Month: October 2025

selective focus photo of yellow dahlia flowers How do you rank the months of the year?
fitness

How do you rank the months of the year?

Sam B

I won’t swear to this, but right now, here’s how I am feeling about the twelve months of the year. This is my ranking.

I started thinking about this as we head into the dark fall months,  focusing on how much I dislike late fall,  and then I decided to focus instead on how much I liked other months and seasons.

Obviously I’m a summer person!

šŸ˜ŽJuly: The most summery of the summer months,  as an academic administrator it’s the quietest work month of the year,  I can work reasonable days and still get stuff done. It’s also full of bike rides and boat trips and warm enough to swim outside just about anywhere local. Also,  I usually take some holidays in July.

šŸ‰August: It’s my birthday month and gearing up for back to school.  The campus comes alive again. We usually go canoe tripping in August. August is a month of very good things including local peaches and corn.

šŸš“June: This is the month of my favourite conference, the Canadian Philosophical Association and it’s also Pride and University Convocation. It’s warm enough for camping and long bike rides too.

āœļøSeptember: My WOW month. It’s beautiful and full of warm days but also back to school energy. I wish I could bottle that energy for March.  It’s a great time of year for canoe camping and long bike rides.

šŸŒøMay: If September bookends the summer months at one end,  May does it at the other.  I love spring gardens before the heat and dry days ruin things. I love the family dinners outside and the lengthening daylight.

šŸ‚October: The weather is starting to get crisp and cool. The leaves are incredibly beautiful.  There are often some good October conferences.  And it’s Halloween.

šŸŽ„December: It’s the holidays and there’s a break in the school year and I get to see my family. So yes, it might be dark but there are lots of lights on the tree and music in church. Also,  the food is good. I love the cozy of Christmas.

ā›ˆļøApril: I wish I liked spring more. It’s a season of hope. Sadly, in this part of Canada it’s also a season of continual dashed expectations. We tend to go straight from cold rainy days to scorching heat.

šŸ’•February: Well, there’s Valentine’s Day, so there’s that. There is also a university break week. Often, there are also some of those bright winter days that I love so much. But wow, winter is starting to drag on by February.

ā˜˜ļøMarch: I think March is actually the worst month of the academic year,  but this is an overall ranking not a ranking of months from an academic perspective. Why the worst? Morale is at an all time low.  There’s grading ahead.  We’re tired.  The students are tired. The weather is usually not good for any outdoor activity. It’s no longer winter and doesn’t yet feel like spring.

ā„ļøJanuary: January feels like the longest month of the year.  It’s dark and often here,  the weather can be miserable.  The two bright sides? Those occasional bright,  cold,  snowy winter days that are perfect for fat biking and or just walking the dog. Also,  the days are getting longer. Sometimes there’s vacation.

šŸ„²November: You can read why November is last all over the blog. For example, See Is there a way to redeem November? and 10 things to make it through November  and November is my toughest fitness month: Hereā€™s why. Way back in 2014 I wrote November goals. Here’s my advice for all the November haters out there.

November has but one redeeming feature: Sarah’s birthday!

white and blue floral table lamp
Photo by lil artsy on Pexels.com

ADHD · fitness · self care

How Much Productivity is Too Much?

Diane Harper1 Comment

I live with nagging anxiety that tells me I should be productive, because I tend to connect my self-worth to my productivity.

This can be great when Iā€™m planning a huge family meal, or volunteering with a local organization. Itā€™s not so great when Iā€™m also trying to cook everything from scratch (at least some of which I grew myself), get in all the exercise I think I need, volunteer with too many organizations, sew and do other crafts, hold a part-time job, manage elder care, and maintain a house to the standards of a 1950s TV mom. Oh, and sleep!

I have always needed to keep busy, so this isnā€™t a totally new problem. However, it seems to have gotten worse since I retired. Is it because everyone (including me) assumes I have more time to volunteer because I no longer work full time? Is it because I am slowing down and more easily tired? Is it because Iā€™m a bit of an idiot and donā€™t know enough to say no? Iā€™m betting on the last one, though the first to are contributing factors.

Meme taken from a TikTok video. It appears to be an older woman moving around her living room.

I wonder how much pain contributes to lack of sleep, which means I spend way too much time at night thinking of things I havenā€™t finished, or adding to the list. Then trying to do those things, so I donā€™t do the stretching/strength training/sleeping I need to get better.

I also wonder how common this is. My social media is full of women who have been diagnosed with things like ADHD later in life. Or who are overwhelmed with family and other responsibilities.

A quick Google search of ā€œolder women responsibilitiesā€ turned up some really interesting research on the responsibilities part. Not so much on the ADHD side. That turns up mostly YouTube videos and sites I wouldnā€™t trust for solid peer-reviewed evidence.

Another meme, that appears to be from the same TikTok video. It shows a middle-aged woman in a white top and blue and white skirt or shorts in an immaculate living room.

A friend uses the ā€œfive thingsā€ technique to clean house when she is managing depression or feeling overwhelmed. She cleans or throws out five things, no matter how small. Some days, tossing a pencil stub counts as a thing. Other days deep cleaning an entire room is a thing. When you have done five things, you are under no obligation to do more.

I love this and occasionally use it to motivate myself for cleaning. More often, I use it as a way to limit what I take on for the day. Five things is enough. And I try to remember that if I stop at five things, I am enough.

Learning to Be (more than okay) Alone
fitness

Learning to Be (more than okay) Alone

Mina4 Comments

Learning to Be (more than okay) Alone

As you may have noticed these past months, Iā€™ve been exploring how it is to do various things aloneā€”drinking champagne, eating dessertā€”and those explorations were, of course, really about doing other things aloneā€”hiking, biking around a new city, lazing in a city park and so on. Iā€™ve been thinking a lot about all the qualities and sensations of being alone. All the different things I do alone. How each thing feels different when I do it alone, from when I do it with another person. How some things, which I never thought could be good alone, are.

In fact, it is this discovery, that more things than I expected are actually quite good when done alone, that has provoked this current deep dive into the varieties of aloneness. It took me some time to get here. My marriage definitively ended about two and a half years ago, so Iā€™ve had some practice at this alone business. And I resisted the potential for good in the experiences until quite recently.   

Sports were where I really learned how to do things alone. Specifically, training for ultra marathons was the first time I started clocking serious time alone. Now I do almost every sport, almost all the time, alone, except my occasional Saturday morning runs with friends. Before the ultras, I had multiple running partners. We kept each other company on long training runs preparing for marathons. When I got into the ultras, I didnā€™t have much company and began to figure out this alone-ness. Until I surprised myself by enjoying the liberated feeling of heading out for hours alone in the mountains or threading through different parks in the city.

In these last few years, Iā€™ve gone through this same process with quite a lot of other activities.

An Incomplete List of Things I Do Alone (which I used to do mostly with another person)

All the sports, most of the time, including ā€¦

Runā€”on roads and trails

Cycleā€”on roads and trails

Cross country ski

Snowshoe.

Hike

Yoga

Cross-Fit

Also ā€¦

Binge Netflix

Go to the movies

Fix magnetic kitchen cupboard door clasps

Rehang the tricky, heavy mirror over the fuse panel

Grocery shop

Go to the farmerā€™s market

Cook meals

Eat meals

Go to a coffee shop for the occasional breakfast or afternoon macchiato

Go home after dinner with friends (including my own birthday dinner)

Take the subway home late at night

Plan trips

Fly on planes

Wake up on weekend mornings (well really all mornings)

Dance

Go for walks

Take naps

Sleep

An Incomplete List of Things I Havenā€™t Quite Figured Out How to Be More Than Okay About Doing Alone:

  • Go to the theatre, live dance performance or the movies. It turns out that what I love about live performance or seeing a movie in the theatre is diving into conversation afterward with my companion, to prolong the delight or bemoan the time we canā€™t get back.
  • Swim in a pond or lake. Partly because of water safety drilled into me at long ago summer camp. And I know thatā€™s not the whole reason.
  • Cook an elaborate meal.

With each experience (on these lists and so many others) there is a process of acclimatization to aloneness, like what I went through in sports. A process of familiarization. Of figuring out how it (whatever it is) works alone. What works alone. How the experience is different. What are the pleasures. And the disappointments. Because to be sure, there are those too. Which is why the title of this piece includes the phrase, more than okay, and not some version of the word, joy.  Most certainly, some alone-ness is joyful. And Iā€™m not fully emancipated from my deep-seated desire to be in connection with another human being while experiencing life. Chocolate cake is delicious, and it tastes better with someone I love (friend, family or intimate partner).

A slice of chocolate layer cake from Yiseul Han on unsplash

And then thereā€™s last night, when I finally closed my computer after a disheartening study session for an exam Iā€™m taking in a couple of weeks and, sitting on a chair to take a breath, I had a vivid and visceral desire for a light hand on my shoulder. A gentle kiss on the top of my head.   

The past couple of weeks my Saturday runs have been alone. Iā€™ve gone up to the Cloisters Museum, a run Iā€™ve been doing for more than 30 years. Every person who has ever been beside me on that run comes with me in my heart. And Iā€™m there, at every age Iā€™ve ever been on that stretch of road. Still here. In the company of spirits who lighten my step.