I just finished my second set today of twice-daily burpee-based calisthenics. Normally, I do my second set in the evening, but since I started the habit on December 22, 2011 and today is December 21, 2021, today completes my first decade. I already finished my first decade of publishing blog posts, nearing 5,000. Here are all of them. 20 percent of the time has been on a single load of[…] Keep reading →

This morning as I walked to Washington Square Park to pick up litter, then to drop off my food scraps for compost in Union Square, I saw someone on the steps of a brownstone, curled up, fiddling with something. I’d seen that look before, of someone concealing doing drugs. Sometimes they pull their shirt or jacket over their heads. When not that many people are around, they just do the[…] Keep reading →

Someone suggested I learn about a writer named Pico Iyer. In an interview I listened to he talked about the musician Leonard Cohen, who apparently spent time living as a monk. Cohen’s practice, according to Iyer, included scrubbing the floor. The practice doesn’t sound glamorous. You can hire someone to do it. Why bother if you can afford not to? The movie Amazing Grace, about William Wilberforce, showed John Newton[…] Keep reading →

As a vegan who also doesn’t fly, having seen the suffering to humans, animals, and other life flying causes, I don’t understand how vegans who say they are for ethical reasons don’t apply it to their flying. Stopping flying was just like stopping meat and animal products. I thought it would be impossible and a sacrifice. I’d learned others did it so tried. In less time than I expected, I[…] Keep reading →

Every time I look at my floor sponge I think, “it’s beyond the end of its life. Time to get rid of it.” Below are pictures of the front and back. It’s in tatters. But look at the third picture. It still cleans the floor. Why get rid of something that works? I’ve cleaned my floor every fifth day without fail for about five years, maybe more. I do it[…] Keep reading →

I finished six marathons and my exercise habit began by joining the cross country team in high school in 1986. Ultimate had a lot of running in it. Practice led me to love running. I didn’t at first, when I struggled. I’ve had my share of running injuries. Last year I started running barefoot, inspired by podcast guest Nir Eyal. Over the winter I tend to row inside on the[…] Keep reading →

Meeting myself as I did yesterday and today happens once every couple of years. It turns out the wild blueberries I thought I was picking were black nightshade. Black nightshade apparently comes in edible and toxic varieties and I seem to have eaten the toxic kind. First things first. If you see these adorable looking berries, I recommend thinking twice. It was hard for me to type the word adorable[…] Keep reading →

People who don’t want to act on the environment will create and believe any rationalization to justify not acting. A common one is to say what they do doesn’t matter. Or that their results wouldn’t make a difference. I kept myself from acting for years for “reasons” like these. Nobody said to act once and stop. Any one individual action divided by the results of billions of others rounds to[…] Keep reading →

My spreadsheet said I hit 175,000 burpees yesterday. I don’t record each one. I programmed in how many I do each day. I update the date and it tells me how many I’ve done. So I’ve done more, since occasionally I do extra without telling the spreadsheet. A decade ago, I’d record what felt like big milestones like my first six months of doing them daily or the first ten[…] Keep reading →