Tag: Habits

Walking is good for thinking

exercise

I try to go for a walk every day. I have kept my streak going for a while. Sadly, my Apple Watch, which tracks similar exercise-related things, does not tell me how many days in a row I’ve gone for a walk. I could probably dig that information out of the app’s colorful, well-designed graphical user interface, but I just know that I’ve been doing it for a while with very few breaks. The breaks are when I’m sick; not much else deters me.

The health benefits are good; I know that a couple of years ago when I would go for a walk I would quickly get out of breath and that doesn’t happen any more. My heart rate rarely gets out of Zone 1 unless I try to do a little jog.

I have mentally mapped out routes through my neighborhood, keeping to side streets as much as possible. The routes include laps around a park nearby so I can walk on soft grass if I want (or stop at a public restroom or get some water if I need to). I can tailor the routes to be anywhere from 25 minutes long to over an hour. It’s great.

One of the major benefits, though, is the mental break. Especially for the past 7 months, I’ve spent all my time at home, rarely leaving, because I was unemployed. Going outside gives me a new viewpoint, literally, and the habitual movement allows my mind to wander.

Wandering minds are creative minds. Walking, it turns out, is good for thinking.

On today’s walk, as on nearly every other walk, I had headphones in and listened to podcasts. Today’s was this week’s episode of Accidental Tech Podcast, where three friends talk about various tech news and developments, mostly focused on Apple and the ecosystem surrounding Apple products. They do wander into other topics, though, and a frequent one is cars and car news, since the podcast they started first was called Neutral and was entirely about cars.

Casey, in the aftershow of this week’s episode, told a truely astonishing story about a car failure that I do not want to spoil. If you have any interest in cars, as I do, you owe it to yourself to listen and marvel at Casey and his wife’s terrible luck. Everyone is fine, except for their car, an otherwise-bulletproof 2017 Volvo.

Listening to that, though, reminded me of many past car-related stories, and since I’m trying to post something here daily, I realized that I could mine those stories for future posts. It would make a nice break from all the D&D I’ve been posting here lately. Gotta keep up with my theme, which is that I write about whatever the fuck I want and don’t have to stick to any single topic because this is my place on the internet.

I was able to remind myself of that topic by asking Siri on my Watch to remind me about it when I got home. This feature is amazing for me: the act of making the reminder helps me remember, and then getting another reminder when I get close to home helps seal it in my short-term memory, which is otherwise like a fine Swiss cheese.

Look forward to posts about that, and other topics, in the days to come, but for now, I’m thankful I can still move around, and that my body and my mind work together to keep me living a creative life.

A listing of recent positive habits

General

Another Saturday night and I ain’t got no… topic to write about. Let me just do some typing for a while and see what comes up. Today has been a slow day for me. Since becoming unemployed and having my dad move in while his space gets remodeled, my days have been bland and blah. I spend 80% of my time in my apartment, only leaving to go grocery shopping, or to get my dad to his appointments. I sit in my computer room looking for jobs I can apply for, rewriting my resume, or zoning out if there’s nothing else going on. Sounds super mentally healthy, huh?

I do carve out some time to work on my D&D game. My next session is next week, and I’m very much looking forward to it. Still need to get a handle on what my players want to do next but I have so many ideas for new plots or advancing the plots they’re interested in that my plot cup runs over, so I’m not worried about having enough material to start the next chapter off with a bang.

All my friends have stayed in touch but have been very hermit-y, if I can steal a word my friend Christi made up but describes exactly how we all feel. Tracy has been dealing with family stuff and work stuff, Christi has been doing work stuff for her business, my sister has been doing work things while also dealing with the house repairs from the January ice storm, my nephew and niece have just been working… we’re all just keeping our heads down and trying to get through to the good times that have to be coming. Right? Good times are coming?

I do manage to get at least 30 minutes of walking outside done a day. That’s been very helpful to get my body moving and get a break from sitting and staring at my screen. Once my cough clears up, and if the weather stops being so gray and rainy, I might start trying to jog-walk again. That was good. I’ve been trying to get at least some fiber-rich food daily, which also helps my body feel like it’s not running on fumes (where by “fumes” I mean “carbs in the form of sugar” mostly.)

Because dad has been helping with groceries we generally always have food in the house, which has also helped with my budget and with nutrition. Before dad got here I would eat out or order expensive delivery all the time, but I don’t do that when he’s here. I do sometimes, rarely, like once-a-week, sneak out to get a burrito or tacos or teriyaki from someplace close by, which makes me feel a little guilty for not sharing with dad. On the other hand, dad also goes across the street to a local bar for booze and sometimes food, so he’s not the only one not eating every meal at home these days. It balances out. Right?

Other habits of course include posting at least 500 words here daily, which is hard sometimes, like tonight, but other times, like last night, incredibly easy and fun and produces a story that I enjoy telling. The slog makes the good posts stand out and feel worth it. This is a habit I like pursuing.

But here’s to better times ahead, folks. Sending love to everyone, no exceptions.

Adding healthy things

exercise

Haven’t been eating very well lately. Haven’t been eating much at all, actually, since I’ve been sick and my appetite has been low to non-existent. Most of what I’ve been putting in my mouth is microwaved burritos, simple sandwiches, or things like cherry turnovers, chocolate bars, tortilla chips, and the like. And I can recognize that my body, feeling sick, and then putting food of questionable nutritional value into it, just makes it feel worse in the long run. Not good; it’s a downward spiral, the opposite of a virtuous cycle.

What am I trying to do to change that? I am abiding by one of the best rules I’ve ever learned from dieticians and nutrionists: instead of removing unhealthy-but-loved things from my diet, creating a lack and a hole that is unsatisfying to me, I will aim to add things that are healthy on top of what I’m already eating. And by adding things to my diet I am hopefully satisfying my hunger enough that it has at least a chance to squeeze out the unhealthy things, because I can only eat so much, y’know?

Last night, late, around 9:30 or 10:00 pm, I got hungry, and wasn’t sure what I had in the fridge that I could eat. I worried it was too late, too close to bedtime, but still didn’t want to go to bed hungry. I went downstairs, and on the way down, realized I could make a little charcuterie plate. I had cheese slices, pickles, carrots, some ham slices… it was the perfect idea. Light enough, but I could include good, fiber and nutrient-rich, things. I cut up some carrots, some celery, and then also included a couple of slices of that salty black forest ham. I poured a little jalepeno Ranch dressing into a cup to dip the carrots (and, frankly, the ham) into.

Overall it was a better meal for the additions. Instead of me nuking another carb and fat laden burrito, I got a nice spread of items. I felt mentally better and physically better.

Today, for lunch, I fell back on the burrito thing. But, as I did last night, I sliced up a carrot and ate them along the cheese, salsa, and sour cream topped burrito. And again, I felt the better for it.

This “add things that are healthy” idea is a good one and I plan on doing it going forward as much as possible. Can’t wait to feel better overall.

I’m also walking for at least 30 minutes a day. That hasn’t yielded as much benefit as I’d hoped but at least I’m getting outside, getting some fresh air, and moving around a bit every day. It’s not vigorous exercise but it’s better than sitting in my computer chair all day, which is what I’m likely to do if I don’t force myself to add exercise to my daily routine. Adding good things is the rule and it works for physical activity as well as meals and food.