I'm pretty sure my fascination with temporary lifestyle challenges started in
grade school when I learned of a national challenge for kids to go a week without
TV. I signed a pledge form in one of my magazines and announced to my mom that I was participating. I don't remember if I made it the whole week, but I do know that it didn’t have
a lasting effect. I grew up in the golden age of Thursday night NBC and to this day I do not regret the high priority it had in my weekly life (others may disagree, but the '90s were amazing).
Twenty-five years later, I'm still ready to sign a pledge and sentence myself to a temporary lifestyle change and tell my mom about it. Since January I've been incorporating a
weekly challenge into my daily life pretty much every week for fun (a challenge in itself). I mentioned a few of these in a previous post, but I wanted to let you know I'm still at it! Here are a few highlights from more recent challenges and what I'm learning:
The Week of Riding the Bus: I love riding the bus. You get time to yourself to zone out, to listen to a podcast, to knit, or to read. The challenge is in scheduling, and that is why I don't do it more often. I have to get up earlier to walk the dog, do my morning routines and make it back out the door by 6:56 a.m. I get home about 10 hours later, but only if I work through lunch to leave early so I can catch the fast bus back downtown and then one more to home. So...long day. I watch moms get on with their kids and I can only imagine how much longer theirs' are. It's logistically impossible to make it to my barre class after work without a car, and a bus that's a few minutes late or early can derail one's entire day. It requires a bit more meal planning and errand bundling, but that introduces other benefits of saving money and exercise. I definitely slept harder during this week. I'm good with riding just a couple days a week. I'm lucky to have the choice.
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| The days are getting longer! |
The Week of No News: I had some idea, but this week really highlighted how much of news is not actually news. It's often regurgitation, speculation, not life-changing stuff. I didn’t
miss much in the course of a week, and if anything important happened, I
heard a recap from Joel. And hearing about the news from someone you love is actually a
nice thing. I also stayed away from my personal accounts on Facebook and Twitter that week, and that was more challenging. My brain longed for something
to mindlessly scroll through. I ended up spending a lot more time on Pinterest just to scratch that itch. But when I did use the internet for non-Pinterest purposes, I used it purposefully - to look up something I wondered about, rather than allowing myself to be fed things I didn't care about - or to learn something new. Since ending the challenge, I've pared down my subscriptions on my Feedly reader to display the sources I actually read, which are mostly not news. I still catch myself mindlessly scrolling.
The Week I Read an Entire Book: I read Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders, which ended up being the perfect kind of book to read in a week because I couldn't put it down. It was so imaginative and touching, poignant and clever. I actually felt I learned something about how my brain works as I figured out the narrative style. I hear the audiobook is a work of art, too, with dozens of recognizable voices. Maybe I'll re-read it that way.
The Week of Running: I ran 10 minutes a day for four days out of seven. Not a rousing success, but I had good excuses for at least 2 of the days I didn't run (there was one day that I didn't feel like running because it was Friday, and thus I felt I needed to celebrate by not running. Not my best excuse). What I learned was I'm not too out of shape to run a solid 10 minutes, and I could have gone longer. I also enjoy running for 10 minutes because it's not a huge time commitment, and I start to feel really good by the end of it, therefore I don't dread it the next time. Ten minutes is totally doable, even the times I ran after my regular workout and didn't think I could make it...after two minutes of powering through, I felt like a new woman. I'd like to do this more often as the weather brightens up.
You can do anything for 10 seconds, they say. This weekly challenge thing feels the same way to me. You know you're not in it for the long haul, that the end of it is coming soon, and by the time you get to the end, you often realize you could do it longer. Or you're grateful that you can do it at all.
The Week I Read an Entire Book: I read Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders, which ended up being the perfect kind of book to read in a week because I couldn't put it down. It was so imaginative and touching, poignant and clever. I actually felt I learned something about how my brain works as I figured out the narrative style. I hear the audiobook is a work of art, too, with dozens of recognizable voices. Maybe I'll re-read it that way.
The Week of Running: I ran 10 minutes a day for four days out of seven. Not a rousing success, but I had good excuses for at least 2 of the days I didn't run (there was one day that I didn't feel like running because it was Friday, and thus I felt I needed to celebrate by not running. Not my best excuse). What I learned was I'm not too out of shape to run a solid 10 minutes, and I could have gone longer. I also enjoy running for 10 minutes because it's not a huge time commitment, and I start to feel really good by the end of it, therefore I don't dread it the next time. Ten minutes is totally doable, even the times I ran after my regular workout and didn't think I could make it...after two minutes of powering through, I felt like a new woman. I'd like to do this more often as the weather brightens up.
You can do anything for 10 seconds, they say. This weekly challenge thing feels the same way to me. You know you're not in it for the long haul, that the end of it is coming soon, and by the time you get to the end, you often realize you could do it longer. Or you're grateful that you can do it at all.
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