Five weeks have elapsed since 2026 began, and this is my fourth blog post. That means my New Year’s resolution to post a blog a week is not going great. But it’s not going terribly either. At least it won’t be going terribly if I actually sit down and write this post. If I publish it. Last week, I tried to write a blog post, but I was so overwhelmed by the fact that my government is killing people in the streets of America and my frustrated attempts to say something coherent about the descent of fascism in the United States, that I just wrote, erased, rewrote, deleted, wrote again, and then finally gave it all up. 

Writing about swimming in the midst of everything that’s going on sometimes seems silly, even insulting. But swimming continues to keep me grounded and sane, and it continues to be something I like to write about, something I told myself I would write about once a week for the next 47 weeks. And, while writing about anything other than the dumpster fire(s) of 2026 could be construed as trivial, reading about the wild array of other things afoot on planet earth is another thing that keeps me grounded, sane, and even hopeful and happy. So, I guess writing about swimming serves some purpose? Maybe? 

In any case, these cyclical, doubting thoughts have made it hard to write. Another challenging thing is just how strangely hard it is for me to do something “often” compared to doing that same thing every day. I’m guessing this is normal. When you do something every day, it becomes part of your routine; you don’t have to think about it. Swimming and then coming home and writing a blog post about it was just what I did in my year of swimming. I didn’t stop to think about whether I had the time or inclination. About whether it made sense in the bigger scheme of things.  

I was thinking about all of this on yesterday’s swim. It was a beautiful, warm morning. Unseasonably warm (if seasonality still holds meaning). The water was warm enough that I properly swam, rather than performing the heads-up kicking I favor in the cold. It was glorious. But after a few blissful minutes, an upwelling of frigid water came from nowhere, and I was suddenly freezing. I spent the next couple of minutes acclimating all over again. This process repeated itself a few times; the whole swim was spent in a cauldron of shifting water temperatures, and I never really acclimated. 

The experience somehow seems like an apt metaphor for how I’m feeling right now: trying to develop a routine in the midst of chaos, to find my acclimation in a whirlwind of shifting temperatures. But here I am at the end of my blog, so I guess I managed it today.