Sometimes you have to work hard to not do anything. For me, Labor Day Weekend was NOT one of those times.
I was a few miles away from hitting 30 miles for the week, but I just couldn’t be bothered, and to be honest, I took some inspiration for my weekend of slack from a Peanuts comic first published on August 14, 1963, and recently re-published by the Charles M. Schulz Museum on Instagram.
I’ve been getting up at 5:30 AM for over a year now, and around 6 or 6:30 since starting the Comeback Special Tour in September of 2022. All in an attempt to stave off the temptation to lie in bed and think of the 1,205 things (and counting) that I (and most likely you) hate about myself. I found it wasn’t an ideal way for me to deal with depression, and that getting up and “doing stuff” works way better. Who would have thought?
But there was something about seeing Snoopy in that comic that made the idea of guiltless slumber super appealing. So, I made the decision that over the weekend I would get up at my normal time, tend to Lola, and then go back to bed until 7 or 7:30. The only rule was that I had to be sleeping or at least soundly resting; NO THINKING!!!! “If you thinks, you gets up,” as the kids say.
And it worked! Outside of illness, I slept more last weekend than I have in years, and while I would love to say things like ”I’VE NEVER FELT BETTER IN MY LIFE!”, that would be bullshit. It just felt good to catch up on some rest, free from the guilt and the negative thoughts that can so often creep in.
While I didn’t hike or photo creep over the weekend, I was busy and did super fun stuff like clean the bathroom, scrub the vinyl flooring on the first floor, grocery shop, and mow and trim the grass. Of course, I found time for beer and footy, but that’s a given 10 months a year.
Come Tuesday, I thought that I would be feeling refreshed from the long weekend and ready to resume normal lumbering, but it seems like all that thought-free sleep caught up with me, and at 3 AM, I found myself wide awake, with the “Jimmy Legs,” and my brain doing its best to tell me that I am indeed a waste of human flesh, with very few life examples to the contrary.
After a good hour or more of that, it was soon 5:25 and I was shuffling through the house to feed Lola, get my gear together, and wait for daylight to make an appearance.
The sun was to officially rise at 7:04, and I was on the trail at 7:02 with a noticeable lack of spring in my step. It was a pretty OK 5-mile hike, and it felt good to be back in the woods, but I admit I was having trouble turning off the thoughts that kept me awake. And I was having even more trouble finding any critters or random nature nubbins in the early morning light to tickle my creative fancy.
Oh well, not every lumber is going to get the endorphins going, or provide photo ops. Sometimes it’s just maintenance, “blowing out the pipes,” if you will.
Shout out to Snoopy for the weekend motivation, but it’ll probably be a good while before I entertain the idea again. I have too much going on in my noggin, and sooner or later, it seems to always find a way to catch up with me, no matter what I take or who I talk to.
Wednesday was another chance to shine. Or at least another chance to lumber around the early morning woods like a hulking oaf, looking for things to photograph whilst I pretend that my hiking is anything more than me pissing in an ocean of suck with some crap photo to illustrate my point.
I ended up getting a few pics on Wednesday and hiked 6.69 miles, which helped my mood go from a -2 to solid 1 on a scale of 1-10.
The hike was only supposed to be 6-ish miles, but I made a detour to a porto near the other suspension bridge due to the fact that I felt weirded out using the same one as the folks who’ve been squatting at the campground for the past month. It’s not them; it’s me. Well, it’s a little bit them, but whatever, I got a few more steps in my legs.
As you can see, my autumnal mood is less than enjoyable, so I plan on taking a few more days off from writing this dross. I’ll be lumbering and taking pics as usual, but positive words escape me, so if I post, it will just be some pics, which is probably what I should have been doing all along.
Later.