Micromovements

One area of my life I've long been wanting to improve is the whole fitness/exercise thing. When I lived in Philly, every day I walked, I biked, I skated, I stood around waiting for (or riding on) the bus or subway. I walked to the grocery store, I biked to work and to social events, I took full advantage of that wonderful location right near Kelly Drive for my last few years there, skating 45 minutes (about 8 miles) most days, except when there was some %$#&@! regatta happening. I did join a gym at one point, but frankly, I hate the gym. Other people's germs and sweat, having to worry about how I look and what I wear (not that I had to, but I did), showering in public. Honestly, the public gym is pretty close to my definition of Hell. Not to mention a lot of money. The one thing I enjoyed at the gym was the aerobics class on the mini-trampoline, but not enough to keep going, especially when biking and skating, despite a small up-front investment in equipment, are pretty much free.

Since moving to Ohio, a lot of the activity that was built into just propelling myself around town and through life vanished. Moving to the suburbs and having a car have meant I've gained maybe 20 pounds or so since I moved here. Not that 10 of those I maybe kind of needed to gain-- I see photos of myself from back then and I do look a little malnourished (of course, now when I see photos of myself I think I look, shall we say, overnourished, but there must be a happy medium). I also didn't eat too well in Philly, eating tortilla chips with cheese and salsa for dinner way too often, and I didn't realize it until maybe a year or two ago when I found out that I'd been consuming way too little protein pretty much ever since I started living on my own. I'm still working on getting my diet to a healthier place, and I'm renewing efforts to get the exercise piece going, too. Yesterday The Professor and I walked around the block, which is surprisingly just over a mile. That seems pretty big for a block to me, but great, I'll take it. This morning, we walked around a few blocks, totalling up to about 3.8 miles according to Google Maps. I am glad we did.

SARK talks about micromovements in her book, A Creative Companion. The idea as I recall (the book isn't to hand just now, and I don't want to break my stride to go find it) is that by doing one tiny thing that moves you toward your goal, eventually you will get there, and tiny changes are easier to make than huge ones. Not exactly a novel concept, but I like the way she presents it. Today's micromovement was walking a few miles in the morning. I'm hoping to keep moving forward toward having more regular exercise in my day-to-day life. Walking to my J-O-B is one way I can build in more activity, so I'll try to do that at least one day this week. There's one little hitch to the walking, one obstacle as yet to be addressed, but that's a topic for another post.