Every Day

I hesitate to share this because it sounds egoic/bragging to me, but if it were a day of writing gratitudes in my journal I would definitely include this, so it only seems right to put it here.  I exercised every day for the month of January.  

 At first it wasn't on purpose.  It was because we didn't have skiable snow until the very end of Dec and the warm temps and great snow meant that it was around Jan 7th or 10th and I thought.  "I've exercised every day this month thus far, I wonder if I could do the whole month?"

These are my favorite types of goals, ones that begin of their own accord, kind of arising by themselves instead of manufactured by my brain.  I have a few routines - Michael and I usually do yoga together (that I improvise) Monday mornings.  He has some resistance bands so we've been using those once a week to find an online work-out to do.  Then I usually do an online class with my local yoga studio.  And the weeks that Michael's daughters are here - the oldest and I do a work-out on her phone.  So lots of small routines pile up.

There was one Sunday that were it not for my goal I wouldn't consider exercising. I thought that morning, "I could make myself do some video online or something."  But that would have just been ego, so I could say, "I did it."  That wasn't the energy I was looking for, plus I had other things I wanted to spend my time on that day.  I let the goal go and thought, "Oh well." I think it was Jan 17th. 

Then that afternoon a couple friends I asked if we could meet on Zoom, preferred to be outside during the day.  So I went to one's house and we were either going to sit by a fire pit or go for a walk.  I brought some ice cleats for our shoes, as it was super icy.  "So you want to walk?" one asked.  

"Either is fine.  I just brought these as an option."

We ended up going for a walk and when I got back to the car I realized we had walked for about an hour and a half.  "That counts!!"  I exclaimed to myself.

Today I finished the month with an outdoor cross-country ski with my brother and family.  My brother mentioned how my mother would have liked that they can ski/walk to a course the high school uses.  

That is true, she loved to ski and would walk to a tiny park a couple blocks from where we grew up, where she'd make a loop, or even in our backyard.  I can hardly imagine a more boring ski setting to go around and around a tiny circle.  Growing up I rolled my eyes at her, but now I marvel at her contentment with little things.

Last night I held a reflective Zoom gathering, using my birthday as an excuse for a bunch of friends.  There were a few people that had told me they were excited to come and then didn't show up.  One in particular had been one of the first people to respond to my idea, with great enthusiasm and then later said how much he was looking forward to it.

So I emailed a couple of them to say I appreciated their support of the idea and I hoped that whatever reason caused them to miss was a happy one.  They both responded that they remembered too late, one woke in the middle of the night.  I mentioned to them, as I did last night, that preparing poems and writing prompts for this made me want to do something similar on the anniversary of my dad's death which is fast approaching.  And if at least one other person would like to spend some quiet time in reflection about loss (any sort of loss) that it would motivate me to make this happen.  One person emailed me that the day after my dad's death will be the 2 year anniversary of her dad's death.  Wow.  Ok, I've got one person, that's all I need.

Then my enthusiastic friend who woke up in the middle of the night said that in March will be the 2 year anniversary of his dad's death.  He is coming too.  As is the other woman who missed last night.