Observations From a Night of Pep Band
1 - The performance anxiety rollercoaster is real. This is a longer post waiting to happen, but I’ve had two public perf...
Listening from the first half of October:
Brian Blade Fellowship - Season of Changes (2022)
Mackaya McCraven - In These Times (2022)
Keith Jarrett - Bordeaux Concert (2022)
Gard Nilssen Acoustic Unity - Elastic Wave (2022)
Robert Glasper - Black Radio III (2022)
Rachika Nayar - Heaven Com Crashing (2022)
jaimie branch - Fly or Die (2017)
Ambarchi - Shebang (2022)
Shygirl - Nymph (2022)
Laura Jurd - The Big Friendly Album (2022)
Björk - Fossora (2022)
Currently reading: Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport 📚
In my old neighborhood, there was a woman who seemed to walk incessantly. And in my old mindset, I used to contemplate how the body of someone who was constantly exercising could be relatively out of shape.
This was besides the point. I hadn’t grasped that there could be health benefits to walking beyond exercise. I’ve had a threefold reason to come to grips with this.
One - in the books of folks like Ryan Holiday and Cal Newport, they reveal that some highly creative people have sworn by walking as the catalyst for solving problems. The exact figures escape me at the moment, but some of them swore by their walking habit, by working only while walking, etc.
Two - Sit Up Straight is Vinh Pham’s guide to “future proofing” your body against injury. For me, this was a serendipitous find: after the Summer conducting seminar at the Hartt School, I am now dissatisfied with my posture - all the time. While the book has been helpful in considering ways to approach better posture, Pham voice is among the chorus denouncing our sedentary lifestyle. I found some opportunities to walk the halls of my school last Spring, once a day at most, in order to augment my exercise. After reading Pham’s book and in taking this all much more seriously, I’ve become a die hard walker, getting in three 15-minute jaunts every day…well, at least weekdays…
Three - in a recent episode of the No Stupid Questions podcast, Angela Duckworth brings up that getting outside is a tool for combatting Seasonal Affective Disorder - something I am not diagnosed with, but one of those back of your mind thoughts that seems to reappear this time of year. The timing was funny - I had only recently brought my walking habit to the weekends on recommendation of my doctor. At my physical, we both realized that my physical activity on weekdays and weekends were completely lopsided. I have consistently had a lot of trouble sleeping at the end of the weekend, whether Sunday or Monday. Spending nearly the entire weekend sitting around could certainly be the reason I felt so buzzy at bedtime.
So, I became a constant walker. I’m going on a couple of weeks now walking 45 plus minutes a day. What’s changed? Small things, like the strength of my back and how it assists my posture. I am very sleepy in the evenings, so perhaps I am on the right track there. But generally speaking my body is feeling tremendously better, as well as it did when I was in my best shape, if not better. I think it has helped me to field the stress of teaching in an incredibly efficient way - like shock absorbers for my soul and my mind. And all it took was getting up in the middle of my preps and doing two laps around the building.
Now I get why that lady was out walking all day. Although I’ll never get over the speakerphone calls she used to engage in most of the time. Ever heard of airpods?
Currently reading: Discipline Is Destiny: The Power of Self-Control (The Stoic Virtues Series) by Ryan Holiday 📚
