While I have consistently managed to keep up my swimming for a remarkable 285 days, many of my other habits have eroded over the last couple of months. I’m struggling to keep up my journalling (something I’ve been pretty good about since the third grade!). I blame this blog for that one. By the time I’m sitting down to write in my journal, I feel as if I’ve already done all my necessary reflecting.

Other daily habits have also become less consistent for various reasons: family dinners, dog walks, and, most distressing of all: Lift and Sprint. I love this exercise class of mine, yet for the last month or more, my attendance has been sporadic, once a week at best.

Again, I blame this year of swimming. At the beginning of the year, I didn’t mind doing a solo swim on a Monday, Wednesday, or Friday. I’d go just after Lift and Sprint or later in the day. Sometimes a buddy would join me, but even if they couldn’t, it was great. But as I’ve grown attached to the larger swimming crew at the Albany Bulb, it seems a shame to miss my chance to swim with the 7 o’clocks or the 8 o’clocks or my original Salty Sister crew. It’s become more than just swimming, but the beautiful community of swimmers that gives me the mental boost each day. 

But this week I’m determined to recommit to these other things I love and I dragged myself to Lift and Sprint this morning. It was wonderful. And, lucky for me, I also got my swim community in because Arwen and Angie joined me for a slightly later swim after my class.

It was gray (again) and chilly and getting in was difficult, but two minutes in the exhilarating goodness of cold water swimming set in and I was on top of the world.