My exuberance quotient is up now that I've laughed at the NYTimes

This morning, the NYTimes sent me an email with the subject header "how to make life worth living," recommending an article on how to age exuberantly (as though passing around a blood pressure monitor with friends a few months back and trying to outdo one another with low BP numbers does not suffice). I am still laughing (exuberantly, thank goodness) at the suggestion that hundreds of thousands, or millions, or nay, perhaps even billions of lives are not worth living because people's exuberance quotients fall below the NYTimes' exuberance threshhold.

As is the way with online media, the how-to-age-exuberantly article was followed by a link to an article on whether it's OK to sip coffee on an empty stomach: "there are a few facts that you should keep in mind..." 

My morning takeaway: it's a wonder that civilization has lasted as long as it has.

That's a wrap

Walk walkity walk walk walk.

In 2022, I walked 3,024.5 recorded miles, plus a few miles that I didn't record, minus a few miles that were recorded but that I didn't walk (Garmin's GPS connection understandably struggles between canyon walls and inside buildings). That's about 1,000 more miles than I walked in 2021, largely enabled by taking five months off from work to travel with S on a sabbatical.

Yesterday, I drafted a thoughtful, reflective blog post on the pros (many) and cons (some) of walking that much. Then my blog ate my draft. Oh well. 

 

The gist was that 3,024.5 miles is a lot more than most folks walk in a year, but it's also a lot less than many folks walk or jog or (to quote a friend) "RUN. I don't jog. I run" in a year.

Strava says I spent 994 hours on those 3,024 miles. 41.4 days. I walked for 11% of my year.

The CDC recommends 150 minutes of "physical activity" per week (including a poorly-worded "2 days" of muscle-strengthening activity). That's about 1.5% of a year, or 2% of an adult's time awake. I came out 864 hours ahead of that. Lucky me! I'm pretty sure that had I spent those hours differently, I would have spent them being grumpier.

To my previously recommended minimal list of walking accoutrements, I'll add an LED-illuminated reflective vest. S gifted me with one because there are only so many sunlit hours per day, and I often walk at night, and he'd rather I didn't get hit by a car in the dark. I agree with him on that, so I wear the vest.

Why walk? These posts still hold true:

https://mightoughtashould.blogspot.com/2021/03/walking.html

https://mightoughtashould.blogspot.com/2022/02/still-walking.html

What does 2023 hold in store? Most likely less than 3,000 miles, but more than 2,024. Maybe another car-free February. More backpacking. And more point-to-point wending my way across longer distances.

To walk 3,024 miles in a year requires integrating walking into mundane activities (walk to work, walk to the grocery store, walk to the dentist's office, walk to the post office), and then walking recreationally on top of that. My walking highlights for 2022 were 100% recreational (thanks, sabbatical!), and included: 

(1) 157 miles in Utah

(2) 1,115 miles in Germany, 300-some of which traced a path stretching 3/4ths of the way across southern Germany between Breisach, at the French border, and Berchtesgaden, near the Austrian border. I hiked segments solo (Steinebach to Immenstadt), with E (Freiburg to Ueberlingen), with LF (Brannenburg to Berchtesgaden), and with S (Immenstadt to Lindau). I enjoyed hiking with friends and family, but there was something pretty excitingly magical about that first solo stretch: I was covering terrain that was largely new to me, alone, in a language that isn't my first, and I actually had intelligible conversations with people along the way, AND I survived. All of that was pretty empowering. I feel like I know what I'm doing now, in ways I did not a year ago.