#64 🧭 SEEKING but not necessarily FINDING 🛡

In brief 🩲

• Journal: The barest exertion possible
• Practical: Testudo that calendar
• Read: Be found for weird and wonderful things
• Quote: The twitch-tickling problem of getting squiff-squiddled

From the journal 📖

Recently, while swimming lengths, I couldn’t help but notice the guy in the shallow lane next to me. Now, I’m not going to criticise the way he flailed his arms out sideways, or bobbed his head upright for most of the way, or the way he would intermittently put his feet down and push off the bottom.

It didn’t look like he was unable to swim – more that he lacked conviction. I wondered, as he took one of many breaks, whether he actually thought he was getting exercise. If he just wanted to feel the lightness of being enveloped by water, to feel the cool of it on his skin, then good on him. Enjoy the water, friend.

But if exercise is what he was after, I felt like saying to him – as he exited the pool at about the same time I’d done 35 lengths and he’d done maybe 7,  most of them just... walking – hey, you’re not exactly exerting yourself, friend. What kind of progress are you hoping for?

Perhaps this is harsh. This might just represent the beginning of a swimming habit for this guy. (“If I can just get myself to the pool regularly, that’s step one. Then I’ll work his way up to doing some of the actual swimming.”)

I just hope he’s not kidding himself. Did you really “go to the track” if you just went down there and didn’t run anywhere? Did you really “go to the gym” if you just went and sat around? Did you really “do research” if just went to the library and had a coffee?