation Week, the start of the school year, at Otago, it’s time for serious fall and the intensity of the first half of the academic year. Instead, we came home to spring. It’s not helping my seasonal confusion that it so horribly cold. Here are the headlines: Toronto faces coldest late May in more than 50 years and Toronto’s unusually low late May temperatures not seen since 1967: meteorologist.
That’s May. It was a big month! Luckily, I love my job and I’m happy to be back at work.
