stays in motion

It’s 8:30am, and I’ve already taken about 900 steps. This is way more than I manage when I’m working at home… I only start to see these sorts of numbers when I’m formally working out—you know, taking steps on purpose.

On Monday, as I tried to see whether I could set up the printer near my carrel on my laptop, I traversed the stairs three times: getting in, getting the computer room door code from the front desk, getting more paper from the deprived printer.

Now that I have a carrel—more accurately, now that I’ve committed to campus—I am moving far more than I chose to before. Even during my tenure as communications specialist, my movement was from building to car to building and back, with only a tiny bit of in-building movement. In my previous semesters here, I kept up a similar pattern—from parking lot to classroom to student lounge on the same floor. Because I was carrying all my texts with me in a crate with wheels, I used the elevator rather than the stairs.

Now I come to campus first thing in the morning Monday through Thursday, the next class’ books slung on my back with my laptop. I go from classroom to cafeteria to library (where my carrel is) to chapel in varying patterns, with stairs to climb every place I turn around. I’m doing a lot of sitting, to be sure, but I suspect that I’m not sitting appreciably more than I have been for lo this past decade or so. When one’s favorite activities are reading and writing, bodily movement is not the default!

I knew campus life would suit me, but I’d only been thinking about my brain. It never occurred to me that it might suit my body as well.

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