On June 21 I set out to accomplish a goal: MOVE EVERY DAY between the summer solstice and the autumn equinox.

To make sure I didn't miss the very first workout of my streak, I did this hike after work. There wasn't a ton of light at the waterfall so this pic isn't fantastic. What isn't apparent, unless you hike here often, is how the area was just decimated by our winter of heavy snows. Trees down everywhere!

So here it is, September 24, the day after the autumn equinox, and I'm thinking about how I did and what I learned and where I'll go from here.

I did 20 hikes including yesterday's, which was, while short, an epic one because there was a moose on the trail, and we had to wait for him to move before we could go around.

Same trail head as the June hike, but a different direction so a totally different waterfall. Early evening so still not a lot of light! This is a fun trail with several little scrambly spots and amazing views. And moose!

I'm feeling too lazy to scroll back through Strava and count my runs, but I ran about 45 times during my streak. Two of my runs were on the beach in Florida!

I did a few trail runs (three to be exact) and want to do more, but I think I need some trail running shoes and I haven't made it to the running store yet.

I went to one High Fitness class, which I really enjoyed but my knees sort-of didn't. (Squats are basically impossible for me.)

The rest of the days I did yoga or strength training of some sort.

I missed either one day or four days, I can't decide. When we were in Florida, on the days we were at Universal Studios I didn't do any other exercising besides walking around the park. I think that counts, as we went at least ten miles every day, but it wasn't all sustained, fast, high-cardio walking, so maybe it doesn't. (I know, it's my streak so my rules, but I can't help but think it was cheating.)

My results:

I lost not a single ounce, nor a millimeter of measurement anywhere.

That is, of course, super frustrating. Actually, as I sit down to write this, I find myself almost in tears over that fact. Especially because during that time, I developed a medical condition that requires me to give up chocolate, tomatoes, spicy foods, citrus, coffee, tea, yogurt. Chocolate was the one indulgence I wasn't restraining myself with at all, but after my diagnosis I have had almost none (one mint brownie at our city-employee lunch, one mint brownie at my aunt's funeral, and, yes: A bag of almond M&Ms I bought when we were in Florida because I was pissed at Kendell, and it was actually that moment when I realized how much I've been depending on chocolate for my emotional stability).

So, healthier eating and more exercising for (almost) three months, and not even a pound down? Not even a half inch somewhere?

In fact, my belly is even bigger.

Yes, that makes me feel like crying. (Actually, I *am* crying.) I had my gynecologist test my blood and my levels are normal. I have an appointment next month with my GP, but I already know what he's going to say: something about how my body responds to cortisol, and how the changing levels of hormones effects belly fat. {{{shrug}}} (Cue me going off on a rant about how the medical community is skewed towards men's health, as you can be damn sure if there were a falling hormone level that made something distressing happen to men, they'd have solved the problem decades ago.)

BUT.

I do still feel like I had some results, if only that I changed some of my attitudes. I learned that having a goal helps me to be more consistent. I've watched people on IG or in my running groups do running streaks and right now I can't do that. But this little goal of mine, a moving streak? It changed my thought processes and got me more dedicated to always making sure I take care of what my body needs.

I also learned that I have a LONG way to go as far as strength goes. Mostly this is because strength training is so boring to me. After I finish a run or a hike, my heart is lifted, my spirit is lighter. During a run or a hike I feel that happening. During a weight training session I'm just…bored.

But I know I need it. Especially as I've done more over the past months, I can see where I am weak. I definitely have some asymmetry going on, my lazy glutes are still lazy (I have been known to actually TALK to my glutes on a long uphill hike to get them to do something other than go along for the ride), it's hard for me to work my quads.

Clearly I'm OK with getting my cardio in. I think, knock on wood and barring any injuries, I will continue to be more consistent with cardio. So for my next streak—now that I've streaked once, I want to keep doing it—I am going to concentrate on muscle work. I will still run and hike (and hopefully do more High Fitness classes, maybe just once every other week for my knees' sake), but my goal for today until the winter solstice is to do some strength work EVERY DAY.

It's a strength streak!

Some ways I am going to accomplish this goal:

1. Use the tools I already have. I have some weights, a couple of yoga mats, and three books with workouts in them.
2. Actually *use* the workouts I've saved or pinned on social media.
3. Acquire a few more tools: heavier weights and some resistance bands.
4. I haven't decided for sure on this one, but: sign back up for Ballet Barre classes. It is SO expensive. But I loved them when I went. But I never managed to go consistently, even though I was paying for them. But I know it would help me. But I feel weird showing up by myself when everyone else seems to be friends (probably that's the real reason I wasn't consistent before). But maybe if I went consistently I would make friends? Why is this a complicated decision?
5. Post about it. (Not every day, but more consistently than I did with my solstice-to-equinox streak.)

Also, just going to include this other goal: I am searching for a half marathon to do near the end of October or beginning of November. I haven't really pushed myself to up my miles, and I think a race would help with that. Seriously considering the Moab Trail half marathon and I can't tell if the little thrill of fear I feel at that is because I'm actually afraid or if it's just excitement at a new challenge.

Did you streak with me? How did it go? And if not, what are your upcoming fitness or health goals?

"To join with others to shape a future is the holiest act."

"Part of how they make you obey is by making obedience seem peaceful, while resistance is violence. But really, either choice is about violence, one way or another."

The City in the Middle of the Night continues my woman-based sci-fi reading streak. (I’m not really doing this on purpose, it’s mostly how the Hold List has been dictating my reading life, but I am enjoying it so it’s OK.) It tells the story of humanity after we have abandoned our own misused planet, spent generations traveling on a Mother Ship to a different place, and established life on the planet called January. January doesn’t rotate, so humans can only live in the slim belt of temperate twilight between the boiling-hot and the frozen sides. Humans have established two cities: the strictly-controlled Xiosphant, where citizens’ circadian rhythms are controlled by shutters and where social roles are narrowly defined, and the anything-goes Argelo, where anyone can do whatever they want.

The story is told by Sophie, who comes from the lower Xiophanti culture but has managed to gain admittance into the university, and Mouth, who is working for a band of traders called the Resourceful Couriers, traveling the dangerous road between the two cities. Sophie is in love (awe? thrall? Some emotion that is unhealthy) with her roommate Bianca, who is a member of the elite Xiophanti echelon but also likes to putz around with the underground rebellion. When she is about to be arrested for a minor violation, Sophie steps up and says she committed the crime. The police haul her to the top of The Old Mother, one of the mountains that protects the city from the worst of the weather, and leave her there to die.

Sophie doesn’t die, however. She has an encounter with a crocodile, one of the native species. But it doesn’t rip her apart and eat her. Instead, the crocodile saves her life.

This is the experience that the rest of the plot turns and grows on, as Sophie, Bianca, Mouth and her friend Alyssa begin to interact.

As the plot moves along, you get to experience Xiophant, some of January (including the Sea of Murder), and Argelo. Mostly the plot shows you that you can take humanity off of earth, but you can’t remove our capacity for wrecking a planet. But it also asks you to consider the limits of friendship, why we love who we love, what love really looks like, and whether or not people can change. All the while, politics and environment are starting to spin out of control, and Sophie’s relationship with the crocodiles—which she renames the Gelet—might be the key.

I loved many things about this novel, but my favorite part was the time Sophie spends with the Gelet. That is where the opening quote comes from, as she is learning how they have lived for so many eons on such an inhospitable planet. In fact, if I faulted this book for something, it is that it felt like there was too much time spent rambling around with people. Interactions with strangeness: while of course you go to other planets to see that people are people no matter the setting, you also go for the differences, and I would’ve liked more time in the city of the Gelet.

I also found Sophie and Bianca’s relationship compelling. As the story progresses you watch as Sophie begins to see that her feelings for Bianca are not mutual, and not just in a romantic sense. Bianca has mostly been using Sophie since she took her punishment, and it takes a while for Sophie to understand this. It is such a painful process, and sometimes she utterly frustrated me with how she made so many decisions based on a non-reciprocal love, but it also felt true to the situation. And: again, that is what I love about books. I’ve never been in Sophie’s exact situation—a girl on a strange planet in love with another girl who wants to lead a revolution AND be seen in gorgeous gowns at parties in mansions. But her struggle resonated with me because that process of coming out of the blindness of a damaging love and figuring out how to deal with it is a situation I’ve gone through. Watching Sophie struggle gave me a bit of insight into my own struggles that shaped me.

The one big complaint I had is the ending. I didn’t know that this was to be the first book in a series, or I would’ve waited to read it. The ending wasn’t a huge cliffhanger—no one is in mortal peril by the last page, and we know where all of the characters are. But the story just ends because that’s the last page of the book. I am glad the story will continue, but I am left feeling…unfinished. Like I still need to pick up the book and finish it, but I can’t because there’s nothing else left to read.

I’ve struggled with reading this year. I’m just so slow at finishing the books I start. Becky and I have talked about this and we think it has to do with grief. And so I am just moving along, slowly reading. Not sure what I’ll pick up next. The Testaments? Frankisstein? a YA novel that I could at least just finish quickly and thus feel like myself again? I don’t know yet. But I’m glad I managed to finish The City in the Middle of the Night, despite that unsatisfying end.

“Can you see if you have this book?” a patron asked me one night last week.

Obviously I get asked that question often, but this interaction is lingering in my memory.

“Sure,” I said. “What are you looking for?”

She asked for the sequel to Rachel Hollis’s self-help book.

As I looked up the title and put her on the hold list (16 other people were waiting to read it that night), I listened to her gush about how Girl, Wash Your Face had changed her life, and how excited she was to put what she’d learned into action, and how certain she was that the sequel would be even more helpful.

And then she asked me the question I was hoping she wouldn’t. “Have you read it? Didn’t you just love it?”

I told her I had read some of it, but didn’t finish it, and tried to leave it at that, but she insisted. “You’ve got to check it out again!” she said. “It will change your life. I can’t believe everyone’s not reading it!”

She left the reference desk feeling happy, even if she did have to wait, partly because I'm a professional librarian. I knew that telling a Rachel-Hollis fangirl how I really feel about those books would’ve been a disaster. Pointing out the flaws in the book to her would've only annoyed her, because if she can't see them herself then it's just my opinion.

To be fair, I only read the first chapter of the first book. I didn’t continue for two reasons: 1. The writing tone. I couldn’t spend hours and hours with that chirpy, upbeat, faux-hood writing style. 2. The message itself. I went to a couple of Amway meetings in my 20s. That was enough. The focus on getting and spending—the expensive bags, the second house in Hawaii, the trendy shoes—is not how I choose to focus my efforts in my life. Her message is that the lies we tell ourselves hold us back, which is true, but I think “having expensive possessions brings happiness” is also a lie. I realized with that first chapter that I have no interest in getting coached by a person whose basic values are vastly different from mine, who earned her expensive purses through party planning, who actively self identifies as a “lifestyle influencer.”

But I didn’t share any of that with the library patron that night, not because I don’t feel passionately about it, but because I have come to understand that not many people are able to read critically. (I also understand that for many readers, this isn’t the point of reading.)

By “critically” I don’t mean “in a way that expresses disproval.” I mean the second definition, “analysis of the merits and faults of a work of art, literature, movie, or music.”

Merits and faults.

One of the reasons I love reading, and continue to read, is critical thinking. It is one of the things I loved about teaching: having a group of people to interact with in a discussion about a book, an essay, a poem. I like reading for story, of course, and to get to know characters and to enter a setting. But I also like thinking about (and writing about and, if we’re ever at a meal together, talking about) what the story means, how the characters make mistakes, the way the book influences and changes me. Not in a get-more-expensive-purses kind of way, but in a understand-something-difficult-about-the-world kind of way.

In essence, that is why I can’t bring myself to read books like Rachel Hollis’s: because they are obliviously lacking critical viewpoints. They are unable to allow for differences in life experiences, desires, and opportunities. They assume that everyone wants a Hollywood kind of life.

But Hollis’s books aren’t even the reason I sat down to write this today. They are just an example of why critical thinking is important to me.

Because I feel like it is time to bring some of those critical thinking skills to my own life, not just to the books I read.

As I wrote in my last post, I am trying to experience this autumn season with intent. I want to feel things and to experience them, rather than only looking as if through a window. “Looking as if through a window”: this is how I feel I have been living my life for many years. It has to do with the choices I’ve made, the people in my life and their choices, the ways I have chosen to wall myself off. It is about how I feel like I always have to acknowledge: yes I know I am different from you. It comes from seeing my differences and feeling ashamed of them, wondering why I don’t fit in, instead of being able to be who I am.

I want to be who I am.

The God’s honest truth is that I haven’t been really, honestly happy in…I’m not sure how long. I love my people but I keep bumping up against the reality that my life doesn’t feel like the life I need. And when I write something like that, I am flooded with doubt. I don’t want to hurt anyone. I don’t want to be selfish. I love my children and I wouldn’t trade them for anything. I love my husband. But there are flaws here. And I am realizing: life is short. Life is so, so short. I’m nearing fifty and I still haven’t done many of the things I intended on doing.

And of course I can just continue here. I can keep on with my average life. I can do it until I die.

But deep down, I want change. I am craving change. I am wanting to be more than the quiet, stunted person I’ve made myself into, the one pretending. It isn’t only about church anymore. It is about everything. Maybe it is because I am at the end of my years of mothering. I still get to have an influence on Kaleb for a few more years, and I am learning how (thank goodness) being a mother doesn’t ever, in a sense, really end. But the hardest years of daily care are past, and now, for the first time since I was 23, I can ask myself: what do I want?

What shape do I want the rest of my life to take?

I can’t find the answer in a self-help book. I can’t even find the answer in the fiction and poetry I love.

I can only find the answer by myself, and that is both liberating and terrifying. I know what I want, but I don’t know how to get it within the current shape of my life. I don’t want to hurt anyone. I don't want to burn it all down. But I am also starting to realize that I can matter, too. Is that selfish?

Here I am: a frumpy woman with stiff knees, nearing 50. What have I done with my life? What will I do with the life I have left? I suppose everyone faces and answers that question every day of their lives. I have answered it so far in part by doing what other people told me I should do. Which is like reading a book and loving it only because the story was good, rather than for the wrestle with new thoughts it caused. And I’ve been doing that for too long.

It is time to wrestle.

Today is September 10th.

No, wait: Today is September 10th.

Autumn, as I've long established, is my favorite season. The cooling air, the trees taking up their colors, the slant of the light: while I also love spring, autumn is my favorite because it is moody and sometimes dark and sometimes complicated and isn't afraid of letting things go.

September 10th is the crisp edge of the beginning of fall, and already I am sad; the trees haven't even started changing colors in the mountains yet, except for a few early patches on Maple Mountain, but it will happen so soon, and then a wind will come and blow everything away, and then autumn will be over.

It's a season you can't hold on to.

But I want to grasp it and hold tight, even though I know I can't.

Today in the shower, I was thinking about this, how I love fall but I don't ever really want fall to get here, because once it arrives it's already ending.

And I decided to set myself a challenge: to linger in fall by writing about it. I almost decided to do this on Instagram, but I'm hardly known for brevity and sometimes I bump up against that character limit Instagram sets. And I feel strangely vulnerable now, posting things on Facebook, because it seems like no one posts stuff like that anymore there, and when I do I feel exposed. 

So, what I'm going to do is pay attention. I'm going to watch for the moments in my day that feel like I am soaking deep inside of fall, and then I'm going to write about them.

My posts will probably not be long. They might be photo-heavy or have no photos at all. They won't happen every day.

But maybe by purposefully paying attention and then by recreating as best I can what I felt using words—maybe that will help me feel less like autumn is slipping through my fingers.

***

This morning, after I took Kaleb to school, I drove to the Dry Canyon trailhead. I was going to hike with my friend Wendy, but already, as I drove up the steep hills past the enormous houses on the road that leads to the trailhead, it was starting to rain.

Past the houses and through the gate that closes off the rest of the road in winter, there was a wildfire last week. It burned right up to the road, and the dead trees still smell crisply acrid, a bitter smell that is offset by the rain. When it falls on so much soil, rain doesn't smell like petrichor. Instead its scent is sweeter and larger, somehow, a billow of wet dirt and wet leaves, an organic and almost floral smell that makes me think  the trees are drinking?. 

I sat at the trailhead waiting for Wendy, reading my book in the truck while the windshield became almost opaque with rain, the door window open just enough to let the smell in. I was parked in front of the Great Blue Gate, one of my places I go to when I want to feel that nature is prescient and knows, in some stony way, that I exist. Thunder—we almost never have thunder in the mornings here—bounced inside the canyon and the wind made the trees shiver. I watched a couple climb out of their truck, take a selfie together, and then start up the trail, seemingly oblivious to the rain.

I knew it would be too wet to hike, and Wendy texted shortly to say she couldn't make it anyway (sick kid), but still. I sat there for a little while longer, listening to the rain. I thought about how last week it was still close to 100 but at that moment it was only 65, and I at last felt cool again. Summer breaking: that's what I witnessed this morning. There will be other hot days, of course. But from now on it will be more cool than hot, the sky moodier, the grass gone dry from August's lack of rain wilting in new, wet winds.

When I was a kid, I lived within two or three miles of my cousins (on my dad’s side), but we only saw each other once a year: at Christmas. Until I was 9 or 10, we went to my grandma Elsie’s house (my dad’s mom) every Christmas afternoon, where we’d eat dinner and open presents. When my grandma got older, we switched to the Cousin Party, which rotated between the three houses each year; we opened gifts and Santa came.

But that was mostly it: the time I spent with my cousins.

I grew up thinking that the reason for this was that Grandma Elsie loved my dad the least out of her three sons, and so by proxy she loved me and my sisters the least out of all of her grandkids. I don’t know if the memory I have of my mom saying that is a memory of me overhearing her say it to someone else, or if she said it to me directly, but it is one of the surest childhood memories I have.

So all through my childhood, I both revered and feared my cousins. I thought they were so glamorous and beautiful (I was a decade younger) and just cool, while I was the perennial uncool baby. (They gave me dolls as Christmas gifts for far too long.) Of course they must’ve had something I didn’t, because my grandma loved them more.

Today, I went to the hospital to visit my aunt, who was married to my dad’s brother (they’ve since divorced). She is dying from congestive heart failure and diverticulitis, and is going home to receive hospice care today. I had planned on going running, but Becky called and I decided not to run but to go there instead.

I am so glad I did.

When we got into the hospital room, I hugged my aunt. I also immediately started crying, because even though it was a different hospital it felt the same: the strangeness of the end of a life, which is still so raw to me.

Some of my other cousins also got there at the same time, but my aunt was holding my hand, and she told me a story about how she had written a card to me after my mom died (my mom was her sister-in-law), even addressed it and put a stamp on it and carried it around in her purse, but she kept forgetting to send it to me. Then she squeezed my hand and said “I want you to know that I always loved you, and I’m sorry we weren’t close when you got older. I wish we would’ve been closer.”

Then I pulled a chair up to her bed and sat silent for a few minutes, while Becky and my cousins chatted, because I was feeling overwhelmed.

My aunt didn’t have to say any of that. Maybe it was just the Dilaudid talking. But as I sat in the aftermath of her words, I felt something strange happening in my psyche:

A little bit of healing.

I thought about my mom, who I loved, but who had a very strong personality. And my grandma Elsie, who also had a strong personality. How much of the third-best grandchildren feeling was actually a result of both of their strong personalities? Their inability to put aside their differences so that the four of us could feel like we belonged and were loved?

No one is around anymore who can answer that question for me.

But my aunt saying she loved me and that she regretted us not being closer? That was like someone taking that little girl I used to be, wrapping her in something soft and warm, and whispering a soothing murmur: you matter, you matter.

I sat thinking and watching, feeling something sharp lose some of its edge, in a sort of reverie, until my aunt laughed. Some of her grandchildren had come in and brought her presents, and she laughed in exactly the same tone of delight she used to laugh in, when we were kids opening presents at Christmas, and for a few seconds I felt just like I did as that little Amy version of myself, young enough to love dolls and happy that my aunt love what I loved.

When we left, one of my cousins said, “you know, we might not be as close as we should be, but we are…we are something important and strong.”

And maybe for the first time in my life, I felt like that “we” included me, too. That I mattered just as much, that I had as much to offer as anyone else in the room, that maybe other people love me, too, that I don’t know about.

I’m so sorry this had to happen on the day that marked the beginning of my aunt’s death. Why couldn’t I have known this twenty years ago, why couldn’t we have all been closer and supported each other through babies and divorces and crises and weddings and joys and losses?

But today, right now: I feel different. I feel stronger and a little less bitter and brittle. I feel lighter: not as heavy, but also more full of light. Less damaged.