Tuning in #SOLC26 6/31

After I broke my wrist in December, I took a few weeks off from walking the dog. In fact, I took a few weeks off from walking at all; I had no desire to find out what might happen if I slipped on another patch of ice. Can one break a currently-broken wrist? What if I slipped and broke my left wrist? What does one do with two broken wrists? I decided that I didn’t want to know the answers to these questions so, since Ottawa is definitely icy in the winter, I stayed home and “let” my partner and the kids walk the dog.

The children were compliant but not thrilled with their new duty. Mr. 15 wondered pretty regularly exactly how not icy it would have to be before I would take up my former duties. “Winter lasts a long time, Mom,” he stated bleakly. Mr. 17 tried to talk me into “just” using my left hand – but walking Max, our large energetic black lab mix, is a two-handed endeavour. Still, I missed my daily walks, so in mid-February I tentatively rejoined the dog-walking rotation: anytime the sidewalks were mostly clear, I took the dog.

Things were different now. Where before walking Max was just something I did, now it required my full focus. I scanned the sidewalks for icy patches; I looked ahead to spot other dogs that might cause Max to pull on the leash; I checked the streets for any vans he might need to try to attack (he really hates vans and buses). To protect my right hand, I needed my wits about me, so I did not put in earbuds and listen to podcasts as I used to do. I didn’t even look for things to photograph – something I love to do. I just walked the dog.

Suddenly I could hear those much-detested vans earlier and help settle Max before they arrived. When the weather broke for a February thaw, I heard the birds. And I noticed anew that people who passed me spoke several different languages – one of the many things I love about our neighbourhood. When I felt steady on my feet, my mind was able to wander. I hummed songs and just sort of thought.

This morning, as my mind meandered, I remembered the first time I realized that headphones (or MP3 players, I guess, though I didn’t know it at the time) were going to change the world. I was walking down the Champs Elysees, trailing the students I had accompanied overseas. The iPod was relatively new, and several kids had brought theirs on the trip. As some of the boys exited yet another patisserie (I’d be willing to swear that all they did on that trip was eat), I realized that Ben was bopping down the wide sidewalk of the great boulevard with his ears full of his own music. He wasn’t hearing the language swelling and swooping around him or the street noises that rose and fell as we passed various stores or even the thrum of the traffic. He was taking in the sites with his own soundtrack. I’m not 100% sure, but I think I told the kids to take out their headphones and be in Paris. I know that at some point I gave up the fight.

My objection seems almost quaint today. Now, students sit in class, an earbud in one ear, strategically hidden behind a shock of hair or under a hat. They are vaguely offended when I ask them, again, to take out their personal life soundtrack. During silent reading time, they insist that they “read better” with music on. When I ask, many can’t think of a time that they aren’t listening to something unless they are forced to take their earbuds out. They hate the “silence” and tell me it’s uncomfortable. In my office, most of my colleagues have something in their ears all the time so that they can “concentrate.” I, too, often go through the world with someone else’s voice in my ears.

My broken wrist may have broken that spell for me. Sure, I miss my podcasts, but I am enjoying the space that I’ve found. I can’t call it silence because the world is full of sounds, I’d just forgotten that they could be enough. Maybe I’ll get sick of it soon. Maybe I’ll slip back into the sense that every minute needs to count as two – or that every minute is mine to control in some way – but I’m starting to think that maybe I won’t. I think that maybe it’s time for me to remember that the world provides its own soundtrack and that my mind is happy there. It turns out, I like the space that comes from being a little tuned out.

A metaphor #SOL23 5/31

I was about halfway through the snow to the river when I realized that the path would not be plowed. I would have known this if I’d paused to think, but I’d been anxious to take advantage of the time between two soccer games, so I’d dashed out for a walk without really thinking everything through. “Typical,” I mutter as I take another step forward and sink again, ankle-deep in snow.

If I had paused before I left, I might have thought about this part of my walk – the part *after* the easy part. Maybe I would have decided to try it anyway, but since we got 20ish cm of snow yesterday, I probably would have stuck to the sidewalks. “Nah,” I realize, I wouldn’t have thought of it anyway. Apparently 15 years in Ottawa has not significantly improved my winter planning. And if I had thought of it, I would have stayed at the game – the sidewalk runs along a parkway with a fair amount of traffic. Yuck.

Anyway, now I have to decide: keep going – I can see that the trail is really snowy – or turn back. My own tracks will be firmer footing, but then I’ll be going backwards. And someone has already broken this trail, it’s just that they had better gear (snowshoes). What the heck, I decide, it’s only snow.

This is where I realized that nothing was going to be plowed.

So I keep going towards the river. The trail does not get easier. Sometimes I sink up to mid-calf for step after step; other times the snowshoe path is firmer and I can move several feet on firm ground. This is a metaphor, I think. I am forever throwing myself into things first and only afterwards realizing what I’ve gotten myself into.

Nevertheless, I keep going. The trail along the river is divided into two paths, one for snowshoes and one for cross country skis. The ski path looks well-worn and firm. I bet if I walked there, I wouldn’t sink so much, I think. But I don’t, because that would make the trail much harder for the skiers. It’s not their fault I came unequipped. I continue my slow, uneven plodding, stopping regularly to look at the river. The view, the quiet – they’re worth the work. And sure, it would have been easier if I’d done this another way, but I didn’t, and I’m still here. This is a metaphor, I think, This is what it’s like to learn new things. I walk, stop, walk, stop; the snow slides into my boots; the bottoms of my leggings get soggy.

That’s a fence in the foreground & part of the river just past the tree line
The trail I took
Yes, the snow is up to the bench seat
Snowshoe on the left, ski on the right

By the time I reach my turnoff, I’m hot and a little tired. My jacket is tied around my waist and I’ve even had to take off my hat. Just as I find firm footing on the pavement, two skiers pass me and nod. They glide smoothly forward, easily covering ground that had been so hard for me. I check my watch – I have taken a long time to go a short distance. Now, on the sidewalk, I pass more people. Our only obstacles are puddles, but we’re also surrounded by cars and the dirt of their exhaust is gray against the snow. I remind myself this is a extended metaphor and walk the rest of the way back to the soccer games.

A year of walking

Yesterday, one of the writing prompts I gave my students was “create a timeline of no more than six moments from your life that tell a specific story; then do it again with different moments.” The idea behind the prompt is to recognize how selection and omission shapes the stories we tell. As I wrote alongside my students, I had a revelation: most of my stories aren’t shaped by specific moments. Instead, a lot of my stories are determined by a series of events or choices that someone – me, my parents, my sisters or friends – made over and over. The story isn’t one test, one class, one dinner, one disaster or one anything: instead, it’s all the swim practices that led to the swim meets that led to one race and then another; it’s the series of dates that led . It’s not one book; it’s all the books.

My timeline was a disaster – so obviously I shared it with my students. Though they nodded as I explained, I can’t guarantee that they really understood my scribbles. Most of them had managed to complete the assignment with some ease. No messy ongoing moments for them.

As of today I have officially walked at least 1.5 km for 365 days in a row. Once I decided to do this, I went about it wholeheartedly. I was so committed that when we foolishly went to a cottage during black fly season, I walked in the lake. I was so committed that I checked the weather and walked around rainstorms – and sometimes in them. I was so committed that I walked in ice and snow and even sleet (but only once), which I do NOT love. In fact, this is now the first year of my adult life (and possibly even my childhood) that I went outside every day in the winter. It’s the first year I went through multiple pairs of shoes. (I got fancy new ones for today.)

My fancy new shoes for my one-year anniversary.

And now, maybe because I’m deep into studying information with my students – how it is never neutral, how it is shaped & created – I feel like I should, you know, share some life lessons. After all, it’s been a year. Still, I’m not sure that I have any. In ways both literal and figurative, a year of walking is simply about putting one foot in front of another. And then doing it again. It turns out, there’s no earth-shattering moment when all is revealed. There’s just another morning, another day I put on my shoes, another day I head out the door.

And yet, I want to create meaning from this year of walking. I *want* to reflect. Two million-ish steps later, I must have learned something. It’s not a timeline, but…

Have a buddy. (Hi Lisa!) I already knew that having a buddy makes things easier, but I didn’t know that even a virtual buddy would be a real motivator. In some ways virtual was better (story of this year, right?). I had no idea if Lisa had already walked on any given day, so I couldn’t let her down by skipping my own. On days when the weather here was better, I imagined her slogging through snow or muck. How could I not go out when she had faced that? On days when the weather here was worse, I imagined the glory of sharing that I did it anyway. Lesson learned: community counts.
Bite-sized goals. Our original goal was to walk daily from Victoria Day (right before Memorial Day for you Americans out there) until Labour Day. Ambitious but do-able – I mean, walk through the summer? Easy peasy. Then we aimed for Halloween. No problem. I balked a little at the stretch until Christmas – I knew what the weather might do – but once that was done, the rest was a no-brainer. (It was as if I had forgotten February’s existence. It was cold.)
Make it fun. I listen to podcasts, talk to my friends or my sisters, walk with friends, take pictures, find scenic routes. Taking pictures every day has allowed me to slow down & really look at things – no worries about cardio or times. Just walking. I love it. Now, I take pictures every day – and I’m getting better at that, too.
Focus on the basic goal. I am NOT going to run a race – turns out I prefer streaks to competitions. I am not going to sell my pictures. I am not going to walk 30 km. All I’ve committed to is 1.5km each day. Everything else is extra. Extra is fine, but some days 1.5km (and a few snapshots) is enough.

I’m sure there’s more, but there always is. I’m proud of myself in that sort of vague way that comes with milestones I saw coming: I never feel older on the day of my birthday, I found my various graduation ceremonies mostly tedious & I think I was more tickled about finishing a year of walking a few weeks ago when I realized how close I was. A year probably won’t fit neatly onto a timeline for a writing prompt, but as it turns out, I’m not especially good at telling my story through just a few big moments.

Might as well put my shoes on and head out the door again tomorrow.

Getting better #SOL21 28/31

314 days ago, Lisa Corbett over at A Little of This, a Little of That started a walking challenge and invited me to join in. The goal was to walk every day from Victoria Day (May 18, the week before Labor Day in the US) to Canada Day (July 1) – at least, I think that was the initial goal. It seemed like a fun idea and something to do during those early days of the pandemic, so I joined in. Once we’d finished that, someone suggested extending the goal until the end of the summer, and then until Halloween, and here we are, 314 days later, still walking every day.

When we started, I set myself a minimum goal of 1.5 km (ok, secretly 1.6 because that is a mile and I am, still, American in so many ways and apparently because I also like rules) and I walked. Mostly I walked around my neighbourhood and the more I walked, the more I started to notice things. By May 24, I was taking pictures on my phone as I walked. By June 3 I started posting them because I thought they were pretty. Soon my walking challenge was a walking & photography challenge.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this during March because, obviously, I’m doing another challenge. Given that I’m doing three challenges at once, and one of them is *entirely* self-imposed, apparently I am a challenge person. This is not something I knew about myself. I am not a race person: I’ve tried a few and mostly find myself on race day annoyed that my walk or run is so crowded and that everyone seems to think that a timer is a reasonable motivator. I’m a selective group-joiner, often preferring groups that allow me to attend or not attend based on my own needs. So, basically a selfish group member. Sigh. I *am* a perpetual class-taker, though I often end up frustrated in the middle and regularly swear never to take another – and then I sign up for another one the next summer.

Doing the Slice of Life Challenge got me started with regular writing four years ago, and every year March makes me dig deep to write through whatever comes at me. I have signed up for this challenge even when it made no logical sense and I have always written & commented every day for a month (and almost every Tuesday the rest of the year). As a result, I am a much more confident writer than I was four years ago. I am more comfortable writing in front of my students; I am more versatile (hey, I’ve written poems!), and I think I am more effective. I can’t say that the walking challenge has made me a better walker – what would a better walker be? – but I can say that it has gotten me out of the house every day this year, something that has *never* happened in my previous 13 winters in Ottawa.

I’m thinking about all of this today because today’s walk was in a cold gray rain. Days like today make me a) not want to walk and b) not want to take pictures. What sort of beauty can I find in late March muck in the middle of the city? After 314 days, you’d think I would know better, but I don’t. Even as I headed out the door, I had the same conversation with myself that I’ve had dozens of times this year, “There aren’t going to be any good pictures today, so you might as well capture what you can. You realize how often you think this? There’s always something. Sure, sure, but today… today’s going to be just like yesterday. Might as well just use something left over from yesterday’s batch…”

But there’s always something if I’m looking for it. Always. Today, I found myself fascinated with droplets, entranced by rain and the minutiae of the leaves pushing through the soil. Sure enough, I took pictures; when I got home and looked at them, I had a realization: I have gotten better at photography. This is improvement I can see. And you know what? I’m proud of my pictures and I’m really proud of my growth. That goes for all of these random challenges and maybe this is why I like a challenge – for me, the consistent practice that comes with a challenge helps me get better.

Here, enjoy a few of today’s pictures. Not bad, eh?