If, like me, you’re a habitual maker of lists, you know how enjoyable it can be to make one. I want to tell you about the two kinds of lists I tend to make.
The first type is a detailed, four-quadrant list that is legibly handwritten in a spiral notebook. It’s a strategy I learned from leadership training years ago: draw two lines bifurcating the left and right, top and bottom of the page. Top left: IMMEDIATE to-dos. Top right: TODAY to-dos. Bottom left: TOMORROW to-dos. Bottom right: LATER THIS WEEK. Now there’s four lists! 🤩
This 4-list system has helped me triage competing demands and deadlines in a busy life schedule. As the top half got completed by the end of the day, I’d feel that little list-hit of dopamine. More satisfaction would come when tomorrow’s items were ALL scratched off and became today’s.
My second style of list is a scrawl of half-expressed ideas onto the back of a mail envelope, program flyer, or receipt. These lists get folded and stuffed into my pockets or become bookmarks, only to be discovered later, partly deciphered partly forgotten.
Over the past few months I have not had the discipline of a tidy schedule. My flâneuse-style wandering has reflected in my list-making. I tried to make a type 1 list, but items didn’t easily sort when my “today” and “tomorrow” have been so fluid. Instead, the type 2 lists catch my daily thoughts before they dissolve, little messy scraps that reveal how I am figuring out what shape my life takes next.
List Type 2: A handwritten list on the back of a Saje sales receipt: CAAT, 4-piece snaps, unemployment (CHECK!), City of London, MOI. What does it all mean? I hardly know myself.
Adam Grant has a WorkLife episode on procrastination where he suggests writing a to don’t list to make visible what’s might be delaying one’s progress and help get yourself out of your own way. That’s not a bad idea, especially when big life transitions mean the work of processing hard feelings, managing stress, and trying to find small wins.
So I’m giving a type 3 list a try. Moving into my next life phase, which doesn’t yet have neat time-bound quadrants, I write neatly down the centre of the page:
Don’t be hard on yourself.
Don’t fail to appreciate what you have.
Don’t seek certainty at the expense of your joy.
Don’t not trust yourself. (Double negative, but you get it.)
This third type of list has turned out to be important, not because it tells me what I need to do but because it reminds me who I want to be.
One of the many things I love about this blog and these bloggers is the consistent message that we are okay as we are, and that our lives can and should be happening NOW, not wait around until we’ve achieved some other body size or proportion. Time and time again we’ve called out the fitness industry for promoting body size and proportion changes as if they are the most important aspect of engaging in physical activity.
The before/after photos are especially objectionable to me for this reason. In addition to being misleading and probably photoshopped, they add on the emotional force of equating the before state with being unhappy, unattractive, unfit, unwell, unacceptable for public view. Of course this isn’t accurate.
Then comes the after state, depicted in more colorful or fashionable attire, better lighting, and of course smiles (in addition to body shape and proportion changes that reflect stereotypical views about what the fit or acceptable or attractive body is supposed to look like).
Despite that fact that we know all this, before/after photos are everywhere. The rise in use of GLP-1 weight loss drugs has brought them back with the vengeance on social media and in advertisements for online hawkers selling compounded forms of the drug (a very bad idea, btw).
One new twist on the before/after messaging was a series of ads I saw on Facebook, selling an exercise program. It kept saying, “you’ll be unrecognizable in eight weeks if you do this”.
Ew. No. I don’t want to be unrecognizable. I mean, what would happen at work? People would say, “excuse me, where is Catherine? And why are you in her office?”
Seriously though, you get the idea. In January and February (which is the new January, as we know), we are pummeled with ads selling exercise and diet programs, promising us quick transformation. I’m not opposed to transformation– in fact, I spend a lot of time working on projects that I hope will be transformative. I write, meditate, and do creative tasks in part to find new insights that change the way I see the world.
I do physical activity because I have goals, but also because it makes me feel good. Or great. It does change me, but in more complex ways than a mere photo can capture.
Here’s my one exception to the no before/after pics rule: when I get my hair cut. Here’s what I posted to my book group signal thread.
Me, before haircut. Admittedly well overdue for a trim.
During hair transformation. After washing, all turbaned up. I wish I could manage this look at home.
Now, without further ado, the after-haircut salon-pristine pics.
Full-face view, smiling and sleek.Turned a little, for mystery.
Readers, what do you think of before/after pictures? And more importantly, do you like my new haircut?
I have been experimenting with when and how to write different things, I have experimented with different ways to approach my volunteer work, I have given a lot of thought to how ELSE my Go Team ideas might apply in my life, and I have experimented with my well-being practices.
Here are some of the things that have come up for me so far and some questions I am pondering at the moment.
As soon as I mention pondering, I gotta break out a Pinky and the Brain GIF. Image description: a GIF from the cartoon Pinky and the Brain in which The Brain (a short white mouse with an oversized head) is asking Pinky (a tall skinny mouse who looks kind of goofy) ‘Are you pondering what I’m pondering?’ The mice are in a homey setting within a green cage in a laboratory. This question always came up in episodes of this show when The Brain, who was supposed to be a genius, had hatched a plan to take over the world and Pinky, who was rather silly, would respond with nonsense.
My medal from the Salem Witch Trials walking challenge. The medal is a black rectangle is kind of like a wrought iron gate along the top and sides with four points along the bottom line. The medal is decorated with a crescent moon, a sun, a crow on a branch and a bat hanging from a different branch. Then there is text that reads ‘The Salem Witch Trial Virtual Challenge’ The words ‘Salem Witch’ are in green and the lettering is ornate and kind of spooky. It is attached to a green ribbon with decorated with stereotypical ‘witchy’ items like beetles, moths, crystals, a dousing rod, and a fly agaric mushroom and a purple banner that reads ‘Make Every Mile Count.’
It’s really fun to have a tangible, obvious, and related reward for my efforts.
While I am very used to activities in which the effort is its own reward or ones in which I decide on my own ‘prize’ that often has nothing to do with the activities itself but this is different.
While I set my timeframe, the distance and the reward were both set by someone else and I enjoy the feeling of meeting some sort of standard (even a loose one) and getting a medal as a result.
Now, let me be clear – I am in no way treating this like a medal that I won. I know I wasn’t actually racing. I didn’t have any competitors except myself and my time was snail-paced but the medal does remind me that I made a choice to do a program and I completed it.
The fact that I really like how the medal looks is also a bonus.
My feelings about this medal – and the related challenge – are really interesting to me and I am definitely going to explore more tangible and related rewards for my other fitness experiments this year.
And this is where the January experimenting comes in:
I decided to experiment with a longer challenge so I signed up for a 2026 challenge with the same company and, like with the shorter challenge, the fact that I can see each day adding up is giving me a little extra push to move more daily.
BUT it will take all year to earn my medal so I’m going to need to invent some more immediate (and related) awards for myself to earn on a regular basis.
Question: What kinds of rewards will feel more directly related to my fitness practices?
Imperfect Practices
Several of my Go Team 2026 posts have been a bit of a thought experiment for me as I figure out whether I am regularly applying these ideas to my life/practices and how ELSE I might want to apply them.
My Sunday post this week is an excellent example of that experimentation.
That post Done Beats Perfect is about getting so caught up in doing things right that I end up not doing them at all has really helped me tune into something about myself.
I have ‘discovered’ this fact many times in many different contexts but each time I rediscover it, I find a new layer.
I spend too much time trying to figure things out before doing them.
For example:
My ADHD brain is convinced that there is value in waiting to start work on my core because I wouldn’t want to waste time on some practice or program that doesn’t work.
So, it kind of shelves the project of improving my core while awaiting more information BUT it keeps the thought in rotation so it FEELS like I am working on it all the time even though I am not actually doing any work.
But since it has been on my mind for ages, I do get the bonus (annoying) feeling that I am not getting any results for my hard work.
So, a lot of time passes, I don’t end up finding the right system for strengthening my core AND I don’t actually work on a less than perfect system AND nothing changes AND I feel frustrated with myself.
This is all kind of subconscious and I see the illogical nature of this process when I consciously consider it.
But until it occurs to me to bring the thought forward I just have this annoying contradictory situation in which something is sort of on my mind, time is passing, there’s a feeling of effort but no results, but I also know that I am not actually working on that yet.
It’s a bit like when I sit down to write but I can’t make the words string together at the moment so I sit at my desk and putter around at all kinds of distractions. I feel like I am working on it and getting nowhere but there is actually no work taking place.
In that situation, I need to become aware that I am doing that (again!) and remind myself that the only thing that gets my writing done is putting words on the page and then moving them around. I have to coax myself to stick with it past the initial pain of dealing with an ambiguous situation and trust that if I go through the tried-and-true procedure, the work will get done.
Since I know that completing an imperfect workout or an imperfect practice will be automatically superior to a perfect one that never actually gets done, I need to identify a tried-and-true procedure that I can trust to get my workouts/practices done.
I am going to work on the following questions and develop an experiment based on my answers:
Questions: What procedures can I use to make it easier to do an imperfect workout instead of waiting for a perfect one to arrive?How can I make myself conscious of being stuck in the ‘waiting for more info’ loop?
My plan to connect my drawing to my evening yoga has resulted in me avoiding my yoga because I couldn’t wrap my mind around drawing at that point.
I know that the main reason I didn’t draw was because I didn’t have a clear idea of what I wanted to draw each evening. Frustratingly, in my post about this experiment I actually said that I needed to pick something to draw or I probably wouldn’t do it.
Alas, I forgot all about that aspect of things then just tried to wing it and ended up (temporarily) sinking my yoga practice along with my plan to draw.
So, for now, I am going back to committing to evening yoga and, if I have the energy, I will do a drawing on an index card but the drawing is a bonus not a dealbreaker.
And I am going to consider the following questions and have an answer to experiment with by Wednesday evening:
Questions: What kinds of drawing would be fun and relaxing for me to do each evening? How can I make the process of drawing easier to start?
Row Row Row… my living room?
This experiment is less than two days old but after hearing me wonder aloud if moving my rowing machine from the basement to the living room would make it more likely that I would use it, my husband volunteered to move it for me.
As soon as it was in the living room, rowing felt more like a thing I *could* do instead of a thing ‘I need to get back to’ and now that the living room experiment was underway, I decided to try for 5 minutes of rowing each day for the next week.
I know that’s a small amount but I wanted it to feel easy and I can definitely fit in 5 minutes a day for a week and then review.
So, on Monday morning, I planned to row for 5 minutes but ended up rowing for 15 minutes while watching a video about setting up an artist’s notebook. and it really felt great.
That doesn’t mean that I am changing my experiment though. I am going to stick to the 5 minute plan with the option of doing more but with zero pressure to do so.
Now I am just playing around with the when:
Question: Is it easier to have a set time to row or to just do it when it makes sense on a given day?
Overall, I’m enjoying the experiment approach and I am planning to continue into February.
Have you been doing any experiments with your practices and habits in January? How are things going?
I decided to draw my own calendars this year. This one is above my desk and will have a different robot for each month. Image description: a happy square-headed, rectangular-bodied robot drawn in blue ink. She is holding a sign that says ‘Real Snow Please!’ in one hand and she is holding a star in the other. She is standing on a curved line that is supposed to represent snow on the ground and there are dots in the background to represent snow falling. Text beneath her reads ‘January’ and there are two snowflakes and two horizontal arrows pointing to the word.
I’m really tempted to say that I’m going to do one thing for the first month, but we all know that’s not true.
Except that it kind of is.
My themes for the year are practice and process and I’ve picked ONE particular aspect to focus on in January.
My focus is going to be on experimenting*.
In particular, I’m experimenting with scheduling my fitness and well-being practices.
So even though I’ll be trying lots of things, they’re really all in-service of that one thing – finding a comfortable schedule that lets me include all of the things I want to do on a regular basis.
It’s a practice that fits in nicely with my usual Planuary approach.**
I have found that evening is a good time for me to do yoga and morning is a good time for meditation, but I haven’t found the best time for journalling yet.
So that’s part of the January experiment.
I’ll keep you updated!
Speaking of updates:
Back in October, I started a walking challenge and I completed that on December 20. (My medal is in the mail!)
Last week, I signed up for a year-long challenge with the same company.
For these challenges, many people add their daily step count from their fitness tracker or that kind of thing***but I wanted to encourage myself to add more activity to my life on a regular basis so including my routine steps would be counterproductive.
Instead, I decided that I would only include extra activity that I deliberately chose to do- walks, dance videos, strength training – any activity that I did for the sake of moving. (FYI – the app converts many activities to an equivalent distance.)
And I enjoyed how my commitment to the challenge gave me extra motivation to seek out some exercise on a regular basis.
I’m following the same pattern with the current challenge – only adding deliberately chosen activities so I know that every kilometre was ‘travelled’ on purpose.
I’ll keep you in the loop on this, too.
Khalee approves of my walking challenge but she was very confused as to why I stopped to take her picture today instead of just continuing to walk. Image Description: My dog, Khalee, who is medium-sized and has short light-brown hair is standing on a snowy road that has one lane plowed. (It’s a suburban side street, we weren’t in danger!) she is standing looking to the left so we can see her entire left side, and her head is turned slightly towards us. She is wearing a light blue harness and a darker blue leash. The leash extends from her towards the lower part of the image on the right, where I am holding the leash in my right hand, but you can’t see that.
**As I said in one of my December posts, I actually managed to do a little January planning in December this time. Will wonders never cease?
I mean, I still have other things I want to plan but I feel good about having the capacity to think about January while so was still in December. Christine 1: ADHD 0 (in that situation, at least!)
***Zero criticism intended here. That’s a totally valid way to approach these challenges, it just wouldn’t serve my purposes.
So, I started November with a reasonable plan and lots of time to get it done.
Two weeks ago, I was on track to complete most of my list.
Then I started having trouble with my arms. It’s kind of hard to describe but basically I had something going on with my shoulders that was inflaming a nerve? tendon? string? piece of spaghetti? And it caused a pain down the back of both of my arms and made my forearms ache and my wrists hurt.
I could tell by the nature of the problem that it wasn’t anything serious but it did get worse when I moved my arms too much and got better when I rested.
So, in the interest of minimizing my arm annoyances, I rested as much as possible and I dropped some things off my list for this month:
Try a calisthenics video
Continue the stretch band strength training program from October
Go swimming
30 minutes on the rowing machine
Sure, this was a bit frustrating but I am proud to say that I was quite kind to myself in the process and I don’t feel at all bad about it.
And, as a result of changing my plan and increasing my rest, my arm annoyances are almost completely gone.*
The list below is what got done (or partially done) in November.
Perhaps I should only give myself partial points for partially done tasks but since I did everything I could do for each task I’m just flicking the metaphorical switch to done and giving myself the point.
After all, I am the boss of me and I get to make these decisions.
Done! It was really hard to commit to the idea of being relatively still for so long and my brain fought me on getting started but eventually I talked myself into it. It was just as great as I hoped it would be.
Do at least one 10 minute meditation per week
Done! I did this once a week for the first three weeks and then switched to every day for the last 12 days of the month.
Find a way to elevate keyboard for a standing writing session
Dan and I are still working on this.
Journal while sitting on the floor once a week
Done! In fact, I journaled on the floor more often than this and watched TV on the floor and read on the floor quite a bit. This, after all, was more about spending time on the floor than about journaling.
Practice those three tricky TKD patterns for at least 30 minutes (total)
Partially done! Obviously, having wonky arms affected my practice in this area too.
So, I’m calling November a success, too.
Why?
Well, 7/11 is a pass, obviously.
And I did what I could with what I had.
And I pushed myself a little but respected my capacity.
And I felt good about the things I could do when I did them.
If that’s not a success, I don’t know what is!
Go me!
Now I just have to make a plan for December…
*I can only assume that my stellar attitude about change was key factor in healing as well. (Christine pats herself on the back. Metaphorically, of course.)
(In case you are wondering, the painting is the ghost of Christmas present)
Rien n’est plus précieux que le temps. (Nothing is more precious than time.)
I was let go from my full-time job recently at a time when my entire sector is struggling. A sympathetic colleague signed off on a supportive message to me with “Stay well.”
Wellness is the focus of much career transition advice I have read so far (on websites, the job program I am in, etc.). Some of it makes sense for anyone: see friends, do exercise, get outside, eat good food, get enough sleep. Some is specific to the emotions and challenges that go along with unexpected job loss: name your feelings, make prudent budget cuts, consider making time to upskill, etc.
Some wellness advice focuses on being mindful about next steps: take time to reflect on and even rethink one’s career goals and job hunting strategy. One piece I read warns against running right back to look for similar jobs when “pursuing a similar role might be the first step in letting history repeat itself.”
It all seems aimed at putting me in a space where I can discover new, even undiscovered, paths ahead for me. But it is a circuitous route: taking time away from looking for work in order to find it. And for a self-admitted workaholic, all this not looking for work feels like work. It is hard to enjoy free time when it is imposed…and the clock ticks with no secure income.
As my brain has been chewing on the work of wellness, I happened to think of flânerie, which one blogger describes as being “all about experiencing the world with an open heart and an unhurried spirit.” In the 19th century, wealthy French male flâneurs walked and wandered the urban cityscapes in a detached, observational way “to appreciate the world […] in its simplest form, free from the pressures of time.” Another way to put it is that they were idlers, which some saw as lazy and others saw as radical.
Paul Gavarni, Le Flâneur, 1842.
Should flâneurs be my wellness gurus right now? You can’t disagree that it’s nearly always a good idea to get out for a walk. In the context of job loss, “staying well” may require some serendipitous, open-heartedfrench wandering. Getting idle in order to see what’s around the next corner. Maybe I will start with Lauren Elkin’s book Flâneuse: Women Walk the City (2017).
Not being of the elite class, however, I only have a limited time to be free from the pressure of time. I can only afford to make flânerie part-time work.
What is your experience with wellness during job loss, and how much work was it “work” to try to savour the time?
On October 7, I made a plan for 10 activities for the 10th month and even though October included a storytelling festival, a week of rain, a week of being sick, and quite a bit of volunteer work, I still managed to do 8 out of 10 activities.
Here’s what got done:
Flail along with a Zumba dance video – Rating: BIG FUN.
Do a yoga video that is longer than 30 minutes – Rating: Hard to stick with it.
Do a meditation session that is longer than 10 minutes – Rating: No problem!
Do a strength training session with exercise bands – Rating: Enjoyable! I’m going to stick with it.
Write in my journal while on the floor – Rating: My body liked it.
Spend at least 20 minutes stretching – Rating: Loved it! I’ve made it a regular practice.
Try a kickboxing video – Rating: Pretty fun. I’ll do more.
Plant bulbs for next spring – Rating: Satisfying! I didn’t plan all of the bulbs but I did some and I’m happy about it.
I enjoyed all of these activities and I was really glad I chose them.
I was also really glad that I had the slight pressure of having publicly committed to them. Without that commitment, I might have let a few of them slide and that would have been a shame.
I really feel that pushing myself a little bit to get these things done added to my fun this month.
I actually did many of the exercise-related ones more than once and I have gotten back into leaving my yoga mat unfurled on the living room floor so I can stretch whenever I watch TV – a beneficial habit, for sure.
As for the ones I didn’t get done?
I’m happy to report that I don’t feel badly about those at all.
I may not have been able to…
Meet someone for a walk instead of for tea
Walk to a meeting
But that was because of circumstances, weather, and timing, it had nothing to do with my interest, willingness, or motivation. None of my meetings happened to be within walking distance and I ended up having to cancel my plans to meet for a walk instead of for tea because I was sick.
So with a satisfying success rate for 10 things for the 10th month, I’m now considering 11 things for the 11th month (a.k.a. My BIRTHDAY MONTH!)
There are some repeats in here but I’m cool with that.
Journal while sitting on the floor once a week
Practice those three tricky TKD patterns for at least 30 minutes (total)
Try a calisthenics video
Continue the stretch band strength training program from October
This weekend, my ongoing efforts to maximize my fun and my current specific efforts to increase my fitness levels* overlapped nicely when I saw that the Conqueror Virtual Challenges had a walking challenge related to the Salem Witch Trials.
Is this kind of a weird and tenuous connection? Yes.**
Am I heavily influenced by themed activities? Also, yes.
The challenge involves walking around 48kms over a self-determined period of time and in the course of the challenge I’ll ‘unlock’ historical information and locations relevant to the trials.
The connection to a real place and to historical events and the fact that I will ‘earn’ interesting facts by reaching certain checkpoints does add to my fun and it gives me an extra reason to keep moving.
Once I signed up, I received my ‘race bib’ which was pretty fun since I have never had one before – digital or otherwise.
Image description – My ‘race bib’ for the challenge which shows my number 03023 in black against a light purple background. My sign-up date ‘Oct 24, 2025’ is above my number and 30 mi / 48 km is below. The light purple background featuring the number is surrounded by a darker purple night scene which shows wrought iron gates, bare tree branches, and two fenceposts with lamps on them. There is a witch on a broom flying in front of a full moon on the upper right, my name is in the middle top of the image, and ‘The Salem Witch Trials’ is in green on the upper left. In the bottom centre are the words ‘Make Every Mile Count.’
I mean, I’m not racing anyone in any real sense of the word. I set my own timeline, I’ve given myself tons of time to complete the challenge, and I’m not part of a challenge group.
Really, my only competitor is me.
Yet, immediately after signing up for this, I was inclined to go for an extra walk because it was part of a bigger project.
Yes, I know that all of my fitness efforts are related to a bigger project – a happier me – but this challenge has predefined goals, obvious milestones, and there’s a definite end point. And I didn’t even have to put in the work to figure all of those things out.
Also, at the end of the challenge, the company will mail me a medal*** which will be a really cool bonus for doing something that already has inherent benefits.
*Yes, increasing my fitness levels has also been an ongoing project for me but after the necessary slow-down to recover from my injuries last year, I have been finding it hard to get back into a good fitness rhythm.
**In case you are wondering, I have, indeed, already done some overthinking about this. After considering it for some time, I felt that since it is focusing on mapping distances/locations and it gives contextual information, this challenge wasn’t particularly exploitative and it wasn’t dismissive of the situation or of the people involved.
**My husband did one of the Conqueror challenges last year and the medals – longer challenges have more than one – were delightful so I am looking forward to receiving mine.
It was a windy, wet day on Wednesday for the inaugural Plane Pull for the Elgin-Middlesex United Way.
I was part of a 15 person team. I really enjoyed getting to know new colleagues at Canada Life. We had fun sharing strategies and preparing to be the fastest. Our pull was 10:55 seconds.
15 people whooping it up as they pull a plane.
The winning team was less than 9 seconds!
Why do this stunt? The goal is to show that a small group of people working together can accomplish amazing things.
It’s important to remember that we can take steps to address social problems. It is easy to give in to despair when faced with big problems.
I loved the competition and camaraderie.
Nat smiles at the camera despite the wind and rain.
I knew my 16-day trip to Egypt with 3 midlife friends would be a fun, budget-friendly adventure, but it also became a test of stamina and strength for me.
We had no tour big bus providing a comfy, air-conditioned bubble. Rather, our ambitious travel schedule took us through half the country, hauling our backpacks up modest hotel staircases and navigating every natural and human-made obstacle in our path. Although we had quiet evenings, including a few days by a rooftop pool, by day our bodies were moving in lots of ways.
Our first of many tomb and temple visits, the burial chamber of Bannentiu, 26th dynasty (Roman Era) in the Baharia Oasis.
Bodies in Motion
In the desert near the Baharia Oasis we climbed up (then surfed down) sand dunes. In downtown Cairo, the honking cars, uneven pavement, and throngs of moving people in the street demanded constant physical manouvering. We toured ancient sites out in the hot sun, including Luxor’s Avenue of Sphinxes and Aswan’s Forgotten Obelisk. We also used steep ramps and narrow tunnels inside multiple tombs and pyramids, crouching under low ceilings carved over three and four thousand years ago!
Folks climbing a ramp in one of the Giza Pyramids, built for Pharoah Khufu in the 2500s BCE. Kim said the ramps were put in after her visit 16 years ago: before it was just dirt.
As well, we hiked three silent, stunning canyons in the South Sinai region that shimmered white, red, and multi-coloured in the sunshine. The next day, after a caravan of camels and their handlers got us most of the way up Mt Sinai, we used 750 steep steps to get up to its peak.
Riding Asfour (the Second), a 7-year old camel up the first 3000 steps of My Sinai was a highlight. And although Asfour did most of the work, my legs were still sore the next day!
Later, it was a relief to float face down in the salty water of the Red Sea over the most beautiful coral and schools of fish I have seen. We snorkelled twice: off the beach in Sharm El Sheik and off a glass-bottom boat in Hurghada. But even in and near the water, I had to be thinking about dehydration and sunburn.
Kimi and me snorkelling just off the beach in the Red Sea. Video by Lisa Porter.
Getting hurt could mean getting stuck. I nearly did a few times, once when I mildly rolled an ankle in the Coloured Canyon and when I jammed a finger on a tomb doorway at the Saqqara necropolis. But it felt good to keep moving. At least twice we saw a tourist who seemed unprepared or was having great difficulty getting through the tomb shafts.
Kim and Lisa going down the low-lit ramps in what I think was the Step Pyramid, built for Pharoah Djoser in the 2600s BCE. Video by Kimi Maruoka.
We covered thousands of steps per day, even on our 2- to 7-hour travel days. At the last minute I decided to leave my fitness tracker at home, and I’m glad I did. It helped me to make sense of how I was feeling in my body rather than by stats on a screen.
Rope repelling, then a rebar ladder, just to get down into the White Canyon. Our guide admitted he used this to judge hikers’ readiness for this canyon.
Caring Co-Travellers
And my body did feel many things, as I was under the weather for a good part of the trip: first menstrual cramps, a head cold that turned to cough, then mild heatstroke after the first time snorkeling, and finally a stomach bug. On my worst night, I laid awake shaking with chills, sipping tepid tablet-purified water, and waiting for dawn (or death, I had thought self-piteously).
A short video of Cairo’s downtown streets at night. Our group kept close watch on each other to avoid getting lost or run over.
But I survived. As a white, English-speaking tourist with a credit card and travel insurance on a holiday, I was never really in serious danger. I saw many Egyptians who may have been facing economic hardships and health risks I will never have to deal with as a middle-class Canadian.
Nevertheless, I am so grateful for my three travel buddies, who showed each other constant care throughout our journey. We divided snacks, each bought rounds of water, shared everything from tissues to electrolytes, and carried the mood for each other until someone sick (usually me) recovered.
A cat next to my day pack and water bottle. I stayed hydrated with old and new friends!
Kim, who had planned the travel and booked the local guides and drivers, happily made last-minute arrangements to help me join later when an early morning tour of Isis Temple in Aswan wasn’t possible for me. This caring company was the heart of my trip.
Me in a feeling-better moment, making silly Instagram poses with the backdrop of the Red Canyon behind me. Photos by Kimi Maruoka.
Proof of Life
I believe that our greater exertions paid off in greater fun. In exchange for living out of packs and in our sore, dust-covered bodies, we got to see and sleep in neat places, including under the desert stars, where we felt extremely lucky to be there, together and alive.
Our remarkable view of the white desert at night. This photo was not taken with a black/white filter.
There’s a certain idea of midlife that says to slow down, be careful, rest more. This trip refused that. It demanded and invited all kinds of motion, reminding me how much the body can still do when it must. It turns out that I was strong enough for Egypt.
Lisa and Elan racing (falling?) down a sand dune in the White Desert. Photo by either Kim or Kimi.
And by the end of the trip, I used nearly every pill I’d packed and every muscle I had. But getting over everything became part of my adventure story. I came home with a mildly sprained finger, hardwon but still overpriced souvenirs, and a feeling that my flawed and frustrating body could still bring me much, much joy.
Our fearless foursome trekking in the desert. To borrow a phrase from Kimi and her sisters: “We did it!!”
