It’s spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you’ve got it, you want – oh, you don’t quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so! – Mark Twain
As winter begrudgingly releases it’s stony grip, my thoughts have begun to turn from my freezing feet (mine are cold from November to February) to looking for buds on trees, from hunkering down at home while a bastard of a blizzard rages outside, to talking hikes on the winding sidewalks in my tree-lined neighborhood.
I feel an excitement when spring is on my doorstep, a sparkling sense of newness, of beginnings and the urge to press forward and put into action creative ideas that have been percolating in my head for the past few weeks.
Here are a few spring-inspired things that I’m working on.
Not going to the gym. I never go to the gym. I feel like a real slacker for not doing it. I know that it would be good for me to grind it out on the elliptical sandwiched between two other sweaty bodies. But, I always fall short of making it off the couch. Maybe things will change with the warmer weather. But, I doubt it. I tend to see working out as some big production. This perspective deters me from actually doing it.
There are just too many steps involved, after all: I need to pack my gym bag, I have to determine the precise time that would be ideal to work out, I have to figure out if I need to eat breakfast before or after I workout, etcetera. My best laid plans to exercise collapse under the weight on my ruminations. For now, with the better weather beginning to break, I am going to just hoof it. No gym bag, no special plans or driving to the gym. I am just going to go for walks and see where that takes me.
Reading the New Testament. I grew up in a Polish Catholic home. I have wandered in and out of the church for the years. I’ll go to Mass on my lunchtime at a nearby Jesuit church and feel great afterwards. Then it will be two months before I go again. Go figure. When people ask me my religious faith, I usually say that I am a “left-of-center Catholic with sprinkles of Buddhism” tossed in the mix. I’ve never read bible from cover to cover. Like most, I’ve read snippets and heard bursts of liturgy during Mass. I’ve heard said that reading the bible for oneself is a path towards wisdom.
So, I’ve begun reading the New Testament from cover to cover during Lent. I scoured Amazon and found the perfect book for my journey, the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible, which not only has the full text of the gospels, but lots of commentary from theologians, historians and anthropologists.
Picking better movies. My wife tends to like the romantic comedies and independent films. I like these as well, but also laction movies with lots of explosions and mayhem. Like a lot of the junk on T.V., there’s a lot of crap showing at the theaters. I am going to try to be more choosey about what I see and expand my horizons. My next film up to see? The Grand Budapest Hotel by Wes Anderson.
Keeping my clothes better organized. I have never been good at this. I come home and am tired from a hard day at work. The thought of taking off my suits and neatly hanging them up gives me a migraine. I am pooped, after all; I deserve to just throw my shirts on my bedroom floor, I rationalize. But later, when I see the mess on the floor, I feel like an undisciplined slob. I am going to be more respectful of my clothes and try to bring down my dry cleaning bill.
Eating better. I am going to keep this simple. I’ve reading and seeing lots of information out there about this and I’ve boiled it down to this: eat less sugar, more protein, more fruits and vegetables.
Keeping my office neater. Last week, we had a blizzard here in Buffalo that shut down our city. I have a brother in a downtown hospital that I had to see, so I drove to my office for a few hours to get some work done. Instead, I spent three hours just cleaning and organizing my office. It was a freeing experience. Somehow, the act of chucking last year’s phonebook, a stack of unused index cards, old receipts and piles of outdated reference books exhilarated me.
Completing my book on depression. It has been an off-and-on project of mine, but I feel a renewed sense of determination to finish it. I’ve decided to make the process more creative-tinged, than laborious.
What’s on your list of things to do this spring?
