The water level is lower this year so I take the ladder off the dock into the water. It’s cold, but my whole body is on fire after the heat of the weekend and a short three-mile run in the late afternoon. If there are recipes for instant happiness this is one of them: exercise in the sun and then get in a lake.
I’m in old running shorts splattered with paint and my worn sports bra; the rest of my possessions sit on the dock’s lone bench. I was self-conscious of going running with so much skin showing after not running very much for a couple of months, but that’s all gone by the time I’m done. That’s the feeling I’d been missing. When you’re done with a run it’s hard to care what you look like when you just feel strong.
I’m finding a lot of joy today, and this weekend, which feels relieving after a tough month or so. Like in the way I have the energy to clean my condo first thing. Or that, after lunch, I decide to go to the writing center on a whim and use the last two hours of their opening to write. After I walk their public trails and read on the bench in the forest without a soul in sight. Or the energy I have to stop at the grocery store on the way home and then go for a run. Then after that run to jump in the lake. Then I cooked dinner. This is only monumental for me because usually I “heat up” dinner, but I would classify browning meat and a thirty-minute prep time as actual cooking for me. Who even am I today?
I often orchestrate and plan my days but today the day led me forward to where I needed to be. My mom told me yesterday that she has days like that . . . following her intuition rather than a plan and good things happen. Maybe she passed on a little magic to me today.
With Love,
Natalie