Butterfly Mind

Running in the cold

November 16th, 2022

The time of year has come when I heat my mug with boiling water before I pour my coffee in. My coffee stays warm longer that way. We’ve had fires in the fireplace the last two nights, and I had to add another layer of clothes during the day yesterday to keep from shivering at lunch.

In other words, it’s cold.

I’m actually eager for the cold this year. I love a crackling fire. I love the forced restfulness and the introspection the dark brings.

What I don’t love is that the cold makes exercise more fussy. I can’t get up and run first thing because it’s dark out. And then when it does become light, it’s cold, and I don’t want to go out in it. I don’t know how to dress for it. If I dress to make myself more likely to step out the door — warmly — then I’ll get hot on my run and won’t have anywhere to store the clothes I’ll want to shed.

Right now I wear running tights, socks that come above my ankles so no skin is exposed in the gap between the bottom of my tights and the tops of my socks, a long-sleeved running shirt, and a puffy vest, ready to get myself outside as soon as it’s light, which it is now. Except I’m also under a fleece blanket, and I’m going to be cold when I get out from under it.

The wind blows across the top of the chimney, making a gusty metallic sound. I see the treetops sway. I guess I’ll need my windbreaker, too. And the new gloves I bought to encourage myself to get outside and run in the cold.

I know I’ll like it once I do it. It’ll be bracing. It’ll be invigorating. It’ll be better than workout videos in the basement. Okay, here goes.
Sad, angry, kind

November 15th, 2022

Yesterday was a rough day. I woke to a text from our son, “If any of you are aware that there is a shooter here currently I just wanted to let you know I’m safe.” The next 39 texts were alerts from his school, The University of Virginia.

“UVA Alert: UPDATE. 1 SUSPECT IS AT LARGE, CONSIDERED ARMED & DANGEROUS.”

“UVA Alert: ACTIVE ATTACKER firearm reported in area of Culbreth Road. RUN HIDE FIGHT”

These aren’t the kinds of messages any parent wants to receive. I don’t know Charlottesville well, but I recognized the name Culbreth Road. It turns out the shooting was next door to where our son usually plays volleyball on Sunday nights; he randomly didn’t go that night. His friends who went did make it home safely. We are lucky. Three families are not, and countless others are traumatized, and it’s devastating.

I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about this and all shootings. Gun advocates can say all they want that guns don’t kill people, people kill people, but nobody can convince me that a college student could board a bus and kill 3 people with his bare hands as easily as he did it with a gun. That’s a load of bullshit. We protect gun rights more than we protect the rights of women in this country, and every day, more than 300 people are shot because of it, and more than 100 of those people are killed. It’s infuriating.

The saving grace of yesterday’s tumble of feelings were the people who reached out to check in on us. Interspersed with the updates from UVA, mixed in with the sadness and the anger and the fear, I’d get a text from a friend I haven’t heard from in a while, or a message from someone at work who knows our son is at UVA.

“You doing okay?”

“I know you’re son’s at UVA — thinking of you.”

Those small messages meant so much. They were thoughtful and gentle and kind in a time of violence, and I’m grateful.
Bundle for happiness

October 26th, 2022

I considered titling this “Bundle to make things suck less.” It’s a more honest title. I ultimately flipped it, though, to put emphasis on the positive, since that’s the goal with bundling: to have a good experience with something you don’t want to do.

I run for exercise. It’s efficient, effective, and super low maintenance. Running gives me the health benefits of a walk in half the time, running gives me an energy boost and a feeling of accomplishment after I’m done, and to go for a run, I only really need running shoes, a hat to keep the sun out of my eyes, and headphones. No pool, no bike, no facility. Running can happen anywhere.

I don’t particularly like running. I do it because of all the above stuff. I’m always happy after my run is done — I feel invigorated and alive! — but it takes a lot of motivation to actually go out and run. If I don’t have something to distract me, usually in the form of listening, I won’t go. I’m constantly finding excuses not to go. When I can’t get excited about the experience of running, I get bored with it and just stop doing it.

That happened a few months ago. I just couldn’t anymore. I dreaded runs because I was so bored: with my route, with my running playlist, with the activity itself. I walked instead, but walking takes a long time if I’m not actually trying to get somewhere and am just walking for exercise and I really need to get back to the house and get to work.

I thought I needed to listen to music to run. I thought I needed the beat and the energy to keep me going. But I was bored with all my running music, too. Meanwhile, I had podcast episodes piling up in Pocket Casts, and not enough time to listen to them. Hidden Brain, The Happiness Lab, Radiolab, Fresh Air.

So I gave it a go: I listened to a podcast episode instead of music on a run. And it worked! I was so absorbed in what I was listening to that the run just disappeared beneath me. At the end, I still had that awesome post-run energy, and I had the excitement of learning something new.

For several weeks now, I’ve kept up my running practice, running as many as 4 or 5 times per week, because I want to listen to all these podcasts. I want to learn about the human mind, and why commitment can be better than endless choices, and about rabies, and about British Vogue‘s editor in chief. I love to learn, and I love the short format of podcasts, and I love listening for knowledge (as opposed to reading non-fiction books or articles with my eyes). I think for non-fiction I need that human component of voices and interviews and sound effects that can happen in an audio recording that just don’t happen on a page.

Now, I look forward to running. I can’t wait to go out so I can listen to whatever is queued up next in my podcast feed. Now, because I’ve paired something I don’t want to do but needs to be done (run) with something I want to do (learn!), I get excited about my runs, and I actually do them. I learned on one of the Happiness podcasts I listened to that this is called bundling, and now I do it with lots of things. Don’t want to fold clothes or empty the dishwasher? Bundle those activities with podcasts. Don’t want to iron? I’ll watch Schitt’s Creek while I do it.
An extra hour a day

October 25th, 2022

I listened to a podcast episode yesterday, How to spend time on what you value, that posed this question: if you had an extra hour each day, what would you do with it?

A million times, I’ve thought, “there aren’t enough hours in the day!” But if I were suddenly given more time, would I spend it in ways that actually brought fulfillment to my life? As they talked about in the show, many of us do find little pockets of time during the day, and we often fritter the minutes away on things we don’t really care about, leaving us feeling empty instead of full.

As I age, I think more and more about time and its finiteness. I think about time running out. With our kids growing up, and driving, and one of them already being out of the house, I’m also faced with a glut of time that used to be filled with my kids needing me: needing me to drive them places, to be at swim and soccer practices and meets, to grocery shop, to feed them. Now the days and years stretch before my husband and me with few obligations other than going to work. Sometimes the emptiness ahead of us is frightening. Nothing dictates how my time is used other than my own decisions about how to use it.

With limited time left in life, I want to spend whatever hours I do have on things that matter to me. After listening to that podcast, I made a list of things I’d do in that hour a day, activities that align with what I value — love, beauty, hope, humor. I know it’s shocking, but “scroll Twitter and Instagram” were not on the list (though sometimes those are good for a laugh).

Instead, my list includes write, read, photograph; walk, see live music, go to art museums, listen to podcasts and learn; play with kitties, go out for coffee, Boba, and food with people I love; garden, hike, people-watch, hang out with friends.

I don’t need to wait for a theoretical extra hour in each day to do these things. The time is already there, in little pockets during the week and in longer expanses on the weekend. The secret is to choose these options when time presents itself.
October garden

October 16th, 2022

The trees are starting to change, leaves are starting to drop, and the colors in the garden are beautiful.

Bronzes and golds and garnet reds

Guess it’s time to put the hammock away

View from the back deck

I cannot get enough of these grasses. I love the gold and copper tassels.

Autumn joy sedum. It’s color just keeps getting deeper.
Cozy

October 2nd, 2022

The world outside is wet and gray. I hear tires spray rainwater on the slick neighborhood street as a car passes by. I sit with my slippered feet propped up on an ottoman and watch the drizzle mist my freshly planted flower boxes. I put in purple cabbages and yellow and purple pansies last week. Grass tassels droop and drip over the velvety pansy leaves. I’ve got a steaming cup of mint tea in the windowsill, along with a book to read while I drink it.

Our son is home from college this weekend, and our daughter just returned from an out of town swim meet. Life feels complete when all four of us are here. I feel a warm fullness, and a sense of satisfaction and fulfillment. I love these people; they’re my favorites.

I made brownies and blueberry muffins for our son, and I stocked up on some of his favorite foods, like fresh pineapple, and orange-mango juice. He and his roommate have a small fridge in their door room, but they can’t be bothered to go to the grocery store to buy stuff like juice. He’s been wearing my WordPress sweatpants since he got home because he forgot to bring any sweatpants, and this is sweatpant weather. I probably should just send him home with those, and get myself another pair.

The cats are happy we’re all here. They’ve got lots of laps to keep them warm during the day, and feet to sleep on at night. I’m happy too.