Since moving to Lafayette, Colorado, one of my favorite activities is walking around Waneka Lake. This lake has everything – the Rocky Mountains in the backdrop, pelicans, egrets, herons, raptors, ducks, red-winged black birds, and more, bunnies galore, and plenty of humans walking their dogs, so I can say hi to all of them and even be welcomed to pet some of them. I could not ask for a better way to start my day.
Which is why I walked around the lake every morning this summer for seven weeks straight! Now, I do a lot of mental and physical health care in my mornings. I meditate, move, write, and, most importantly, stay off my phone, with the occasional exception of playing Wordle, Connections, and Strands when my brain needs a quicker dopamine hit.
Speaking of Wordle, I guessed it on my first try yesterday!
Anyway, all these morning behaviors take up quite a bit of time. It’s a luxury over the summer to have the time to be so leisurely. Such is the privilege of being a college professor.
Alas, once the start of the fall semester crept closer in August, my morning walks went back to my originally scheduled goal of “walk around Waneka Lakes two to five times per week.” Two is the bare minimum that would still make me feel like I’m connecting with my local community, landscape, and nature.
I still remember the disappointment I felt on August 11th when I had to make the difficult choice of prioritizing what morning activities to do. That was the first time since June 4th that I didn’t walk around the lake that morning.
So it begins, I thought.
I knew the first day of not walking around was coming. That didn’t make it any easier.
Since then, I’ve kept up with my original goal. I walk around the lake a minimum of two times per week, and sometimes I’m still able to get in three to four walks. Some mornings it’s a tough call – do I walk around the lake, lift weights, spend the time with Heath before he heads to his job, work on writing, etc.
Without fail, every time I choose to prioritize walking around the lake, I have the same thought: this is never the wrong decision.
Today was the first day in a long time when I’ve felt breathing room in my upcoming week, and so I didn’t have to worry about prioritizing one of my morning rituals when deciding how to spend my time. Even though it’s the first truly cold day of the fall (a brisk 25 degrees Fahrenheit), I relished the crispness of the air and the bite of the cold against my nose.
Within minutes of being on the lake path, I said hello to a woman with her dog in a dapper red sweater, waved at a jogger, and marveled at how clear the Rockies looked in the distance. As I rounded the top of the lake, words started flowing for the manuscript I’m working on for Novel November to the point that I had to stop at a bench, take off my mittens, and type away on my phone, lest I forget the ideas by the time I got back home to my computer.
Yep. Never the wrong decision.
As I was walking around the lake this morning, I wondered what it would be like if I set myself the goal of walking around the lake every morning. That would likely mean I would have to let go of something else in my mornings. I wasn’t opposed to it, but I also wasn’t sure how that would play out in real life. It’s something I’m going to think about as my 2025 comes to a close and I consider how I want to spend the next calendar year of my life.
In the meantime, I’m going to enjoy the lake as much as I can.
I love that you analyze how your time is spent and choices. Take the walk! ✅
Time in nature is never a bad idea.
Keep the gloves on and speak into your phone. Maybe you can combine the exercise and alternate between walks and weight or walk with weights?
That point about how we only label things as “wrong” after seeing the outcome really changed my perspective, especially since I’ve been paralyzed by a career pivot and realized I’m just comparing my reality to a ghost version of myself. I’d love to know if you’ve found this mindset actually speeds up your decision-making process or if it just makes the aftermath easier to handle?
I’m glad that resonated with you. I don’t think this mindset helps speed up a decision, especially when the decision is based on information (or even partly based on information). What it does help me with, as you said, is with the aftermath. Oftentimes people will play the “I should have…” game, but then that assumes you KNOW what would have happened had you made that other choice. We never know. There’s infinite possibilities for what could have happened, so it doesn’t help to fear a choice as right/wrong in the moment. There’s the choice you make, and it’s never wrong because it’s the one you made. I hope this helps!