I am self-employed. I work from home. It is very easy for me to just sit indoors at my computer all day. I don’t even have to go outside to commute! There are advantages to this, such as being able to set my own hours and being able to work from anywhere, but there are also disadvantages too. The contracts I receive are sporadic, so the work load is never consistent. This can lead to very high stress levels. And it often does.
I moved to Montreal in May of this year and decided that I didn’t want to live that way anymore. Not this summer at least. I wanted to enjoy the new city I am in. I also made a conscious choice that I wanted to be more healthy. Unfortunately, there have been set backs. Work not coming in at all has made it a very stressful few months. Having required surgery I haven’t been able to be as active as I would have liked.
But through all of this, I still wanted to be healthy. Or at least be healthier than I was at that point. For several years now my doctors have told me that I have had low iron and low vitamin D. So I knew those were two things I could work on without pushing myself too much. I decided that every day I would get outside, no matter what the weather and no matter how poorly I was feeling, and walk somewhere. I have been walking every day for fifteen minutes or more – but no less than that. I have explored the library in the area, the parks, the sports centre, the churches, the schools, neat old houses – there is so much to see!
I have also made it a point to share my morning tea (as I am doing right now) outside on my balcony with my beautiful cat. He loves lounging out here in the sun, so why shouldn’t I learn to do the same? It will be harder in the winter to do that, mostly because he has no interest in going out in the cold, but I am determined to keep active and keep walking. And maybe I can convince him to sit on the back of the big arm chair in the window and we can continue to catch a few rays together still.