Do Not Pass Go
Where to go when you can't walk away
“All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols
Back in March of 2020, while others perfected their sour dough recipe or awkwardly fumbled their way through their first Zoom happy hour, I was developing a new "hobby” that I would come to incorporate into my daily habits - long walks.
I would tighten up a pair of Asics, hit play on a podcast, and walk aimlessly for sometimes hours at a time around the neighborhood. I discovered the source of the waxy smell that would sometimes waft into our bedroom at night (candle factory), observe the BBQing schedule of a family that lived three blocks away (every Thursday evening), and counted dozens of “For Sale” signs as the Bergen County real estate market heated up.
I kept this habit up almost obsessively over the next year as I created a web of well-trodden paths throughout the adjacent neighborhoods. There was something cathartic and serene about putting one foot after the other repeatedly as I was alone with my thoughts. I planned out my days ahead, mulled over things that were troubling me, and quietly reflected on what pandemic-approved activities Grace and I would spend our weekends doing. As I hit some of the most stressful months of recent memory, these long walks provided a daily outlet for me to keep my body and mind grounded. In fact, starting on October 6th, 2020 when I began a daily habit of tracking my total steps, through end of the year, I logged over 407,000 steps.
This daily ritual became something I looked forward to and even after we moved into the middle of suburbia, I maintained this tradition. I spent a not insignificant amount of time on Google Maps trying to map out different paths that I could take without having to resort to weaving in between streets like a lost rat in a maze. As my Pandemic 10 slowly started expanding to the Pandemic 15, I drafted plans to ramp up my pedestrian activities even while the temperature began to rise in the middle of June 2021.
That is until life decided to take a different path.
At the end of June 2021, in the midst of a wonderful evening of pickup basketball, I felt a sudden pop in the back of my foot while trotting back on defense. What I initially thought was an accidental kick on the back of my heel turned out to be a complete rupture of my right Achilles tendon. I had never suffered an injury quite like this before and it took a few days to come to grips with my new reality for the next several months.
However, here we are almost three months later. I’m able to walk without the assistance of crutches or a walking boot and the other day, I was able to accompany Grace and our dog Barry down the block for a quick walk (oh, that’s right…we also rescued a Pitbull puppy 2 months before the injury). Thanks to my incredibly patient wife who had to literally serve me hand and foot for a few weeks (and deal with my incessant complaining) along with a very supportive community, I was able to get through this all mostly pain free.
I suppose to stay on theme with the whole walking thing, I could make a pun about “navigating through this ordeal” or how people “walked alongside me”, but instead i’ll just link you to this incredibly interesting article about the relationship between great thinking and obsessive walking. As I sat at my desk in a foot cast reading this article, it brought me back to those moments outdoors, but as the article reminded me, I could still find ways and alternative outlets for these moments of zen (like this newsletter which has made a triumphant return from the digital grave) - “Surely the astoundingly brilliant Stephen Hawking did not walk after ALS paralyzed him. So walking is not essential to thinking, but it certainly helps.”
Wait, did I just compare myself to Stephen Hawking?
All this to say, I’m glad to be back and look forward to finding a spot in your inbox every Monday morning moving forward. This is a pretty accurate representation of what I’ve spent the last year doing and I look forward to hearing about yours.
Is this what you can expect each newsletter to look like? Probably not, I was actually intending for something a little shorter and less narrative, but I figured I at least owed everyone an update. We’ll figure this out together over the next few Mondays.
Have a great week ahead.
If data is your thing, here’s a fun line chart of my daily step total starting from the day of the injury to today