I think I've built a habit
One that even smokepocalypse couldn't break
I played division 1 field hockey in college. Yes, that's a brag. I won't pretend to be humble about it. I am proud. The experience, and sports generally, have shaped huge parts of my life.
When I graduated though, the options to become a professional field hockey player were not abundant. There's a whole other conversation to be had about women's professional sports that we won't have here – the opportunities, the financials, what we owe the little girls growing up. But the chief reason I didn't pursue anything was that I was nowhere near good enough to do so.
So for the first time in my young adult life I was left without the structure of seasons and coaches and practice and games. I knew how to follow a workout plan (or make it look like I had) but I didn't know how to make one on my own that I would follow because I wanted to — one that I would stick to because I was answering to myself and not trying to get a pat on the head from an authority figure.
It took me a while to settle into a good routine. For a long time I would shame myself if I didn't exercise some specific number of times each week, or at an acceptably high intensity. That wasn't sustainable.
Activities and classes came and went. Floor hockey, a few months of crew, yoga. (This was all before kids.) But what really worked in the end was simply repetition. And going a little easier on myself, I suppose.
I started putting a little blue dot on a paper calendar each day that I was active. I lowered the bar from division-1-athlete level workout intensity and counted anything that made me move and sweat and feel good. On days when I felt down or that I wasn't doing enough I would look back at all those blue dots and see that yes, I was.
This week I realized that aiming to write 25 words of my novel a day and sharing the accounting of it with you weekly has become a new expression of those blue dots.
When I look at my notes this week, I see that I wrote nearly everyday. More importantly, I felt like I accomplished a lot and managed not to be completely drained by it. And this was as apocalyptic smoke blanketed New York city, my kids’ school was closed two days, and I had an extra busy work week capped off by a day-long off site.
It was a lovely surprise to see the proverbial blue dots marching in a line down my calendar. Somewhere in these fifteen weeks, it has become a habit to write a little each day in the slivers and cracks of time that I make or that present themselves. Enough so that I can tell you I drafted this entire newsletter in the back of an Uber on my way home from the work event.
Every week won't feel this effortless. And many before it certainly have not. But right now a downpour just washed away the feeling of lingering smoke, if not the actual smoke (we'll see). That magic hour light is bathing the wet pavement. And I'm getting dropped off directly at the park to meet my family at my oldest child's baseball game.
For now, I'm going to celebrate this win. And my division 1 athlete self won't be humble about that either.
Week 15: Not humble about this brag
Some everyday: No
Words: 1290
See you next week.
Love it!