We’ve reached the start of the time of year I wait the entire winter for. There’s a lightness I feel – and not just in wardrobe – when I can feel the sun on my skin. It almost feels as if my actual skin is breathing and the opposite is also true. Under layers of winter clothes I feel stifled. My mouth is usually uncovered unless it’s really cold but I feel smothered.
You can really get a feel for how the weather feels these days here (though it was 8 degrees and I still needed a light coat and gloves when I started – it’s 24 now):
Last week was not quite as nice but I was still glad to get out – even with 60+ km/hr winds, 6 degrees and rain. I didn’t see any other cyclists and hardly any pedestrians, runners and noticeably fewer cars.
I’ve needed to make a bit of a reset in my routine, though. I want to sleep a bit later so the alarm moved forward to 5:30 AM. This means the morning rides are no longer happening. I do like them but they’re limiting. Anything more than 25 km makes me late for work. On the other hand, if I want to do 50-60 km or more after work it’s possible – and I do want to increase my distances. I have my eye on completing my first 200 km ride of the year on Canada Day – a little over a year after I bailed out on that same route.
I’ve also tweaked my device usage – particularly when it comes to social media. To understand a bit better my approach, I recommend checking out this article which I’ve shared before here. Basically it talks about how before smart phones we had “The computer” which usually was shared among a whole family and was in the living room or a dedicated space. It competed with the telephone for connectivity and so time was limited. That meant time was focused when you were online to get in, get the things you wanted done, and get out. In the early days you couldn’t even write email offline. You would connect and type fast before someone needed the phone or worse yet, picked it up and immediately closed your connection.
So in that sense, my phone has only those apps that have no “stickiness” – nothing to scroll or check over and over. For things that can be a time sink I do those on my computer with plugins to limit their time to 15 min each for TikTok and Instagram. So when I power up, I get in, check my RSS reader to see whose blogs are updated and what articles there are that I will want to read and send those to my Kindle for later reading. If I have any email to write, I prefer to do it here – who likes typing on a phone? If I have books to download to my Kindle I do that and then turn off the computer.
The result is this: Most days I’m averaging 1 hour 40 minutes of reading with some days well over 2 hours. That’s a mix of books and articles I downloaded. I tend to read in the morning with breakfast, on the bus to/from work, and just before bed. Some days if there’s nobody to eat lunch with I’ll read again at lunch. Where some people take out their phone to pass the time, I’ll take out my Kindle and read. I’ve even resumed that thing I used to do when I was a kid – reading and walking – obviously not on busy streets or when actually crossing roads. I’m reading like I haven’t read since I was in my pre-teens. I completed three books, reading 997 pages on top of articles and blogs. And I’m not a particularly fast reader.
Two months ago all of those times I was reading were likely to be scrolling – except for just before bed. Imagine that – 1-2 hours/day of scrolling turned into reading. It’s definitely changed my mental landscape for the better in terms of happiness/stress levels as well as other less tangible things like my ability to quickly recall things like an actor or author’s name.
And what about my time spent on my phone? Screentime said I spent 23 minutes there yesterday. That includes 4 minutes on Tidal (choosing/playing music), 4 minutes on “Messages” mostly trying to figure out where Sage was in the bookstore and mall we were in, 3 minutes on email and a minute looking at my grocery list.
Today I spent a bit longer, editing and posting videos but after that there was little else happening on there.
How’s your early summer going?
Meanwhile, for the curious, I’ll end with some of the articles I’ve found interesting recently.
Here’s a wild and wonderful bit of news. This year solar will overtake coal as the biggest source of electricity on the grid in Texas!!
I haven’t read Lord of the Flies but it actually sounds horrible – a terrible portrayal of what the author thinks boys left alone on an island would behave like. But six boys from Tonga took a joyride on a boat way back in the mid 1960s. They were not found for 15 months. When they were found, their experience was as far from “Lord of the Flies” as possible.
Speaking of traveling by boat, this memoir piece about a young man taking on work as a deckhand on a boat in the Mediterranean back in 1984 was beautifully written and a delight to read.
While I’m currently reading a dystopian novel related to the climate crisis, I’m really happy to see a new genre being described. “Thrutopia” is neither utopian fiction that feels like it glosses over the future nor dystopia where the world has turned to an authoritarian hellscape. It’s a realistic, hopeful (but still struggle-filled) vision of the future. One that takes work and acknowledges the new challenges we’re facing without throwing up its hands and giving up. Sanjana Sekhar’s Cabbage Koora is a great example of this type of writing. And if you liked that, you can see all of the winners of Grist Magazine’s Imagine 2200 collection.
In the face of the world today, a perspective like that is refreshingly hopeful – and realistic.
Thank you for the links Todd. When I go out there is always a book in my bag