Is it me, or does this time of year feel heavier than any other? I love early March, we are knocking on the door of Daylight-Saving time, (set your clocks forward before bed next Saturday night), and the dredges of winter are mostly behind us. Indeed, March introduces the dawn of warmth and renewal, but it also springs up dark periods in our recent past like the start to the Covid lockdown in 2020, and war… right now. It feels like every month, day, hour, minute, second lingers less lightly than it used to, uncertainty is the only certainty we can count on, and suddenly we are coming to in a middle aged body on the first Sunday night of March lending our late twenties child a pep talk about the joys and responsibilities of life and realize that our twenties went by in a blink, a long time ago.
Right?
At times like these, now, early March, nearly Springtime, a year and half after surviving a near death accident that jolted me out of a malaise of depression/anxiety/uninspired steps stuck in a standstill, sinking, I subsist on simple daily acts of movement that spur on immeasurable amounts of joy, and humbly hum along on the chord of contentment more than ever before.
How?
I have sat, stood, laid in long ballads of silence and quiet the last two years that (maybe) I always wanted but never knew how to ask for? Or, who to ask it from? I have always struggled with asking for help and have never felt comfortable being taken care of; choosing pain over weakness, grit over common sense, complexity over simplicity, for decades. Then the universe tossed me around a couple of times (in traffic) and forced me to feel acute and obtuse pain, rather every rising and crashing note imaginable on the pain spectrum, and violently encouraged me to acknowledge (and finally) invite weakness to dance – (staring at my immovable dangling hand while losing consciousness due to a cascade of blood loss recalibrated my bias on weakness instantly). I chose to embrace its strong and stable presence to pull myself up, rather than trip over it and fall down, again.
Scene from the trails at O’Melveny park.
Movement creates contentment for me.
I prefer exasperated movement, running, cycling, swimming, hiking, pushing weight around, but any kind of movement will do. During my recovery stint in early 2024 for my cracked clavicle, and later for my lacerated hand and busted left leg, I could only walk for stretches of time, so I did, because I could, and knowing that I did what I could, made me feel content.
It was a daily choice to move then, and it is a daily choice to move today.
Last Friday, during on my fifth week of training for the Boston Marathon, I chose to swim in the morning, and then set out for an afternoon workout that consisted of a hike with a 30lb. GoRuck pack for a three mile jaunt on hills and trails, followed by running (sans any additional weight) on the trails for three more miles, and then running another two elevation enthused miles on a nearby neighborhood loop (on heavy legs) to make it a healthy mix of strain over varying terrain for an even eight miles total. It was a simple (not easy) way to make the most out of a beautiful day.
Rucking with my GoRuck pack that includes 1x 10lb. plate and 1x 20lb. plate.
On the rucking front, I was early to the party and have been training with various weight vests since 2009, and owe overcoming a nagging hamstring injury to hours and hours of weighted stair workouts back in 2020, but if you are curious to learn more about the benefits of rucking, I recommend listening to this Rich Roll podcast episode with Michael Easter, an incredible author and formative leader of the rucking movement. I cannot recommend including rucking as an additional modality of training highly enough.
Lastly, the book I read last week, A World Appears by Michael Pollan broadened my beliefs on consciousness and inspired the “stream of consciousness” format I chose for this post, so if it seemed trippy, that’s why.:) Moreover, I have spent a lot of time delving into my own mind and enjoy learning about the study of consciousness, so when I saw this new book pop up from Pollan on the topic last week I sprang into action and devoured it quickly. However, it deserves much more attention, so I will re-read it multiple times, and I invite you all to give it a read at least once, too.