As I have passed the halfway mark with my drawing challenge and this is the second time I have carried out a 30 day challenge, I am looking to take this forward to other areas of my life. One of the main ones is health, but I plan to try out others too. I used to go out walking every day, most of the time twice a day. Since moving from the family house and all that entailed I somewhere lost sight of this. One would think that living in a place of beauty is the motivation to just go outside. However in my case that has not always been the case over the last couple of years.
Due to life events leading me to this point I have struggled with the lack of for want of a better word, focus. Not having a job and career to provide that structure I threw myself into treating walking as my job. In those darker days, it helped me concentrate and as a byproduct helped me lose weight, lots of weight. But once I had completed the move of forty-four years of a families life, I felt worn out. I’m still amazed at how I and my brother managed to achieve this feat! But the consequences of that were relaxing the resolve and determination to complete the goal of returning to an ideal weight if there is such a thing.
So the purpose of this post is to get myself going again and try and use the repetitive nature of the thirty-day challenge to spur me on to go walking every day. I have chosen to do this in the morning before 9 am. This is to help start the day in a positive frame of mind. I know this works as it worked in the past for me. In fact, it has many benefits not just physical ones and there are many studies that highlight the benefits of walking for mental healthiness.
It gets the exercise out of the way before the day starts and means that I’m less likely to procrastinate through the day and not do something that is important to me and also something I enjoy. Starting the day with a tick in the box helps the feeling of progress, makes one feel more energetic and allows for some consideration of life and the days’ tasks that no other method in my view does.
I have often been extolled with the virtues of meditation and in my younger years attempted it via the guidance of a girlfriend. I gave up quickly and always rather dismissed it as not for me. However, leaving the often manic life in London for the quietness of the Dales lead me to realise that “my mediation” was walking. I would often find that I had covered a distance that I couldn’t remember. I had been pondering or meditating over, “life, the universe and everything” I now find if I have things on my mind the best solution is to go for a walk.
So that brings me back to the here and now. Starting tomorrow 22nd July, for 30 days I am going for a morning walk and take a picture. At the end of it stitch them together into a time-lapse as I think this will be a nice way to mark the completion.
So lets see if I hear my alarm in the morning! :)
