Efficiency drives my young life. I am perennially afraid of being five minutes late, and optimizing time is always my resolution come New Year\u2019s Eve. Thus, I\u2019ve long undervalued the experience of a purposeful or meandering walk. They are long, sweaty in July heat and seemingly inconvenient in a city with so many feasible public transportation options. Nonetheless, they are my new favorite activity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It all began on the first day of summer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dizzied with a newfound freedom of schedule, I decided to take a literal walk in the park. Central Park, that is. Rather than streamlining my route, I changed course whenever a new path presented itself. This led me from the calm of The Ramble to a wedding near The Boathouse. From there I passed the knolls a friend and I sled upon in winter before venturing to Columbus Circle. I let my feet guide me forward and my mind drift. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
My headphones abuzz with music to match my surroundings, I played Charli xcx\u2019s \u201cBRAT\u201d when I felt like a power walk and switched to Paolo Nutini or Chris Stapleton as strut slowed to a stroll. The activity allowed me to decompress and relish the act of simply \u2018being.\u2019 I did not intend for my walk to span the better part of three hours, but I also wasn\u2019t mad at myself when it did. The time felt well spent. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some days later, I accidentally bought tickets to a movie at the wrong theater. They were non-refundable, and I had already promised myself to actively try and watch movies in theaters across the city. With just an hour before showtime, I realized a good mistake had been made. Another walk lay ahead. Over 50 blocks and a few avenues later, movie theater air conditioning graciously welcomed me inside. Even so, I only wanted to keep walking.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The walk left my Notes app teeming with new places to venture to, my camera roll full of photos of a sunset that peeked between buildings and my mind emptied of the day\u2019s stresses. Walking allowed me to become a part of the world around me rather than just observing it from a car window. Living in California and coming to love L.A traffic accustomed me to this, but I began to favor New York\u2019s walkability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I favored it so much that for the past two weeks, I traded my beloved oversleeping for getting up an hour early just to walk to work. Along the way, I join frenzied flocks of people in business attire and prioritize a small habit that brings about a larger sense of joy. The simplest advice I can offer is to go for a walk (if you don\u2019t believe me, Lily Saal makes a poetic point about it<\/a>). <\/p>\n\n\n\n Whether to exercise, appreciate your own company or simply de-stress, just put one foot in front of the other and trust all that the path ahead may bring you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Efficiency drives my young life. I am perennially afraid of being five minutes late, and optimizing time is always my resolution come New Year\u2019s Eve. Thus, I\u2019ve long undervalued the experience of a purposeful or meandering walk. They are long, sweaty in July heat and seemingly inconvenient in a city with so many feasible public transportation options. Nonetheless, they are my new favorite activity. It all began on the first day of summer. Dizzied with<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341,"featured_media":9884,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[347,437,318,566,441],"tags":[],"coauthors":[494],"class_list":["post-9883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community","category-health","category-news","category-summer-narrative","category-world"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/Screenshot-2024-07-05-at-1.36.05-PM-e1721236353677.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9883"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9883\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10030,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9883\/revisions\/10030"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9883"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=9883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}