After literal years of practice, how can I still struggle to start a workout session? None of the arguments seem to bite and the body just resists it.

I know it will be fun once I have started. I know it will feel good when I’m finished. I know it is good for me. I know I can do it.

And still I have to push myself to do it.

Looking back, there has been progress. It is actually easier than it used to be. I no longer need to tell myself that I’m allowed to not finish, and I no longer convince myself by picking the shortest videos.

What works? The usual stuff. Committing in advance. (Twice a week, on the weekdays when I work from home, at lunchtime.) Not allowing myself to think about it. (I said I was going to do it, so there’s nothing more to it.) Removing all obstacles and smoothing the way. (Paid subscription, with plenty of videos I’ve tagged as favourites. Gym clothes and equipment in easy reach.)

I am envious of the people who go to the gym with a spring in their step and who look forward to it.

My half-teaspoon measuring spoon fits perfectly inside the opening of a standard spice jar. Not theoretically perfectly, with no space between the two, but practically perfectly, with just enough room that I can put the spoon inside and scoop out some of what is inside.

As a result, I measure nearly all spices in half-teaspoons. If the recipe calls for a tablespoon, that’s six half-teaspoons. If it’s any more than that, I might start pouring from the jar into a larger measure instead.

Photo walk/mini hike on Kärsön, a small island in lake Mälaren in northwestern Stockholm. I wanted something relatively nearby, and with at least a chance of liverwort: sunny slopes facing south, and a mixed forest, not pure pine on rock.

I so want spring to be here. March is not spring, I tell myself every year. It is, at best, not-winter. I didn’t let myself have very high hopes for the liverwort. But here they were! Some still in buds, barely open, but also fully blooming stands.

I had planned my walk for today because the forecast promised sunshine. There was some of that, but mostly the sky was overcast and the air quite chilly. Definitely hat and gloves weather. With nothing really growing yet, the big picture feeling was dreary.

Though some sections of the path were muddy, I got through everything with dry feet. Some balancing on fallen trees was required at times.

There was still ice in small, sheltered bays.

When the big picture is dull, I take out my macro lens and look for the small things. Liverwort. Dead, fallen trees; dead, standing trees. Not-green things growing on trees. This is always more fun in nature reserves where there is a mixture of species, and trees are allowed to fall where they fall, and remain there afterwards. Production forests tend to be less varied in what you can find.

Today was a getting things done day. Three loads of laundry, two hours of cleaning, baking hazelnut cakes, setting a bread dough, and sorting through half the drawers in one of the closets in my bedroom, finishing the embroidered name sign. None of which makes for good photos, apart from the name sign. (The hazelnut cakes taste great but look kind of bland.)

The plan is to get all the must-dos checked off the list today, and then I can go out for a photo walk tomorrow without any time pressure.

Me, waiting for the bus, next to a very shiny glass building.

Started on the metro tile wall embroidery.

I had a piece of Aida cloth in my stash at home, which I thought would work for this. Now I’m regretting the choice. It’s a bit of a pain to work with – not very stable, and tricky for longer stitches that tend to glide in between the warp and the weft. A stiff, stable canvas would have been much easier.

The stitches don’t cover the fabric entirely. That also bothered me at first, but I mind it less now. I don’t need a faithful reproduction of the wall, just an impression of it. I could fill in the gaps with some dark gray wool yarn to imply the grout between the tiles. Or it could just be as it is.

The embroidery club has agreed on the theme of “Stockholm metro” for this term. I was dithering about whether to join the project or not – figurative embroidery, trying to depict something, isn’t my favourite kind. But the more I think of the ceramic wall art at Stockholm Central station, the more I want to try and translate it into a textile version.

I bought embroidery thread for it today. I like working with wool yarn, but this really calls for the glossy shine of cotton. Or silk, I guess, but covering the fabric with silk thread would be rather expensive.

First bicycle commute for this season.

What I knew but had sort of forgotten:

How sore my sitting bones will be after the first few rides.

How much time with my own thoughts this gives me. It takes me roughly the same forty-five minutes to get to the office by train or by bike. By train, the trip is chopped up and full of distractions. I don’t experience it as a forty-five-minute period, but as a sequence of small stretches of time. Ten minutes to the station, wait a few minutes, find a place on the train. Read for ten minutes. Get off, get through the tangle of Stockholm central station. Repeat the above on the metro. Walk one last bit. Going by bike, in contrast, there is a lot of just… time passing while I move forward. Time to think. Or to not think.

How much energy it takes, when I haven’t been doing this for a while. I can’t really bike slowly. Not if I’ve got 13 km to go. It’s not that I go all out, but I definitely arrive with an elevated pulse. Do that twice a day, and in the evening I’m not up to much more than lounging in the sofa.

March is not winter, but also not spring. It’s not not cycling season, but it’s still cold enough for me to be tempted to take the train.

If I pack and prep everything now for tomorrow morning, then it’ll be easier to just grab the rucksack and cycle, than it would be to re-pack for a commute by train.

When there’s too much “stuff” going on around me, my executive function just shuts down and I do nothing. It happens mostly when I feel like I have no control over my time. One child wants to be woken so that we can have breakfast together. The other needs lunch to happen at a particular time, and then to be driven somewhere straight after. And then some more in the evening.

It’s not that it takes up a big part of the day. And it’s not at all that I don’t want to do these things. I am happy that they still prioritize mealtimes with me instead of being away with friends.

These fixed points spread out through the day chop it up and I feel like it all slips away from me. Then it feels like there’s no point even trying to take any control over the rest of it, and I just let time pass between those moments.

The mere knowledge that I could be interrupted at any time is almost as bad as actually being interrupted. When the day is over and everyone else has gone to bed and I know that nothing more will happen, that’s when I finally breathe out, look up, and feel like I could actually do something.

Charles Dickens reputedly felt similarly. “The mere consciousness of an engagement will sometimes worry a whole day,” he’s quoted to have written.

What can I do about this? Make a list. Commit in advance. Remove myself from the situation even for five minutes to get out of the tunnel and clear my head of this illusion.