Field Notes #42: Let's keep going

Gentle nudges in the winter, a Wordle Diary, hopeful environmental news, and more

Hello, dear friends! So oops, this Field Notes is a little late. I aim for Wednesdays. It appears to be Friday. (Happy Friday!)

But here’s the health insight for today: We all will miss our plans some days. The important thing is to keep going.

1 health insight

It’s Friday, Jan. 13, and I find this time of year hard. The glow of the holidays is past. It’s a soggy, cold, gray day here, no glistening snow. Our sleep schedules are somehow still out of sorts from staying up late and sleeping in. Winter can be a time of funks and depression for many people.

So here’s my gentle reminder to myself and all of us.

You can do something today — not everything! But something.

It will get better.

The season will turn.

Whatever is on your wish list for your day or for your health, you can make a tiny step today. I can send out this newsletter to you. I can take a 10-minute walk in the middle of hours in front of the computer. I can make a smoothie with yogurt with a banana and peanut butter for breakfast. (Mmm!) I can curl up with a good book later instead of scrolling endlessly on Zillow.

The blessed thing about the steps that are truly good for you is that once you get past the hurdle of inertia into actual moment, it can be lovely — walking in the crisp, cold air, sipping warm tea rather than soda, sleeping a solid 8 hours because you went to bed early.

It helps to notice this difference and congratulate yourself on the effort, however tiny. Go you! You packed your lunch today! You took a walk! You are in bed at 10!

Winter feels to me like such a season of stagnation. It seems to take extra effort; for those of us not in Florida or Hawaii or the like, our days are not bouncing with sunlight and warmth.

It’s ok. It’s winter.

Hello, winter! We see you. We know you are here. We welcome you, as best we can.

And we’re going to keep going. Today. Tomorrow. And on to spring.

2 quotes

“Intimacy isn’t something you have. It’s something you do.” — Terrence Real

“I used to feel like a good diary was one in which you wrote down Important Things That Happened To You, but the more I write mine, the more I think it’s the tiny, almost insignificant details, accurately rendered, that bring you back to where you were.

“The same way you think the Big Important Rituals are what’s going to matter to your family, when it’s really the small, silly ones you’ll probably remember most fondly…” — Austin Kleon writing about doing Wordle with his sons and sketching their games in Wordle Diary

3 links

IBD Risk Higher After Antibiotics — Dose-response relationship found, especially for older individuals (MedPageToday)

The US Consumer Product Safety Commission will move to regulate gas stoves as new research links them to childhood asthma (Bloomberg) — I was surprised to learn that gas stoves omit nitrogen oxides and other gases indoors that can be harmful, especially in smaller, not-well-ventilated spaces.

UN Says Ozone Layer Slowly Healing, Hole To Mend By 2066 (Associated Press) — Is is so encouraging to read GOOD news about the future, that Earth’s ozone layer is “slowly but noticeably healing at a pace that would fully mend the hole over Antarctica in about 43 years,” according to a new U.N. report. Apparently this improvement has also helped save 2 million people a year from skin cancer. It reminds me that we can make a difference together, that change is possible, even in the face of enormous problems. But this didn’t happen accidentally. Over 35 years ago, “every nation in the world agreed to stop producing chemicals that harm the ozone layer.”

So much hope here — and action! Let’s do both, my friends.

To our journeys,

Brianne