Do something about this...

walk this way fellow humans...

I’ve committed to walking 5000steps per day for the rest of the year.

Q: Who have I committed to?

A: No one. Just myself really…and now you guys.

Q: Why 5000?

• It’s a round number which makes it legal currency,

• It’s about twice as many steps as I’ve been averaging these last two years - lost as I was in some kind of chronic-fatigue long-covid vortex

• It’s also half as much as we’re told to do…which is perfect because I don’t like being told what to do.

Q: Why Walking?

Walking is one of the original medicines is it not? Mind body and soul all seem to benefit.

Photo by Islam Hassan on Unsplash

Type A Personality

I’m much more of a Type Meh personality than a Type A (Those competitive buggers fuelled on anxiety and hope of a fitter, happier, healthy future). I’m not sure how it’s possible to live in the future, but if anyone can do it, Type A’s can.

Personally, I’m figuring out how to truly want what I already have before daring to figure out what I might truly want. It might be a case of putting alignment ahead of achievement.

Which is tricky when sometimes what you have is breathlessness and a swooping fear and bewilderment that comes with.

I am getting there.

Step Up

Whilst there are much more ambitious (but equally arbitrary) numbers in the step world, I figured twice as much as my current average was plenty ambitious.

As I’m always telling clients, friends, family…basically anyone who will listen… “Please meet yourself where you’re at”

Progress report: I’m currently averaging 4953 steps over the last 7 days.

At the End of the Day…it gets dark

It’s 6pm as I type this on my phone…and I still haven’t done my steps for the day.

I look up, and out of a fairly steamed up driver’s seat window. In-between writing I’m trying to see if my son’s finished his football training. My 2yr old daughter sleeps soundly in her carseat in the back.

Standard parenting territory…our own stuff gets pushed further and further right until the sun goes down and there’s barely anything left of the day.

Which means we normally say “Flip it, I’ll try again tomorrow”… or words to that effect.

Except today, I’ve met myself where I’m at (for once).

My goal of 5000 steps is really manageable, so even when I’m tired, and it’s late, there’s really no barrier to going and getting it done. The hard part is putting my hat and coat on, and once that’s done, I know I’m out the door.

And of course, once I’m out, it’s actually fun and a release.

The Streets Know YOUR Name

I have the streets and my own head to myself - if you have kids you’ll know how much of a luxury that is.

Walking the deserted streets like a ghost. With a just a sprinkling of street lights the shadows are long and the dark spots are numerous.

My eyes play tricks in the greyness and my brain defaults to standby mode. No longer able to function as it might, it switches off its relentless scramble to make sense of things.

I find myself in a place where things are no longer named. No thing is compared to no thing else. Things just are, and it feels like I’m awake in a dream.

These are my everyday familiar streets but they feel like nowhere at all. I can’t help but think I’m a ghost just passing through. Which of course I am. We all are.

During the day I have so many thoughts about these streets…

“Do the bins get emptied today?”

“I must brush those stones up”

“That car’s parked in a strange place”

…and on and on my dialogue goes.

Much of these thoughts remain largely unseen by my conscious attention. Only in their absence do they finally appear to me. I find these ideas abrasive. Like you would if you met a stranger and they just spoke at you with zero attempt to check in with how any of their conversation was landing with you.

At nighttime there is no monologue. Or if there, is it’s very muted.

Maybe you’ve had a similar experience when you’ve wandered someplace on holiday…not trying to get from A to B, you see the streets without cultural and societal context. The world doesn’t have purpose. It just is. It’s like the whole world is alive again maybe as you remember it from parts of your childhood.

This re-enchantment with the world made me realise how fortunate I was, as a man, to have this much freedom. Freedom to wander alone in the darkness as I pleased. A freedom not afforded to everyone.

Walk This Way

I wonder if you would care to start your own wandering journey?

Feel free to tag along if you have your own arbitrary number of steps you’d like to strut?

It’s great for the lymph drainage and should go along way to settling your nervous system. Who knows, it might even reduce those 3am cortisol wake up stories.

Yours in wellness,

David

PS - You’re welcome…