I had planned to cycle out for some more errands today. But the covid-19 related measures were just ramped up in Sweden, and all non-essential contacts with other people and non-essential visits to indoor places are strongly discouraged. So no more errands for me for now. Instead I simply cycled to Ursvik and back (via Rinkeby and Järvafältet).

Before corona I had very regular exercise habits. I booked my Friskis sessions well in advance, and never allowed myself to cancel a booking.

Working from home, I’ve struggled with keeping up physical exercise. I’ve had periods when I worked out regularly, without much of a struggle even. But I’ve also had periods when I became lax and let go a bit. And periods when I lost the habit completely.

The gradual decline always looked the same. “I don’t have time right now, I’ll do it later.” and then “I’ll take a rest day, I can work out tomorrow instead.”

This workout challenge has taught me what I need to keep up the habit. The trick is to work out every single day, so it happens on autopilot. Instead of rest days when I do nothing, I have rest days when I do some other kind of exercise. This way there is no room for hesitation about whether I really need to work out today of all days. The answer is known in advance with full certainty. Yes, I do.

Thinking is reduced to a minimum; the room for excuses and postponement is minimal.

As if the universe heard my complaining yesterday, there were intermittent periods of blue skies today. And when I went out cycling during my midday break, I actually had actual rays of sun touch me.

For about two minutes. But still!

I felt ridiculously grateful for those minutes.

The days are dark and gray. Heavy, thick clouds hang so low that there is little difference between morning, day and evening. Even in the middle of the day it is so dim that I have to turn on the lights inside, although I sit right next to a window.

I wish there was sunlight, at least. There isn’t much else to be happy about, or to look forward to.

I wish there was something to look forward to.

I’ve come out of October’s slump where I had no energy at all. I think I may have the exercise challenge to thank for much of that change.

Now that I have more energy, though, what do I do with it? Indoors I am restless. Outdoors all is mud and gray. I thought of going on another longer hike but there’s only 8 hours of daylight, what would I do with the other 16?

The workout action selfie series continues. There isn’t much else that is photo-worthy in my life just now. And even that’s setting the bar for “photo-worthy” quite low: someone is doing something in daylight.

Today’s workout was also today’s photo session. First I finished my workout and then I did at least 5 minutes of extra swings out of pure vanity, or perhaps out of my pride as photographer, to get decent photos. Action selfies are difficult! Getting the timing right required a lot of attempts.

My mother-in-law was buried today. Lots of flowers and beautiful singing, as she herself had wanted it to be. Had she been there to see it, she would have liked it.

Afterwards the bells rang not with the sonorous, melodious sound that I love but with harsh tones that were almost painful to hear. I don’t know if it was due to these particular bells or my state of mind, but it felt fitting.

If my funeral were to be arranged to my wishes (which is not a given, because a funeral is for the sake of those who are there and not for the one who isn’t!) mine would not look like this, regardless of how lovely this was.

Most importantly, it wouldn’t be a religious funeral. I’m not a member of the Church of Sweden and that is a very conscious decision. I don’t have the least bit of Christian faith in me. No prayers, no benedictions, no sermons about how I will now be in a better place, no psalms.

Organ music is beautiful, though; I can enjoy all of Bach’s chorals despite their Christian origins. Still, for my funeral I’d rather have, say, Thea Gilmore’s Sol Invictus, or perhaps Helen Sjöholm’s Då väntar jag vid vägarna. Maybe I’ll win the lottery and die filthy rich and then you can get Thea Gilmore to sing at my funeral.

If I could choose, I’d die in the middle of summer so the service could be outside, in the sun, in some green and flowering place. Instead of princess cake, how about a chocolate mousse cake?

Afterwards it would be rather nice to simply be rolled up in a shroud and then buried somewhere in the woods just like that, to be eaten by worms and all the other little creatures. Or perhaps cremated and spread with the winds and the waters. I would not want to be shut in a coffin, if it was up to me.

I really didn’t feel like working out today. But the challenge, and especially the knowledge that my laziness would drag the team’s score down, got me off my backside anyway. The uninspired photo quite accurately reflects just how uninspired I was feeling about the whole thing.

When I don’t feel like it, then I have to make it really easy for myself. The less I have to think, the better. Today I just followed a thirty-minute workout video I found on Youtube. Someone told me exactly what to do, when to start, when to stop.

And of course afterwards I felt really good about it. I never, ever regret working out after I’ve done it.

For the past two weeks – or maybe more like three – I’ve been feeling tired and dull and joyless. I don’t feel like doing any of the tasks I normally enjoy. Not reading, not working, not going out, not exercising. I don’t know if it’s due to the shortening, darkening days, or the lack of anything actually happening in my life, or something else.

I can push myself to do the low-effort tasks: work, buy groceries, cook dinner. But workouts are more of a struggle. The smallest excuse is enough to not do it. “I’m in the middle of this coding task… and oh look, now it’s too late.” Last week I only worked out once.

It didn’t take long before I started feeling the results. Less than a week, in fact. My back gets stiff and achy. My hip joints pop and crack. Sitting in the sofa became uncomfortable; I sit on the floor in front of the sofa and lean on it instead.

This week I’ve pushed myself to work out every day, even though it still feels 100% a chore. I’ve set 20 minutes of strength training as the absolute minimum. After every single exercise I think: “Are we done yet? Can I go back to doing nothing now?” but the clock says no.

But the effect was immediate. I can lie down in bed comfortably again without tossing and turning to find a good position for my back. Well worth 20 minutes of daily effort.

We went to see her, one last time, even though we knew she was asleep much of the time and might not even wake up to notice our presence.

It felt oddly intimate to visit someone who is asleep.

She was there, and yet it was almost not her any more. She has always been alive and warm-hearted and vivacious, and this person here is so emphatically not, so how can it be her? This person was closer to being dead than to being her.

When we thought she had months to live, it was only weeks. When we thought it was days, it was just hours.

She died a few hours after we left. It does not seem real.

I have been on a reading binge, neglecting just about everything I can neglect without feeling really, really bad about it – including workouts, blogging and laundry.

I still like paper books – old dog, new tricks, all that – but I am gradually getting more comfortable with the Kindle reader. It no longer feels like second best. Binge reading, for example, is an area where the Kindle beats paper books hands down. I saw a book recommendation, downloaded a sample, and bought the book within an hour. When I finished that book and wanted more, a few taps got me the next one, and then the next one after that. No searching, no waiting for days for a delivery.

The Kindle also handles better with one hand, for example when I’m reading lying down and need the other hand to support my head. Or with no hands at all, when I balance the book on my thighs because my hands are busy knitting. Some books don’t deserve my full attention but I still want to finish them. Can’t do that with a paper book. (Am I still “handling” the book when no hands are involved?)

I read differently with the Kindle.

It’s harder to skim backwards and forwards. With a paper book I can easily flip back a few chapters to look up some detail. I can usually remember roughly how far back that part was – how many centimetres back in the book. With the Kindle I have much less context about where I am. The e-reader can show some metrics for this – how many percent I’ve read, for example. But I would never have an intuitive feeling for how many percent or pages I’d have to scroll backwards to get back to something I’ve already read. So I’m less likely to do so.

Recently I turned those percentages off, anyway, so that they wouldn’t constantly remind me how much I have left of the book. You can’t do that with a physical book. The constantly diminishing amount of pages to read is always visible and tangible.

I’m more likely to re-read a page with the Kindle. Sometimes when the action is exciting and I just want to see what happens next, I only skim parts of the page. With the Kindle, I am more likely to notice this and read the page one more time, more slowly and carefully, before flipping to the next page. There’s nothing stopping me from doing the same with a paper book, but it just doesn’t happen. I think it might be because the Kindle page is less dense and contains less text, so one page is just the right amount of text to re-read. Paper book pages are denser and have too much text – re-reading an entire page would be too much.

When I’m a week behind with my blogging, as I am right now, catching up looks hard and blogging becomes a slightly icky task. I want blogging to be fun rather than icky, so I’ll leave the gap for now and catch up later. You’ll have to check below this post to see if and when I succeed.

Plus I now have a whole virtual pile of books that I want to review. The binge was most enjoyable but it’s a good thing that I ran out of books because otherwise I’d never get anything else done.