Certified Couch Potato? So Were We
Unless you're already someone who gets inspiration as you go for a jog, or relaxes by going for a swim, if you're anything like my husband and me, the idea that you could turn your couch potato life around seemed like a skit from Saturday Night Live.
If you're a writer, you've probably gone to a workshop reminding you to keep your creativity-vessel in good working order.
If you're a reader, you've probably read somewhere that keeping fit is a good blah-de-blah.
All well and good if your idea of fun is spending your Sunday getting up early, packing gear into your car, driving to the ocean, loading yourself into your sea kayak and paddling along the coast.
For an indoors person, that inspires nothing but shudders and a flip of the next page.
You couldn't possibly find two more indoorsy people than my husband and me. For one thing, my husband is agoraphobic, which for him means he feels the same way about crossing the threshhold and heading outside as he would about facing a firing squad.
As for me, I've been struggling with chronic pain for decades, which makes many outdoor activities too much for me these days, although unlike my husband, I do love being outside and drinking up nature.
Last summer I wrote about the 100-day A For Adventure challenge my husband and I have taken on:
I discovered this challenge while chilling out after my day job and reading the paper one evening. I'm a big one for taking on challenges. So far, they've been in the creative category (of course!) -- taking part in NaNoWriMo, taking part in the A to Z Blog Challenge, doing a reading challenge, doing a year-long Movie Madness challenge.
Because the original challenge was to head outside for 100 days in a row, my husband and I modified the challenge as I knew he could never manage a pace like that. We switched it up to 100 walks in 100 different places, and gave ourselves one year in which to do it.
So, a strange thing has been happening over this year of our challenge.
Our walks have been doubling in length all by themselves.
My husband has been interacting with his surroundings while we're out on our adventures. For someone who used to rush through any outdoor walk as though he had blinders on, focusing solely on getting back inside, this aspect of our adventures has been the most touching for me.
In the photo below, Brad stopped to toss rocks onto a newly-frozen pond to see if he could break the ice. We've been married almost 23 years, and I've never seen him do anything remotely like that before.
We greeted New Year's Day by taking a walk in the snow. I can safely say we never did that before.
One thing we've definitely done in order to pull our natural interests in line with this challenge is to wrap a walk around an arts event or an historical site, so that we're exploring something that we find fun.
For example, we build a walk around going out for dinner and a movie, or on our way to a concert.
You really couldn't find two people who were less outdoor-active than my husband and me.
Yet, a funny thing has been happening on our way to Day 100.
We're having a great time, and we're getting into better shape without too much trouble at all.
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