❤️ It’s Congress, that is, the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, Canada’s largest gathering of academics, and one of the largest in the world. It’s a big deal . This year was our first in-person meeting since the pandemic.
🎓 It’s also University Convocation. I love Convocation, so many happy students and proud families. Not to mention I get to wear my fancy blue velvet regalia and with my matching bright blue vegan Fluevogs.
🌈 And, it’s Pride. Wowsa. What a month.
So the big happy month of June is the bright side. On the not-so-bright side, I think this might be a record year for not being on track to meet any of my blog-related goals. (And by the way, it’s not like I’m knocking it out of the park with other life goals I’m not telling you about!)
🏋🏻♂️ I’m aiming to work out 400 times in 2025. So far I’m at 191, where I should be at 200.
🚴 I reset my cycling goal to 3000 km for 2025 but I’m at 750 km, not the 1500 km I should be at. Wah!
📖 You might think I’m spending all my spare time reading, instead of riding my bike, but you’d be wrong. I’m at 7 out of 25 novels in the Goodreads annual challenge.
I could muse here about all the reasons I’m so far behind. The world is a mess. I’m so scared for my American friends and colleagues about human rights violations and the end of democracy. It’s also all happening a bit too close to Canada for my liking. There are also work stresses and family stresses. There are good reasons I’m a bit behind too–like spending the first four months of the year on research leave.
The premise is that we can work out what makes us feel good and do more of it. “Micro-acts of joy focus us on what is good about the life in front of us, and how we can make it better,” says Elissa Epel, a psychiatry professor at the University of California, San Francisco and author of The Seven-Day Stress Prescription, who is a collaborator on the Big JOY project. “This is critical during these dark times; these are ways we bring in the light.”
Big Joy is a citizen science project based at the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley. You can try it here. It’s just seven minutes a day for seven days.
I’m giving it a try right now and I’ll let you know how it goes.
Whatever you think of resolutions, I hope we can all agree that January is a lousy time to make them.
Okay, actually after the holidays and the start of a brand new year, is an excellent time to make them. It’s just that in my part of the world, with short days and frigid temperatures, it’s a rotten time to keep them. It’s a time of the year when many of us feel we need comforts, not challenges.
So I’m proposing a new tradition, July 1 resolutions.
First, July is a spectacular month in my personal calendar. It’s the only month in which my work actually slows down.
June is all Congress and then Convocations. August, we’re starting to get ready for the coming school year. But July? It seems like half of campus is on holiday.
Second, the days are long. It’s warm. And it’s just all round a great month. We’re starting it this year with a Canada Day backyard BBQ.
So I’m going to put all this positive energy to work. I’m resolving, recommitting really, to my two big, ongoing goals. Daily writing and daily riding.
How much? An hour of writing and 20 km of riding.
I’m also committing again to no new clothes purchases with one important exception. The exception is two new work outfits for the fall. I need some new Dean clothes.
Those three are familiar goals to people who know me and to regular readers of the blog.
But I’m also resolving to deal with all the stuff and mess in my house. It’s a complicated goal because there are lots of people coming and going and who keep things here. We’re all coming and going and packing bags and leaving bags of stuff. We’re also all super busy.
I think I’ll feel better if I chip away at it. So I’m adding to my July 1 resolutions to clean and tidy 20 minutes a day. That’s resolution #4.
Trends and fads come and go, but there are some things that stand the test of time. They never go out of style, and attract generation after generation of loyal followers. These include Levi’s blue jeans, Tiffany jewelry (with its obligatory distinctive blue gift box), Colgate toothpaste, and Kellogg’s Corn Flakes.
You can add another thing to the list for consideration: The Magic Wand vibrator.
Some of the family of Magic Wand vibrators, corded and rechargable, in different sizes.
I’m not shilling for the company– we don’t do product placement here at Fit is a Feminist Issue. Nor do we take any advertising. However, I noticed that Wirecutter, the reviewing arm of the New York Times company, is still giving this vibrator its top recommendation. And in fact, people have been going cuckoo for this gagdet for upwards of half a century. You can read more about the Magic Wand phenomenon here.
9 years ago I wrote a blog post about visiting a sex toy shop in Boston with a friend I met at Kripalu, a place noted for its concentration on multiple modes of self-care. When I took a look at it today, I was surprised (and also not surprised) that some things just don’t change. Those include:
The importance of having experiences off the clock
The importance of relieving stress
The importance of promoting good sleep
Sexy solo time (as I called it then in an attempt to be cutesy) can help us care for ourselves and feel better, whether we have a partner or partners or not. And I say huzzah to that.
Take a look at my blog post from 2016 and see what you think. One thing that probably has improved is better device charging. Hey, some things do get better with time.
Oh dear. It’s the end of June and I definitely have not averaged 30 km per week. I mean. It’s not even close.
It’s just 4 weeks until the MS Bike Tour and I’ve not done more than 20 km in a day.
Ugh. I don’t want a steep ramp up but here I am, AGAIN.
It’s not all bad though. The commuting and using my bike for errands complimented my indoor winter spinning.
Year to date graph compares this year in orange to last year in blue.
I’m not certain last year’s data is accurate but it’s close. I was pleasantly surprised that I’ve gotten 437 km in compared to 175 last year. It’s an improvement and my little commutes are adding up.
Like previous years, the month of July will see me getting much more time in the saddle. My goal is to complete the tour with my sense of humour intact.
I’m making my usual migration to New Brunswick to visit family, ride our bikes and get out on/in the water.
Outside of that, it’s day trips of renting canoes/kayaks, walking and biking.
Water
Christine
Ideally, I would be able to do three different getaways this summer:
1) a night or two in the Terra Nova Park area with my husband and my two (adult) kids.
2) a night or two away with my husband so we could do a couple of day hikes.
3) a few dedicated afternoons somewhere away from my house for writing and drawing. I can write and draw at home of course, but having the ‘container’ of being in a new location often helps me focus.
Pencils and paper
Sam
After our big trip to New Zealand, we’re staying close to home this summer. We’ve got weekends at the farm planned, some biking and boating with Jeff ahead of us, as well as some canoe camping booked. I also want to spend some time at the beach.
Jeff’s boat
Nicole
There are places I’d like to go but not happening anytime soon so trying not to think about it lol
I’m looking forward to a three night getaway in mid July where I plan to read a book, finish a quilt and go walk along the beach. I’m looking forward to a short stint as a Canada Games volunteer in August and then having another long weekend getaway in September where I will read more books.
Cycling is excellent for your knees. It’s not just that it avoids the impact of running. Cycling helps distribute fluid to your joints.
It’s so much of a benefit that there are reasons to ride even if you’re not someone who particularly enjoys being on a bike.
If you do enjoy riding a bike, that’s a bonus.
People keep asking if, after knee surgery, I’m happy to be back on my bike.
But the truth is, I never got off my bike. The week before my first knee surgery, I rode my bike from Toronto to Montreal with the Friends for Life Bike Rally. That’s more than 600 km over 6 days. I couldn’t walk enough to get groceries by that point, but I certainly could ride my bike. I blogged about how weird that was here.
Now my new knees are a few years old and I’m still riding my bike. That makes knee surgeon and my physiotherapist happy.
My knees just feel better on days when I ride my bike. It’s enough of an issue that if I’m traveling for work I ride bikes in the hotel gym, not for exercise but to keep my knees feeling good. When I’m planning travel, I think, will I be able to ride a bike?
From the NPR piece, “”Cycling is very low impact,” says musculoskeletal researcher Matt Harkey, an assistant professor at Michigan State University and a co-author of the study. Cycling also helps to build strength in the muscles around the knee which can help protect the joint. In addition, the rhythmic motion of pedaling on a bicycle can move synovial fluid, the viscous, egg white -like liquid in joints that helps reduce friction and absorb shock. “What it does is help to circulate the synovial fluid throughout the joint to help to kind of lubricate [the joint] and provide nutrient delivery to the cartilage,” Harkey says.”
Worrying about what others think of me. Even if they are someone I have a good opinion of.
Sam
I have a particular flavour of summer anxiety, a feeling of needing to fit it all in. When are we going canoe camping? When are we riding bikes? Do I have time to visit with all of my friends on patios? Summers seem to get shorter each year. It’s related, of course, to big worries and big feelings about how little time in this life we have with the people we love and to do the things we like to do. But it’s especially intense in the summer. Deep breaths. Lots of love. And working on letting those feelings go.
Inertia. I am fundamentally a lazy person but tonight I taught my last swim class for a while and remembered how much I love being in the water. I want to let go of that laziness and get myself into the pool, pond or river.
Christine
I’m trying to let go of the idea that I need to have a big plan in place before I get started.
Sure, some planning is needed but I often get caught in the trap of waiting on a (non-existent) perfect plan and I never get started.
A congratulatory note telling me I’ve put 400 km on my walking shoes.
The nudge was intentional. I’ve had a few bouts of plantar fasciitis. To try and prevent more rounds I look to replace my footwear before it visibly wears out.
This is hard for me. My gut says “Those shoes look fine.”
The clicking of my calf and heel tendons are telling me that, actually, I need new shoes.
I know a slip on shoe made for walking works for me so back to the Sketchers brand I go.
I try to get them on sale. I am not picky about colour. Although the white always look raggedy so I picked a dark blue from the discount website. $80 CDN plus tax is better than $120!
The shoes arrived with a 32 page booklet from the Mayo Clinic “Walk your way to fitness.”
Huh.
Unexpected!
I gave it a read and could not find one critique of the information inside.
It treated walking with the respect it deserves. It is exercise!
The booklet outlined guidelines on physical activity as well as suggestions on starting a walking routine.
On page 19 it mentioned replacing worn out shoes. It happened to use the exact distance I walk every day. At a minimum I cover 3km a day which means I should replace my shoes every 6 months.
I’m pretty sure those white Sketchers are coming up on a year. My feet have been whispering “replace your shooooooes” for a while now.
So I log my new shoes in Strava in the “My gear” tab. I often record my walks with my watch which is connected to Strava. The gear plus workouts means I will continue to get nudges on replacing my shoes.
My phone tells me I average 4.5 km a day. It’s always watching.
Unlike Strava, there are no buttons needed for my phone to count steps and kilometers. Since it doesn’t get all the distance the Strava nudge is my failsafe. It honestly feels like I just bought the white shoes. Honest!
This confirms I can’t rely on my perception on how long I’ve had shoes or when I should replace them l.
Reading the booklet reminded me of many things I’ve learned about walking and how this movement supports my wellbeing.
