If it has been a while, then please take this post as a sign to pat yourself on the back, congratulate yourself, and claim your gold star.
And if you congratulated yourself earlier today?
Well, pat yourself on the back, congratulate yourself again, and claim your gold star.
If you’re like me, there will be times when you are really challenging yourself and times when you are just kind of treading water.
Both are good.
In fact, the whole range of ways to show up are all good.
And I’d like you to celebrate every one of them.
I am proud of you for showing up when it’s fun and I’m proud of you for showing up when it’s annoying to be there.
And I hope that, overall, you get more fun than annoyance but here’s your gold star for your efforts either way.
Go Team Us!
I’ve been trying out gold star cards with encouraging text and I like how this one turned out. Image description: a black card with a small painting of a gold star on the left side. On the right side is a piece of white card with rounded corners that says, in black text, “ this gold star celebrates your hard work, the effort you put into showing up every time. Congratulations! I’m so proud of you.” The white card is framed in black with a gold frame outside of the black one. There is a thick gold line a little ways under the star that also extends downward underneath the white card.
Since 2017 I’ve been a member of the 2XX workouts in 20XX Facebook group. I’ve always made it– most years screaming in on the last day of the year, sometimes doing two or more workouts to squeak through. But hey, a win’s a win.
Until 2025. I was chugging along until the beginning of fall. Then, for no particular reason, I trailed off. Stopped posting. I felt like I should resume, but I didn’t.
Then in 2026, I restarted, only to stop again after recording 6 or 7 workouts. Hmmm.
I’ve never had an easy relationship with challenges– they bring out my inner belligerent teenager, ready to flip off anyone (including my non-teenaged self) who’s trying to put me on a schedule of (Heaven forbid) self-improvement. But my non-teenaged self knows it’s not really self-improvement I’m aiming at; rather, it’s self-care. Huh.
I’ve been a close-to-daily meditator since the pandemic. Before 2020, I meditated off and on for decades. But the combination of extreme necessity and a handy app (I’ve boosted the Happier app a lot here, but there are loads of them to try) has helped me set up and maintain a practice that works for me. As they say, the numbers don’t lie…
I’ve meditated 308 weeks in a row. Yes, missing a few days here and there, but I’m pretty proud of this.
The co-most important lesson I’ve learned from 308 weeks of close-to-daily meditation (along with “just breathe”) is that the streak that matters is the streak of one. Being and doing at the time is the thing. Not for what it will yield down the road, but for what it does now, in that moment.
Yes, that sounds cheesy. But a) something can be both cheesy and true at the same time; and b) I’m trying to be sincere here, so don’t pick on me… 🙂
Back to the 226 workouts in 2026: It’s June 28, so we’re almost at the six-month mark. I’m restarting a focus on doing and recording workouts as of yesterday. My plan is 113 workouts by the end of the year. I started last night with yoga before bed. That’s one. I can continue with streaks of one at a time.
Time to do some more yoga now.
Dear readers, how do you feel about streaks? Interrupting them, restarting them? I’m not asking for advice here, but it would be cool to hear how these experiences feel for you. I’ll report back in a while on mine.
Feeling open for business. Open to what’s ahead. By Clemens Van Lay for Unsplash.
I am solidly in the messy, frustrating middle of so many projects right now – fitness and otherwise.
And it is taking a lot of effort to keep working away at stuff instead of ditching everything and starting over.
The middle of any project is rarely fun but it can be especially dreadful for those of us with ADHD. The novelty has worn off, there’s a lot of trial and error, and everything seems very, very dull.
My brain really wants me to
start some new stories instead of working on ones that need revising.
try some new exercises instead of sticking with my walking/yoga/mobility routine.
buy new containers to store stuff instead of decluttering (decluttering = so many choices to make -ugh!)
try some new drawing techniques instead of improving my current skills.
invent different workshops and projects instead of finishing and promoting the ones I am already working on.
(don’t even get me started on my volunteer projects!)
But despite the noise my brain is making about this, I know that starting something new – in any category- will only be temporarily fun.
Pretty soon that new, fun thing will be at the messy middle stage and I’ll be annoyed all over again.
And, even though my brain has doubts, I know that I will REALLY enjoy when I finally finish something, when I can feel a difference in my body or my mind, and when I can see some of the progress I have made.
The only way to get to that real enjoyment is to keep inching everything forward, to add fun and novelty where I can, and to keep reminding myself that it is extra fun to actually finish something – even if that time feels very far away at the moment.
So, Team, even allowing for ADHD-related intensity, I’m pretty sure that ‘Why is the middle so annoying?’ is a pretty common feeling.
In fact, being annoyed with any part of any process seems pretty common.
You might be annoyed with the details required to get started or the details required to finish up.
You might find the middle incredibly tedious.
The unknowns at the beginning might get on your nerves.
Figuring out the last few steps might be frustrating.
All of it makes sense and it is all perfectly ok.
Sure, your frustration might lead you to use a slightly different approach or it could mean you need a little break or need a little more support.
But none of those feelings of frustration automatically suggest that this project isn’t for you.*
And when they arise, you can remind yourself that they are part of your process and then find a way to forge ahead – perhaps slowly, perhaps after a break, perhaps with a little more fun added to the mix.
I’m not saying that it is easy to do that, just that it is possible.
And your effort will be worth it.
In fact, speaking of effort, here’s our gold star for our efforts today – no matter which part of the process we are in right now.
Go Team Us!
PS – Be kind to yourself out there, pretty please.
*Meanwhile, if every part of the project is frustrating every single time, then it may be time to consider whether the project is a good fit overall.
Coordinating the blog means that a lot of the social media content that comes my way is women’s fitness-related. I get inspirational posts about fitness and how-tos, race videos and analysis, and discussions and commentary on women’s fitness and fitness motivation. However, you look at it, it’s a lot.
This weekend I was struck by two posts, and I want to know what you think about them.
If you’re new to women’s sports, you may be noticing how concerned the coverage and marketing of these leagues are with the next generation of players, the “little girls” who are watching and being inspired by their favorite athletes. When these leagues were first selling out arenas, I could maybe understand (and forgive) this focus. But as we are several years into the proof that women’s sports can sell out arena, this narrative is beginning to feel shallow and deeply sexist.
The tension between how women’s sports are being covered and how they perhaps should be covered bubbled over in last night’s post-game press conference following the Boston Fleet/Montréal Victoire matchup at TD Garden. The game had been played in front of a sold out crowd, a huge milestone for the Fleet and definitely a huge moment for the players. The game was also a matchup between the two best teams in the PWHL, with perhaps the two best goalies in the world.
The first three questions for Fleet players Megan Keller and Aerin Frankel were variations on the same question:
“Also kind of redundant, but what do you think young players can learn from the game tonight and the entire PWHL as a whole?”
“What does playing in a venue like TD Garden say about the growth of the PWHL?”
“A little redundant, but just being here and seeing the young girls with the signs, the older women who never thought they would get to see women’s sports celebrated like this—how much does a night like tonight remind you that what you’re doing is bigger than just hockey?”
At first, I thought they were exaggerating. Anyway, go read the whole post. It’s more complicated than you might think from the first slide.
We often do things for multiple motives, and surely it’s not so bad if one of those motives is to help others. I’m proud of my academic achievements and the things I’ve done in my career, but I’m also happy when young women undergraduates say they find my career inspiring. But I don’t do them to be a good role model–that’s just a side-effect of what I do. And at first, that’s how I felt about women athletes inspiring young girls to stick with sports. It’s not why they do it, but it’s a good thing that young girls are inspired.
And I began to think that women’s fitness and sports and motivation is more complicated. In the case of serious women athletes, there’s the young girls and inspiring the next generation narrative. In the case of everyday exercisers and regular women who work out, there’s the narrative about working out because it’s better for our families if we’re fit.
I thought, well, actually, what if I am exercising for me, so I can do the things I love. Is that so selfish? Is it so wrong to care about my future for me?
I’ve never thought that I should work out so my kids can look after themselves and not worry about taking care of me.
I exercise for me — so I can do the things I love, feel strong, feel capable, feel alive in my body. Not to be a good role model. Not to inspire the next generation. And definitely not so I won’t be a burden.
That last one deserves a closer look, because it comes up constantly in women’s fitness motivation, and it bothers me more than the little-girls framing does. At least “inspire the next generation” is positive and other-directed in a way that’s generous. “Stay fit so you don’t burden your family” quietly tells women our own well-being doesn’t count on its own terms. You’re allowed to care about your health — but only instrumentally, only in service of others, only so you don’t inconvenience anyone. It smuggles in a moral hierarchy where women’s needs are legitimate only when they’re actually someone else’s needs in disguise.
Whether you’ll need significant care in old age is far more about genetic luck than about lifestyle. The people I’ve known who needed the most help did nothing wrong. They ate well, they moved their bodies, they slept, they lived. Illness and decline don’t arrive as punishment for neglect. Pretending otherwise doesn’t motivate better health habits. There’s no need to add shame to an already hard situation.
So here’s what I want to say plainly: it is okay to work out for yourself. To want to be strong because strength feels good. To want to keep cycling because you love cycling. To care about your future self not because she’ll be easier for others to care for, but because she’s you, and you matter.
Women are allowed to have self-directed reasons for the things we do — in sports, in fitness, in life. That’s not selfishness. That’s just being a full person.
Image description: looking down bare legs towards feet wearing running shoes and socks, standing on a textured concrete sidewalk. Photo by Tracy
I’ve always been drawn to the idea of cultivating beginners’ mind about things that we think we know. It’s a way of going back to that excited learning mindset where we are open-minded, enthusiastic, and teachable.
And so it was with that attitude that I’ve been approaching my spring effort to get back to a regular running routine with the Couch to 5K program. As I wrote at the beginning of the month, it’s a nine week program designed for people new to running.
I’m not new to running, having taken it up as part of Sam and my “Fittest by 50” challenge way back in 2012. But I hit a wall after my last major event, the Around the Bay 30K back in 2019. I injured my Achilles and since then I have never quite hit my stride again. I’ve tried different things, most notably the Nike Learn to Run program a couple of years back. But I couldn’t quite let go of how things “used to be” and the idea that they “should” quickly be that way again.
Not this time. This time I am forcing myself to follow the program as written, not adding more running intervals or skipping weeks that feel too easy. I fell a little bit behind, with some of the weeks being spread out beyond 7 days. So I’m only starting week 4 instead of being at the end of it. Still, I have stuck to the assignment as written. And it’s been easy to get myself out the door because the workouts are so reasonable. (Apparently that changes a bit in week 5)
My beginners’ mind approach has been really good for me because it means I haven’t been too concerned with pace or how far I get or anything that I used to track. I’m not saying I’ll never go back to caring about those things, but it’s liberating to be out there without any concern for speed or distance.
I’m also not comparing myself to anyone else when I’m out there. We all have different goals and right now mine is simply to get back to a three times a week running routine, following the Couch to 5K schedule. That’s it.
Though it’s still early days, I feel confident about recommending this approach to anyone who is new to running or trying to work their way back. It’s a great way to be present for the arrival of spring, which is coming in short bursts this year, with some cold reminders that, at least in my part of the world, we’re not really in the clear until late May. Whatever, a regular running commitment has put me in touch with the vagaries of Canadian spring weather in a direct and enjoyable way.
If you’ve had experience with C25K I’d love to hear about it in the comments!
Cognitive surrender is an essential new term that’s arisen to describe the abdication of our own reasoning to a machine that sounds fluent, confident, and authoritative. Studies are showing that when people interact with AI tools, they accept flawed reasoning at a startling level (almost 75% of the time). Not because they don’t have the capacity to reason better themselves. But because it is easier not to question. As a writer, it will likely come as no surprise that I’m leery of outsourcing. I worry about dulling not just my cognitive capacity, even more so my creativity.
And, yes, I have started working with AI tools, because I also think it’s important to understand what these machines are all about and how I might use them in an un-surrendered manner. I almost used the word collaborate in that last sentence, instead of use. I chose not to, because I’m not yet ready to acknowledge these machines as entities. That feels like surrender. This from someone who is more than willing to see trees as sentient beings well before reading Michael Pollan’s new book, A World Appears.
I am exploring the border between surrender and leveraging these cognitive machines to free my time for deeper engagement with the world. More akin to my vacuum cleaner than a friend.
I have been thinking a lot about surrender in my body, too. Every time I read an article about aging and activity, which tells me that I should move more gently, now that I’m on the verge of a new decade, a part of me growls protectively. Not yet.
This physical version of surrender can be seductive. Messaging that encourages the little voices that say: I’m older now. Intensity is harder. Recovery is harder. Maybe I should just… let these things be harder. Be gentle with myself. Slow down. Stop. Lie down. The End. Okay—those last four are the hyperbole kicking in.The reasoning (without exaggeration) arrives fluently, confidently, with authority. And, as with AI reasoning, if I’m not careful, I might accept these blandishments about aging without interrogating the particularities of my own case.
I see the parallel this way: an authoritative-seeming signal in the form of an AI answer or an aging body; the availability of a path of least resistance; the ways that acceptance is not neutral, reshaping what we expect of ourselves and ultimately what we are actually capable of.
What the cognitive surrender research captures is that the problem isn’t using external tools. We humans have been off-loading cognitive tasks for a while now. Thank you, calculators. The red flag is what happens when we stop verifying. When silken reasoning substitutes for truth. When we accept not because we’ve evaluated, but because it’s so frictionless (and pleasant) to not expend the effort.
In the physical realm, adjusting our expectations as we age is not always surrender. Of course not. Surrender is unexamined acceptance. Letting the message of limitation go unchallenged. Sliding past the effort of finding out just what we are still capable of.
I turn 60 this year. I’d like to say I feel easy, breezy about that. I don’t. I’m in search of the right balance of grace and grit. I have set myself the goal of running a half marathon (21 kilometers or 13.1 miles) every month. Twelve months, twelve runs (among all the other runs I will do). When I was younger, that distance was a regular sized effort. Last year, I did not run that distance even once. And my year culminated in foot surgery in late November (which I wrote about here).
The decision has an element of stubbornness, to be sure. I am a Taurus, after all. On New Year’s Day, I started the year running 21k with my brother on mountain trails. I had a genuine concern that I would not run the whole distance. It took a while. I got it done. I was inspired. And so, this challenge. As I write this, four 21k are done. Eight to go.
I hear the voices that tell me: You’re not built for this anymore. I’m checking their veracity. They might be right. I might not be up for the challenge. I want to be gentle with myself, if I’m not. This is not about punishment. It’s about exaltation. The joy of discovering, each month, that I still have the capacity.
When I was a child, my mother always made us take the stairs. I remember glancing longingly at elevators as we passed them by. Now I live on the eighth floor, and I take the stairs almost every time I leave or come home. Not always. I’m realistic, not rigid. Not because I’m proving something. Because the habit of not surrendering has become its own kind of instinct. My mother was training something in me: the reflex to push gently against the available convenience, to stay curious about what I might actually be capable of.
The AI researchers found that people with higher fluid IQ scores were more likely to maintain their own judgment under pressure. I do not claim any extra intelligence. I think gentle resistance is more about habit. The habit of fact checking.
This is what I want to hold onto as I run my way through this year, one half marathon at a time. Not the delusion that there no limits that come with age. I have plenty. Instead, I want to cultivate the discipline of inquiry, to distinguish real limits from the limits that are presented with confidence, waiting for me to accept them without scrutiny.
My body, like a large language model, will tell me what it thinks I want to hear in smooth and reasonable tones. Rest. Take the elevator. Watch Netflix.
Sometimes my body is right. And I will be dancing with surrender and resistance, until I find the choreography that leads to graceful, gritty acceptance.
I don’t know about how things are going for you but my brain has been rather uncooperative for the past few weeks.
It differs from day-to-day – sometimes I can do what I planned, sometimes it feels like my ADHD meds aren’t working at all, and sometimes I feel like I get up in the morning, get spun around for a few hours, and then I’m dumped into 9:30 at night without any sense of what kept me feeling busy all day.
Needless to say, this has not been a fun experience at all.
And I think I could just wait out the tiredness, the frustration, and the brain fog if my capacity wasn’t all over the place. The fact that I can do some things with ease (and speed) and other things (that are normally straightforward) feel so difficult and convoluted that I either can’t get started or I end up moving so slowly that I get on my own nerves.
The worst thing is that I know the things I need to do to feel better, I am just having such a hard time making myself do them.
Now this is the part where some people would be saying “You just gotta push yourself. Try harder! This is just resistance.”
I’m voting no on that.
Sure, maybe there is some resistance in the mix of my challenges right now but pushing myself or telling myself to “just” try harder* is not going to be the solution.
Instead, when things are tough like this, what I always need to do is to figure out a way to keep putting one foot in front of the other, to do what I can when I can, and to rest when I need to – all while being very kind to myself about the process.
I don’t need to push myself or to try harder, I need to pare things down as much as I can.
And if you are struggling in any way right now, I invite you to do the same.
If you aren’t up to a full yoga practice, spend a few minutes in Savasana on your mat.
If you can’t write in your journal, do a little voice dictation into your phone or do some drawing in your notebook.
If you can’t tackle that big project, is there a smaller section that feels doable right now? Is there someone who can help you with it? Can you do anything to adjust your own or other people’s expectations around this project at the moment?
If you have been waiting to respond to an email until you have composed the perfect message, can you send a ‘Here’s a quick answer but I’ll get back to you in a few days with the details.’ type of message?
If you are having trouble eating the way you would like to, is there a quicker solution that keeps you fed and isn’t taxing on your brain? (Someideas )
If you can’t stir yourself to go for a walk outside, can you walk in your living room?
If your strength training routine is beyond you at the moment, can you do some mobility exercises or leg lifts or some calisthenics instead?
You can see where I am going here, right?
When things are challenging but you know you will feel better if you take action, you don’t have to summon the energy to do the big version of something – you can do a smaller version. You can pare things down until that activity feels doable.
You can be kind to today-you and tomorrow-you at the same time by scaling your actions to match your current capacity.
And this applies at all times, not just when you are struggling. It’s ok – it’s ENCOURAGED – to meet yourself where you are rather than being annoyed with yourself for not being somewhere else.
So, Team, however today finds you, I wish you ease and I invite you to consider whether you need to reduce the pressure in any area of your life by paring things down.
And I’m offering you this gold star in celebration of your efforts to take good care of yourself.
Go Team Us!
Isn’t this a cheery star? I’m going to prop her up next to my computer. Image description: A small painting of a happy-faced gold star with lines in the bottom left that kind of make it look like she jumped into the middle of the white card she is drawn on. The card is propped up between the keys on my black computer keyboard.
*Christine shudders in neurodivergence. Never EVER tell someone with ADHD that they aren’t trying hard enough – you can’t see the effort they have to put in to focus their attention, corral their working memory, and try to get their executive functions to, you know, function. It’s exhausting and takes A LOT of effort – and that’s BEFORE they actually start the task.
I’m probably not alone in having stops and starts in my fitness routines. My favourite themes over the years have been about starting small, doing less, getting over injuries with small steps. And that’s where I am again after deciding that I would not participate in winter running this year. It’s been a long winter. I got out there today after a four-month hiatus.
Since I’ve never really managed to stick with a consistent running routine for more than a few months at a time since just before the pandemic, I feel as if I am starting at the beginning.
Today was the first nice day of nice spring running weather, where I could run in shorts and a t-shirt. And so I chose it to be my day one of the beginners running program, Couch to 5K.
Couch to 5K is probably the most widely used learn to run app. It’s a nine-week program designed to get someone from not running at all to running for 30 continuous minutes over the course of three runs a week for nine weeks.
It starts easy and that is just what I want after a long hiatus. Week one has three runs the same: 5 minutes warm up walk, and then 8 intervals of 1 minute of running followed by 1 1/2 minutes of walking, and closing out with a 5 minute walk.
I’m going in with beginners mind because despite having many kilometres under my feet, I feel like a newbie. And I’m open to learning something new about what I can do and how I can do it.
I have let go of what I “used to be able to do,” and am focusing on what I can do today.
So, apparently we’re starting April tomorrow which is bizarre because I am pretty sure we just started March.
Time is a mystery.
But seeing as the calendar is insisting that a new month is imminent, I thought it would be fun to look at some of the fitness and wellness related days that have been assigned to April.
April is…
Move More Month – that seems pretty promising and it could be pretty easy, if the weather cooperates even a little. And for many of our bloggers and readers, it ties in nicely with the fact that April is also Active Dog Month -it’s like a 2 for 1 special, really.
Stress Awareness Month – I think we are all pretty aware of stress (ha!) but this could be a good time to pay attention to your stress levels and see if you can find some relief.
For me, though, the best awareness day this month is April 5 – which is My Sister Denise’s Birthday Awareness Day.
Denise is a fun, creative, outdoorsy person and I highly recommend that you celebrate My Sister Denise’s Birthday Awareness Day by finding some nonsense to participate in, by taking yourself outside for some fun, or by doing something creative.
In fact, if you *do* celebrate My Sister Denise’s Birthday Awareness Day on Sunday, let me know and I will draw you your very own gold star as a reward.
I like snow. I like cosy evenings. I like the way the air smells. I like bundling up to go outside. I’m a big fan of sweaters. I like seeing light on the snow. I even like shovelling snow (up to a certain point!)
And even on the most basic level, I just like the variation from other seasons of the year.
But by the time February comes, it is wearing on me.
It really starts at the end of January when time seems to both stretch and contract so I have really long days but really short weeks and then I somehow get unceremoniously dumped into February.
February takes forever and it is always a big struggle for me. I have extra trouble figuring out my time, my projects, and my capacity. It’s almost like my ADHD meds don’t fully work that month and everything is especially difficult and frustrating.
For example, this year I had a plan to do two small things in February. I was going to do a wall set for one minute a day and I was going to add more vegetables to my lunch
I did pretty well with the lunch vegetables but the wall sit? That just went wrong.
The wall set was somehow both too big a task and two smaller task at once. It felt like I could fit it in anywhere in my day., That sounds like an upside but if I can fit it in anywhere in my day then I’ll end arguing with myself all day about when to do it.
I realized that it’s hard to do a wall sit when I have socks on because I end up, slipping on both the flooring and the carpet while trying to hold the position.
But I could never convince myself to put on my sneakers to do a one minute exercise.
In fact, February fills up my brain so much that the sneaker idea didn’t occur to me until more than halfway through the month.
And I never did convince myself to put the sneakers on.
I noticed this February pattern a few years ago, and I have tried a variety of solutions to cope with this annual bewilderment. Things have improved, but there is still a ways to go and I am hampered by the fact that I often can’t see things are going sideways until they have reached an annoying level of sideways-ness.
Anyway, as you can, imagine, I was really glad to see March.
I’m not saying that March 1 is magic but I’m not NOT saying that.
Once we switch to March, it feels like my brain takes a deep breath and suddenly there’s a bit more space to figure things out.
You can’t tell now, of course, but this is where a single spring flower grows and blooms each year. I love watching for it as spring goes on. Image description, a photo of the back of someone’s fence with snow on the ground and a few evergreen trees about halfway between the viewer and the fence.
And once the clocks change, I see even more of an improvement in my perspective, my overall mood, and in my capacity to make useful plans and to follow through on them.
So, I was thinking about all of those things last week and then I overheard a conversation some friends of mine were having at TKD.
(This had nothing to do with martial arts, it had to do with spring.)
One of my friends is a farmer (she also runs a farm-tech company) and she said that there had been signs of spring for weeks
She said that we probably hadn’t even noticed, but the signs are there – more birds are singing, there are probably more bugs showing up in our houses, and that there are lots of things going on underground that we won’t see for ages.
And when she said that I realized that not only had I heard more birds and seen more bugs, but the sun was feeling a bit warmer and the ground felt somehow different than it had two weeks before.
Recognizing all those things felt so great that I started looking for more signs.
And I noticed that the tips of the branches of the trees were looking a little thicker, like growth has started.
Doesn’t that kind of look like buds at the tip of those branches? I’m not sure at what point a bud can be officially called a bud but something is going on right there.. Image description: A photo of a couple of the branches of the lilac tree in my front yard. At the tips of the branches are the suggestion of buds, even if they’re not buds yet. The branches are in the very foreground and in the background, you can See snow on lawns a few people’s driveways and some of my neighbours houses in the background.
And something about how the snow is sitting on the ground has changed. Even though we had more snow over the weekend, there’s something different and somewhat spring-y about it.
See:
It felt so good and so cheering to take a stroll today. A photo of my dog Khalee on our street on a sunny somewhat springlike day. The sun is behind us and she is standing where she can be seen in the photo. You can only see me as a shadow, and you can see the shadow of the leash that I’m holding that she is on the other end of. Her shadow was visible too, of course. There’s a small snowbank nearby and she’s standing on some greyish asphalt. She is a light brown, medium size dog. She’s mostly facing away from the camera, but she’s turned back a bit probably wondering why I stopped walking.
Even the colour of the sky seems deeper recently. it’s not quite a spring or summer sky, but it’s getting there.
I love seeing that blue get stronger. A photo of several leafless trees and a couple of evergreens next to a fence with snow on the ground. The sky behind the trees is an almost spring colour of blue with a few long white clouds
So with things getting ready to shift outside, it’s no wonder that things are also shifting in my brain.
In the last week or so, I’ve noticed myself thinking a bit more long-term about exercise plans again.
And it feels far easier to get myself to go for a walk, to do some yoga, or to just move around in general.
I was on a writing retreat this past weekend and instead of sitting at a table to work I was motivated to sit on my yoga mat on the floor instead, working on my lap, on a low table, or on the floor itself. That felt like a huge improvement because I know how much more likely I am to move and stretch and take good care of myself while I’m working if I’m seated on the floor.
No, I’m not saying that I couldn’t do any of these things three weeks ago, but now that first step, the initiation of that task, is decidedly easier.
