Winding Down the Day

Today the day wound down nicely and differently than it usually does. My wife and I took a nice leisurely jog through one of my favorite parts of our neighborhood. It’s one that I don’t get to as much as I’d like to and enjoy it every time I do. I was actually out there last night, however was pretty rushed and just ended up picking up our dog at her boarding spot and jumping back in the car to get home.

This evening was a nice and unexpected surprise. We had the luxury of time and I allowed myself the flexibility to just roll with it and go with my wife’s idea of a spontaneous run, without having to follow a set path, just a general direction. My first instinct was to argue against that, since we were running together and the only way I thought that would work was if we both followed a set path. After I acknowledged and let that first reaction pass, I decided to wind back from trying to force my way down the usual path and go with my wife’s suggestion.

I’m really glad I did. We ended-up heading out to that part of the neighborhood that I really enjoy, since my wife had been running through there lately. We even went in a few loops and doubled-back, which goes against my usual resistance to anything but a symmetric loop that starts and stops at home and takes almost exactly 30 minutes. We ended up spending a nice amount of time out there and actually ended our run there too, since we had the luxury of time to walk the 15-20 minutes back home. We even stopped on a bench and sat for a few minutes to have a conversation.

While this may sound really simple to a lot of people, it probably should be simpler for me than it really is. What strikes me the most as I write this post is how seldom I let myself run without a route and plan, as well as just wander the rest of the way home, stopping along the way if I feel like it. It was really nice to experience both of these things this evening. They made it really feel like I was enjoying where I was and what I was doing at the moment, rather than thinking about where I needed to be or what I needed to be doing next.