I must take this once-a-year opportunity to mention that tomorrow afternoon the sun will set later than it does today. This annual clockadillic anomaly is my first milestone each year in getting through the short days. I’ve tried in the past to explain how the earliest sunset can occur some ten days before the shortest day, but I’ve never tried very hard, because it’s complicated and I don’t really care how or why it happens. I just like longer afternoons.
Psychologically I’m doing pretty well this season so far. I credit the Happy Walk. What is the Happy Walk? Shhh, don’t interrupt, I’m about to get to that. There was a study about walking that I have chosen to embrace before it is inevitably discredited. The study said that if you walk like a happy person would walk, it makes you happier. It’s kind of a full-body version of the smiling-on-purpose makes you happier idea. But I’ve always just felt crazy when I’ve tried that.
Happy Walking is working better for me. I walk a lot to get to the public transit I use daily, so I have lots of opportunity to bounce around like a five-year-old. For some reason this does not make me feel crazy, probably because I still am a five-year-old on the inside. It just makes me LOOK crazy.
Yes, it is a challenge doing the Happy Walk in 40-degree rain, for sure, but actually it turns out to be less challenging than trudging gloomily along in 40-degree rain. Next thing you know I’ll be singing in it too!
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