Relaxing my standards

I broke with tradition this past weekend.

Saturday has always been reserved for my longest run of the week. Several years ago, that meant a 13-mile loop, my own little weekly half-marathon. In more recent years, Saturday runs have typically ranged about five or six miles.

This weekend I did only four. To a non-runner, that distinction may sound trivial, but to me it was significant, because I can run four miles any old day. Five miles was my weekly “stretch goal.”

Five miles isn’t even that long a run, but in the past year or two, I’ve found that distance to present a reasonable challenge to me. My pace has slowed down recently for no clear reason, and although I’m still embarrassed that I clock a more-than-ten-minute mile, the fact is that being out for more than an hour robs me of more of my Saturday than I wish to give up, and that was one reason not to push myself beyond five miles.

But yesterday I didn’t even feel like doing that much. I tend to cleave to routine; it was a big deal for me to admit to myself that I just didn’t see any great benefit to running five miles as opposed to four. In earlier years, I found it so exhilarating to build my mileage; it seemed the longer I ran, the better I felt afterwards.

These days that doesn’t really seem to be the case, though. As long as I’m out for 45 minutes or more, I feel well-exercised and challenged, but more than five miles feels more arduous than exhilarating. And as far as weight control and other fitness factors, running longer doesn’t seem to make any discernible improvement.

Mostly, though, on Saturday it was that I wanted to go for a long bike ride later in the day. I could have done both, of course – a long run in the morning, a long bike ride in the afternoon – but I figured this was a chance to give myself a bit of a break, and shave that last mile off my run in good conscience, knowing I’d make up for it from a fitness perspective on my bike later on.

“Streak runners,” those of us committed to running 365 days a year without ever taking a day off, are by definition compulsive about running. I’m the first to admit that streak running is a silly pursuit, one important and relevant only to those of us who practice it, as I have been doing for the past three years and eleven months. Physically, there’s no significant advantage to running seven days a week rather than six, just as there’s no significant advantage to running five miles rather than four. Not for me anymore, anyway.

And acknowledging this to myself felt more like liberation than like a compromise. True, I’m not as strong a runner as I once was, and that’s part of what was driving my decision to cut back on Saturday. But I’m also not as driven by routine as I once was. I used to believe I had to run as far as I possibly could at least once a week. But whether it’s a sign of emotional maturity, physical aging or just a relaxing of standards, this past weekend I didn’t feel that way. I wanted to put in my 45 minutes, enjoy my four miles, and save some energy and excitement for an afternoon bike ride. It’s good to have a solid commitment and steadfast habits when it comes to exercise, but it’s good to waive them once in a while too. The run was fun; the bike ride was even better. And the freedom from feeling like I had to push myself to the max was the best part of it.

A disconnected week

Because we are transitioning from one house to another, we have Internet access in neither home for most of this week. It’s been nearly fifteen years since I lived in a home without Internet access. As with so many changes to routine and the things we take for granted as part of daily life, it’s good to be reminded that what we are accustomed to isn’t how it has to be. And while for the most part I have to admit it’s a big inconvenience to be without Internet access – not only for email but for looking up addresses and phone numbers, checking my Google calendar, backing up documents I’m working on and much more – there are ways in which it brings a touch of grace, as well.

For the past few days I’ve gotten on line only a few times in the course of the day, by bringing my computer to my parents’ house or the library and taking advantage of their network. In between visits, I tend to wonder what I’m missing out on. Is someone trying to reach me – an editor, a friend? (Of course, if they are, they can always call.) Is there a breaking news story I don’t know about? (Of course, I’d hear about it on the hourly NPR news broadcast to which I tune in at least every couple of hours.) And what about those thoughts that constantly flit in and out of my head concerning ideas I need to communicate to other people? (I’m finally learning to write them down as I think of them, and then use those notes to dash off emails once I do get on line.)

In reality, it’s reminding me of what daily life was like when I was in college and in my early 20’s, before the widespread use of the Internet. Contact with friends was sporadic, not continuous. Whether “sporadic” meant a phone call every day or a letter once or twice a year, there were intervals of disconnection. We had time to mull over our correspondences and our relationships, rather than constantly and ceaselessly expanding upon them. I’m remembering what it’s like to save up personal news for the occasional phone call with my sisters or my parents rather than dashing off an email every single time I think of something that might interest them. And I’m remembering what it’s like to wonder what’s going on with my college roommate and look forward to our yearly or semi-yearly get-togethers rather than just logging onto Facebook to see what she did yesterday, last night, this morning.

All in all, it would be dishonest of me to pretend I’m fine with this Internet hiatus. Knowing that hours are going by when I might not know about an assignment from an editor or an important new piece of information for a story makes me anxious about getting my work done sufficiently, and I miss the steady comforting stream of chatter from email and social media.

But I’m also enjoying the novelty of a kind of silence that isn’t common anymore: not silence in the literal sense but the silence of cutting off our usual streams of communication. My 12-year-old son, who during our enforced Internet recess is missing the interactive online games he frequently plays with his friends and the instant-messaging he often conducts with a couple of girls in his class, said it was like a power outage only without the cold and darkness. I know what he means. As with a power outage, we’re having to break out of our usual patterns and find different things to do, different ways to carry on our preferred communications and entertainment.

I never cease to be delighted by the thrill that comes when the lights blaze and the heat roar back on after a blackout. It’s as if we’ve been without heat and brightness forever and not just for a few hours, each time it happens. We’ll feel the same way once we again have regular Internet access. For a couple of days it will seem fabulous; and then it will seem everyday again.

It’s good to be knocked out of our routine and thereby to remember anew just what exactly our routine consists of. I’ll owe a lot of emails once I’m back on line. For now, I’m thinking fondly of my friends, working hard on assignments, and hoping that I’ll be forgiven for my lack of communication this week.

The everyday-ness of feeding cows

Heading back from feeding the cows yesterday morning, I found myself musing. Why do I enjoy this so much? Why is it so satisfying, day after day? Why do I find no particular relief in having a couple days off from the duty, as I did last weekend when I went up to Maine leaving my husband and son with the barnyard chores? Why do I never accept my father’s offer to take a turn with cow-feeding, a job he did on his own here for more than two decades before I offered to take it on a couple of years ago?

It’s hard for me to explain why this job is so satisfying. Unlike dogs waiting to be fed, the cows don’t greet me with ecstatic displays of welcome; they just swing their big heads around to watch me enter the barnyard. Our dog jumps irrepressibly with excitement when we offer her the simplest gesture of affection; the cows and bulls, on the other hand, seem almost patronizing as they submit to a scratch between the ears when I walk amongst them, but they certainly don’t seek out my attention. They just wait stolidly for their bales of hay to be tossed down from the loft or pulled out from the back of the barn, and then they wander eventually over to the water trough to see that I’ve topped it off for them.

But leaving the barnyard always gives me a sense of accomplishment different from anything else I do during the day. Not a bigger sense of accomplishment, necessarily, but in some ways a more unequivocal one. And I suppose that’s because the job is physically demanding but also easy. I haul a few bales, turn some valves on the pump, take off my gloves to manipulate the chain closure to the gate, reach and stretch my arms and legs to climb up and down the hayloft ladder; but really it’s all easy. Very little can go wrong; it’s unlikely that on any given day I’ll find any of these simple processes impossible to execute.

So perhaps the satisfaction comes from that combination: knowing I’ve worked hard physically, but also knowing it’s more or less a sure thing that I’ll complete my task in the course of fifteen or twenty minutes. And when I’m done, I’ve filled that most primal of needs: provided food and water to fill an animal’s stomach. What could be easier, and yet what could feel more critical at the time it’s being executed?

Curious about how something so routine could continue to be pleasing, day after day, I resorted to the question I often pose to myself these days: WWHDTS, or What Would Henry David Thoreau Say? In his journal from 1841, I found this quote: “Routine is a ground to stand on, a wall to retreat to; we cannot draw on our boots without bracing ourselves against it.”

Is feeding the cows every morning the routine against which I brace myself as I draw on my boots to advance through the rest of the day? I like that image, the idea that the sturdy everyday-ness of this task fortifies me for whatever follows. Perhaps that’s the answer: I’m fortifying myself as I fortify the cows: them with hay and water; me with the routine of caring for them. Maybe they don’t show the overt enthusiasm of dogs at my arrival, but I know they wait for me every morning, and I know their day becomes better when I appear. And it might be that that’s enough.

Pedaling uphill

Our minister told a story from the pulpit over a year ago that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. I consider it a parable; she referred to it as an “old joke,” which I would like to think suggests merely that it’s more meaningful to me than it is to her and not that I’m so simplistic that what constitutes a joke to other people is a symbolic morality tale to me, though I admit that it’s quite possible that’s true.

The story – whether joke or parable -- tells of two people riding a tandem bicycle up a steep hill. Not only is it difficult to make progress forward; the hill is so steep that they are in danger of sliding backwards. Finally they reach the top. The one in front says, “What a ride! My quads are burning up! I wasn’t sure we were going to make it!” The one in back says, “I know. I was so afraid of backsliding, I had the brakes on the whole time.”

My cyber-colleague Michele Dortch, who writes the Integrated Mother blog, posted on Twitter yesterday that her intention for the day was “to move with the flow of change & stop trying to work against its current,” and I asked her if she knew that parable. She didn’t, and I couldn’t boil it down to Twitter’s requisite 140 characters, so I promised her I would tell it in today’s blog post.

It’s a story that means a lot to me. As I often say, I’m someone who loves routine – both actual routines and the whole idea of doing something in a diurnal or otherwise regularly scheduled fashion – and, by extension, I don’t always embrace change.

Several years ago, my friend Nancy invited our family over for dinner on Labor Day, which in our town is also usually the eve of the new school year. “Oh, that’s a great idea,” I said eagerly. “And if it works out well, then next year we’ll invite your family for a Labor Day, first-day-of-school-eve dinner.”

Nancy is too clear-eyed and practical to put up with me sometimes. “I’m inviting you for a dinner, not the launch of a new tradition,” she said bluntly.

But to me, it sounded like the perfect way to launch a tradition. So the next year we did invite them, and then they invited us again, and I thought we were on to something wonderful until the year after that, when the school calendar changed and school started for the first time the week before Labor Day. I called Nancy, full of anxiety, as soon as I found out. “It’s our turn to host, but I don’t know what to do,” I confessed. “Which night do you want to come over? Is our tradition a Labor Day dinner, or a first-day-of-school-eve dinner, now that they’re not one and the same?”

So yes, I do love traditions, and that’s okay. Not being one to embrace change isn’t always bad either – until you become the person putting the brakes on the bike as someone else struggles to ride it uphill. Every now and then I stop and look at a decision I’m making or an action I’m taking and ask myself that question: “In doing this, are you the one keeping the bike from reaching the crest of the hill? Is your tendency to avoid change really more like an inability to recognize the possibility for progress?”

Sometimes, yes. I try to keep that parable in mind, because it’s a story so relevant to my life and, often, to my faults. Working against the current can be challenging but ultimately productive: just ask a salmon. Keeping a bike from being able to pedal, not so productive. Yes, it’s just a parable – or, to a more sophisticated thinker, an old joke. But to me it’s tremendously informative, and a really useful image to keep in my sights.

Change it up

I write often about how strong my affinity for routine is. I like diurnal rituals, yearly traditions, seasonal rites. My attraction to daily practices is one thing that makes it relatively easy for me to carry out a resolution to run a mile or more every day of the year – a resolution I’ve held now for two years and nine months. Writing one thousand words in my journal is another daily practice that my love of maintaining habits makes it easy for me to stick with.

But even for me – okay, probably especially for me – it’s good to shake up the usual once in a while. Ever since the school year started in September, I’ve been taking my daily run on weekdays at about 11 AM, after spending two hours at my desk. In many ways, it’s an ideal time to go: I’ve made some headway into the day’s writing assignments or other work-related tasks, the sun is high and warm (which in New England is an advantage all but about two months out of the year, when I’m better off waiting for the cooler hours close to dusk), it renews my mental energy for another three or four hours of work when I return from the run, and traffic on the roadways is at a minimum.

But for the past two days I’ve done something different and run right after my seven-year-old climbs onto the school bus. The first time it was because I had a late-morning appointment that would interfere with my usual run, but the second time I just decided there were advantages to this new schedule. There was a sense of energetic continuity in taking Holly out to the bus stop and then just launching right from there, as if Holly and I were both soaring into the crux of our day at the same time. There were loads of people to wave to in passing cars, since I run past the school and so many of my friends drive their kids up to campus in the morning. I even passed a couple of people I knew along the footpath as I ran by; they had parked their cars up at school after dropping their kids off and were taking their dogs for a walk.

I also found that the sense of having my whole work day still ahead of me once I returned home was very motivating. Sometimes when I leave for a run in the late morning, it feels like an interruption; other times when I get back I feel like the day is practically over, even with nearly three hours left before the kids get home from school. Yesterday I really appreciated the feeling at nine o’clock that my run was over and I had almost six hours of uninterrupted desk time ahead. It gave me a good sense of immersion into my work.

Still, I know if I followed that schedule every day, I’d need a break from it. Any regular schedule is good to alter once in a while. When I worked at the American Meteorological Society, one of the scientists described a study in which the light bulbs in the office that housed a group of clerical workers were changed in some small way. The clerical workers’ productivity increased by a measurable amount after that, proving—the researchers thought—that the new light bulbs created a better working environment. But then six months later they changed the light bulbs back to the original ones, and again there was a rise in productivity. It turned out it was the change, and not the bulbs, that energized the workers.

I remind myself of that whenever I get too set in any work or household routine. Running in the late morning is great, but I’m glad I discovered the benefits of running first thing once in a while. I try to read a different newspaper some mornings. I do my work in a different order sometimes.

For some people, routine is never an option: due to the nature of their work or the hardships of their lives, change, as the expression goes, is the only constant. For those of us like me who are fortunate enough to have quite a lot of control over our daily environment, a small shift in our micro-universe is a positive thing, even when we have to push ourselves into it.

Rise and shine -- but at the moment it's not easy

In one of those countless phases of child development that wax and wane, taking on paramount importance when you’re in the midst of them and then becoming forgotten within days after they subside, my 7-year-old and I are in a Difficult Mornings phase. For the past several days, it’s been torturous to get her out of the house in the morning, and it never fails to amaze me that after eleven years of parenting, there are situations like this to which I still haven’t figured out a solution. I’ve been getting kids ready to leave the house for daycare, preschool or regular school for well over a decade, I remind myself. How is it that I still have a problem with it?

When I complain about my own ineptitude to my husband, he’s always quick to remind me that for the two years I was working outside the house and he was responsible for morning departures, it all ran like clockwork. It always does when he’s in charge, because he simply brooks no dissent and takes no prisoners. Children are dressed, groomed, packed and ready to go when he starts the car because it never occurs to him – nor therefore to them – that there’s any other option.

Alas, not so with me. Now both Rick and Tim are gone by 7:30, and I have a whole fifty minutes alone with Holly to get her out the door. Yet the past several days have found me practically bursting a blood vessel as Holly stalls and dodges, sometimes for reasons of her own and sometimes for reasons I impose. She’s not dressed warmly enough. She’s wearing the same shirt as the day before. She didn’t brush her teeth yet. (My reasons.) She forgot the stuffed animal that she promised a friend could play with at recess. Her ponytail is fastened with a pink elastic and she likes only purple now. The dog needs to have her stomach scratched. (Holly’s reasons.)

I remind myself over and over again to choose my battles. Holly insists on fixing her own hair these days, and I tell myself it’s okay if her part is crooked and her pigtails mussed. But what about wearing the same shirt she wore the day before? Is that a battle worth fighting? I’m not sure. The ineffective tooth-brushing and my insistence that she go upstairs and do it again is definitely a battle worth fighting, as poor dental hygiene is serious business, but that doesn’t make it any less awful when we’re about to miss the bus and Holly is arguing with me about whether or not the use of toothpaste matters.

One problem with finding a solution to the challenge of leaving the house on time is that it’s hard to find an immediate bargaining chip. Unlike, say, not being ready to go to the playground, it’s not like I can say to Holly “If you don’t get ready immediately, we’re not going.” She has to go to school, and we both know it. Incentives based on after-school activities often seem too far off to have much impact, and at the age of seven, she’s a little beyond being motivated by a sticker chart. The fact is, she knows I’m going to be sure she gets to school one way or another, so it often seems like the onus is on me to get us out with any kind of efficiency, and without major temper tantrums on either of our parts.

Yesterday wasn’t much of a success, but maybe today will be better. Last night when all was calm before bedtime (interestingly, bedtime is not an issue these days; we read and then Holly goes to sleep, easy as that), she and I had a talk about it. I told her why I think it’s important to wear different clothes from one day to the next and why I’m certain it’s important to brush your teeth. She promised to get an earlier start on all of it next time.

The consolation as far as obstacles in schoolday morning routines is that you have so many chances to get it right. Five days a week, ten months out of the year. If yesterday didn’t go so well, I know I have the chance to make today go better. We’ll see if I can. And if not, I just remind myself that each stage passes in time. If now I’m getting apoplectic every morning insisting that Holly brush her hair and wear a fresh clean outfit, the day will quite likely come when she spends hours on her hair and clothing, and I’ll wonder what I ever worried about.

When Tim was just a few weeks old, a mother of a baby just a few months older said to me, “The bad phases pass quickly, and the good phases pass quickly. Whatever is going on with them changes, for better or worse.” True today just as it was eleven years ago. Today’s battles will yield in time to tomorrow’s battles, whatever they might be. And when that happens, I’ll remember that they too will pass in time. For now, I need to focus on the fact that it’s more important to have clean teeth than clean clothes, and that as long as I get the kids to school on time and safely and remember to kiss them before they climb onto the bus, the rest is just details.

Old traditions, new routines

On the one hand, we really like traditions and rituals at this time of year, at least I do. I bring each of the kids on a special shopping excursion for school supplies, new clothes, and dinner out during the last week of vacation. In years past, the whole family always walked to school together on the first day. And we always have chicken pot pie for dinner that same night.

On the other hand, back-to-school time is a good time to start new routines. As the kids advance through the grades, school is different every year, and therefore it makes sense to reevaluate established routines as the new year begins. This year for the first time, the kids are on different schedules; Tim starts school an hour earlier than Holly does, so we couldn't all walk to school together yesterday (in fact, I was pleasantly surprised that Holly even managed to be dressed and groomed in time for me to take the annual back-to-school photo). Instead, everyone (except for Rick) biked, but at different times: first I rode up with Tim on regular bikes, then I ferried Holly up on the tag-along bike. This morning, both kids took the bus, which they've never before done in the morning, but I've decided driving to school is wasteful and I certainly can't do it for two different shifts now that they're on separate schedules, so their new choice in the morning is bus or bike. Tim couldn't bike today because he had to bring his trumpet in; Holly just didn't want to. So they both took the bus for the first time.

The new school year has brought an unanticipated change in routine for me as well. Last year I worked from home but never thought about going running during the day because I wanted to wait for Tim. Now that he's no longer running with me, I realized yesterday I could go any time -- so I went in the middle of the day, right around the time the dog started acting restless. and I did the same thing today, which was Running Streak Day 754 for me.

This proved to have myriad advantages. First of all, it tires out the dog for several hours and then she's not fidgety while I'm trying to work. Second, as the weather turns colder, it will allow me to run during the warmest part of the day. Third, it eliminates a lot of end-of-day rush for us. When I used to wait for Tim to get home before going running, we were usually squishing it in before dinner, or right after dinner when he should have been doing homework. Running with him was wonderful, but having the freedom to go at any time of day is a great benefit to not running with him.

Also there's something really novel about exploring the town by foot at that hour. I know it so much better at other times of day; I usually don't go out in the late morning. Yesterday and today, I ran just before noon, and the town had a very different feel from what it has at rush hour or just before dusk. Rather than commuters passing through town, I see locals, and outdoor laborers, and preschoolers on their way home from morning sessions. I see seniors from the elderly housing complex out for a walk. There are toddlers using the playground, and babies being pushed along in carriages.

So traditions and rituals are good, but I think I've put too much importance in them in the past, believing that making something a tradition gave it intrinsic worth. Changes in routine can be positive as well. Right now, I feel like a new schedule has infused us with fresh energy for the new year that lies ahead, waiting to be experienced one unfolding day at a time.