Blah blah blah, yada yada yada, it’s Wednesday, I walked 5 miles to the train station, the weather is decent with strong wind for the walk.  The 610 train is just arriving, and now I’m waiting for the 630 one so I can cool down and dry off a bit.

That just about summarizes current events.  Oh, also I can honestly say that walking a total of 8 miles yesterday in the New Balance shoes seems to have worked well.  My left foot is essentially fine‒though I woke up once during the night to realize that, lying on my side, I had the arch of my left foot pressed almost aggressively against the ball of my right foot.  It made me wonder if that strange posture was a regular sleep habit and if it contributed to the foot arch pain I’ve been having.

Evidently, though, based on the fact that the foot is fine now after my five miles so far this morning and eight miles yesterday and that sleepy posture, it didn’t contribute much, if at all.  So, alas, there seems no saving grace for the boots.

I had the temptation to retry the other, slightly larger pairs that I had stopped wearing because they had caused me trouble before, just to try to rescue the boot-wearing.  This is how stupid I can sometimes be, it seems.  I really need to get rid of all of those so that I’m no longer tempted.  I wish I could give them to a good home or something, but I don’t see how I would be able to work that out.

It is good, at least‒I guess‒that I’m able to have gone so far over a couple of days without my ankle or arch or knees or hips acting up at any atypical level.  I am, on the other hand, at least a bit surprised and even slightly disappointed that there was no trace of any of my old, typical endorphin thing yesterday‒my mood wasn’t even briefly bolstered by the long walk.  And, so far, I don’t notice any sign of it today.

Maybe it’s just that the seasonality of my affective disorder and my ongoing, generally deteriorating mental health is overpowering any tendency to get a boost from exercise.  I’ve never really been one of those people for whom regular exercise effectively treats depression*.  Indeed, even when I was running six miles at a time and was in great shape, I still had the same trouble with depression.  Well, it was not “the same”, I guess.  It’s evolved over time and is worse now in some ways than it was when I was younger, though now I’m at least more familiar with it.  In fact, it’s one of the few recurring constants in my life since I was a teenager.  No wonder people don’t like to be around me too long if they can help it.

Anyway, that’s that and it is what it is, and all those other tautological bullshit phrases.  Speaking of which, a whimsical question just occurred to me:  “Is slackology the opposite of tautology?” That’s a very silly and stupid thing to say, I know, but what are you gonna do?  I’m stupid.

I must say, the 630 train is noticeably busier than the earlier ones tend to be, which makes sense, I guess, since it’s getting closer to the typical time for a workday to start.  However, the Tri-Rail people have adjusted for that, and this train has an extra car compared to the usual ones (the others all seem to have 3 passenger cars, whereas this one has 4).  Thus, though there are more people, it’s not more crowded.  Well done, Tri-Rail!

Okay…well, I think that’s that**.  Nothing interesting is going on, really.  I’m still reading Sapolsky’s book, and I listened to some LotR this morning.  It’s a good story to hear while walking, since it’s about a great journey (among other things).  God knows how many times in my life I’ve either read or listened to The Fellowship of the Ring, specifically.  I had read it more than 20 times even before I finished high school.  I almost surely must have passed 50 at some point in the more than 30 years since.

It doesn’t matter, I guess.  Nothing much does.  So I’ll call that enough for now.  I hope you all have a good day.

*Though, of course, I cannot know that I would not have been even worse had I never engaged in regular exercise in the past.

**To repeat the tautological cliché from before.