It took me 33 days, but I’ve made it to the end of the July Project. The main objective of this month-long blogging initiative was to devote time and attention every day to thinking and writing about my efforts to move more and eat better. Even on the three July days when I didn’t post anything, the subject was always in my thoughts, so I’m calling that goal substantially accomplished.

Image: dan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Another stated aim was to collect ideas that I can reflect on at some later date when I find myself struggling to move forward, and to share those ideas with anyone else for whom they might be useful. A few people have told me that these posts inspired them to work harder on their own fitness or writing goals, so in that respect, the project has been an unqualified success. Many thanks to everyone who’s been reading!

Will I return to these posts later for reflection, to see how they’re holding up over time, to check whether their lessons still feel true? I don’t know. Here at the end of the project, looking back seems much less important than looking forward. So here’s the last message I’ll offer for the July Project:

When you reach one of your goals, take a moment to enjoy your accomplishment. But after you’ve learned whatever there was to learn from this chapter of your life, keep moving forward. What you can still do today contains more power than a whole month that’s over and done. On to the next thing!

Yeah, I know it’s not July any more. The month ended in a flurry of activity during which I was too busy to complete any posts, so my first job for August is to wrap up July. Bear with me!

A few years ago, I started thinking of my daily walk as a crude analog to the wandering of our African savannah ancestors in pursuit of game and other food stuffs. They probably spent several hours every day chasing after or rooting around for their next meal, and the one after that, and the one after that. There are three grocery stores within a half a mile of where I pitch my tent, so I don’t have to wander in search of food. But evolution optimized my body and my mind for this movement; walking makes me alert and curious, ready to chase after whatever prey appears on the horizon.

Here in the Information Age, the object of my foraging is ideas. I make my living by collecting, arranging, curating, packaging, explaining, and selling ideas. I need fresh ones every day, and I often capture them while I’m hunting and gathering at the park. While I was taking the 50/50 writing workshop a couple of years ago, I discovered that if I read the day’s prompt before heading out for my evening walk, I’d often come home with a story or essay ready to write. During the present month-long blogging project, I spent many walks turning over post ideas in my head, then came home to write them out.

If my primitive metaphor isn’t enough to make you feel like moving, then take a look at a few headlines I scavenged: Aerobic Exercise Grows Brain Cells; Exercise Grows New Brain Cells; Mental Benefits of Walking; Stronger, Faster, Smarter. We’ve always known that working out was good for the body, but there’s a lot of new scientific evidence pointing toward the benefits of exercise for the brain.

Do you use your brain? Do you want to keep it fit until you’re done using it? Do your 21st-century lifestyle and career require you to trade in ideas? Get your body moving, and your brain will get stronger. And don’t worry—the Information Age will still be here when you get back to the computer.

About a year ago, a business development client and good friend said to me, “I love my job, I’m doing exactly what I want to be doing, my whole life is perfectly on track except for this one thing: I’m fat, and it makes me miserable.”

My answer was, “Well, I guess we know what to work on next.”

She picked a bad time to get me fired up about a new project—the second week of August. She’s not a big fan of Houston summer heat. But she somehow pushed through her reluctance and let me drag her out to Memorial Park for her first walk in recent memory on Monday, August 17, 2009. She was miserable—hot, tired, flushed, and running with sweat—and she made sure I knew it. About two-thirds of the way around, she asked if we could stop to rest. We parked ourselves on a bench for a few minutes.

It became a weekly routine. I never pushed her to establish a specific day or time, and in return, she usually spared me the excuses when I knew she had an evening free and I’d call to ask, “Up for a walk?” She made it through the brutal August and September heat to the payoff of a long, lovely fall. We started working in an extra day every once in a while. She scaled back the whining. I don’t think she was significantly less miserable, but she’d come to realize that the complaining wouldn’t do any good with me as her trainer.

When I started walking two laps around the park in the atypical cold last December, we modified our routine. I’d walk the first lap, then she’d meet me at the stretching area and join in on the second one. I tried always to acknowledge the effort it took her to get out there after nightfall in the cold and damp. By the time we’d extended her at-least-once-a-week streak into the spring of 2010, she’d quit needing a rest stop.

Now she’s coming up on the anniversary of the program. She reported to me tonight that although she hasn’t lost any substantial amount of weight, for the first time in a decade, she’s no heavier than she was a year ago. And there are more signs of progress: we’re making the laps in less time, she’s not experiencing as much next-day soreness as she did at the start, and she made it all the way through last winter without ever getting seriously ill. She’d been laid up for a week or two with bronchitis or bad chest colds at least once each of the previous three winters.

I’m very proud of her.

Right before we started her on the once-a-week program, I wrote her a long e-mail pep talk. I tracked down that message tonight to check whether my advice turned out to be any good. Here’s part of that message (emphasis added):

Don’t be discouraged by the slow pace of progress. The goals you’re going to be setting are for a lifetime, but it’s a healthier, more fulfilling, more satisfying, more pain-free, more energetic lifetime, and it will be worth the work…. [W]e didn’t get ourselves overweight in a year of bad habits, so we’re not going to fix the problem with a year of good habits. But making a few incremental changes in our lives—more good foods, more good habits, a little more dancing, a little more walking, some other fun activities that you’ll discover later—can change the trajectory and get us where we want to go.

Gayle, if you’re reading, congratulations! I’ll see you at the park one day soon.

Image: Maggie Smith / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

At the end of last November, in an effort to jump-start a weight-loss regimen that had stalled, I made up my mind to walk twice around the loop at Memorial Park every day for the month of December. November 30 was a Monday, so I started one day early for good measure. The next day, just in time for my “official” December Project kickoff, the weather turned nasty for two solid weeks. December 1, it was raining and 45 degrees by evening. Then a cooling trend set in. By Thursday, there was talk of snow. I woke up Friday morning to moderate flurries.

At first, denial seemed like a comfortable attitude toward the weather. It wasn’t as if I could do anything about it. But a friend called mid-morning to warn me that it would get progressively worse as the day wore on. “If you must go, you should do it soon.” So I bundled up in two or three layers of shirts, a scarf, knit cap, a windbreaker, and my warmest running shorts. I give up the shorts when the weather gets so cold that ice starts to form on my skin, and not a minute sooner.

Snow was beginning to accumulate when I arrived at Memorial Park. There were plenty of parking spaces to choose from. In the course of 6½ miles, I encountered perhaps a dozen other people. Half of those were sightseers. They’d pull off the road, get out of the car, look at the falling snow—and the crazy man in the shorts—for a few minutes, and then get back in the car and take off in search of somewhere warm.

But the other half…those were my tribe! I recognized some of them as park regulars. With one in particular, a man in his late 50s, I’d had a mutual smile-and-nod pact for a year or two. But on that snowy December morning, I looked up to see him coming toward me with a big grin on his face. It felt like the right moment to solidify our bond, so as soon as we were within earshot, I said, “It’s days like this when you find out who’s serious.”

He said, “Hey, I’m from Colorado. This is like a nice spring day.” We shared the laugh and went our separate ways. A mile and a half later, we met again in front of the tennis center. We compared notes on which parts of our bodies had gone completely numb. There was a look of pride and satisfaction in his eyes that felt familiar.

When we were ready to break for our cars, he said, “See you tomorrow?”

I said, “Count on it.”

If you find something you love doing that’s good for your health, your self‑esteem, your sanity, and your spirit, you might become obsessed. It’s okay. You’ll be in good company.

We’re down to the last five days of the month. I woke up this morning thinking how easy it is to run out of steam right at the end of a project like this, and wondering what extra effort I might need to put forth to get the rest of the way to the goal, which was to give time and attention to this blog every day in July.

I was also thinking about how I’ve struggled for the last couple of months to get rid of the weight I gained while I recuperated after my eye surgeries. I’m close to that goal, but the last couple of pounds are hanging on tight. I’ve been banging away on my exercise routine as hard as ever, but with a lot going on in my work world, I’ve stumbled in the commitment to eat well. Too much snacking, too many poor choices, too many stray calories. Not enough veggies, whole grains, and lean meats.

So I asked myself, “What can I do with the five remaining days of July?” I have ideas for a few more blog posts. We’ll see if it’s enough to carry me across the finish line. But what else can I do in my sprint toward the end of the month? I decided to turn my focus to the practice I call “eating with intentionality.” For the last five days of July, I plan to pay more careful attention than ever to every bite of food or drop of drink that goes in my mouth. I’ll write it all down, and I’ll take my own advice about making sure that I eat only when I’m hungry. It’s a challenge. But we’re talking about five days. I know that I can do this for five days.

What’s the goal you’re working on? What could you accomplish toward that goal if you gave it everything you’ve got for five days? Ignore all the distractions—it’s only five days, after all—and give your time and attention to the facet of your life that needs them most right now. Five days of eating well, five days of exercising at your full capacity, five days of writing poetry, or making art, or doing yoga, or cooking nutritious meals.

Then come back here to the comments area and share with us what you’ve done.

A very late start—delayed by rain, I didn’t get to the park to start my walk tonight until almost 7:30. Afterwards, I made a long-overdue trip to a couple of grocery stores: first Whole Foods for coffee, then to Kroger for everything else on the shopping list. By the time I drove home, cleaned myself up, put the groceries put away, and had a bite to eat, it was nearly midnight.

Instead of trying to write a substantial blog post, I decided to use what energy I had left to look around online for a few more images to decorate the header area of this site. There’s some wonderful free photography out there. I found all of the images below (and many more) at public-domain-image.com:

I’ve added about a dozen new images to the collection of photos that are displayed at random in the header. If you visit enough pages of the site—or click the header bar to refresh it enough times—you’ll eventually see them all. Click on any of the thumbnails above to see a larger, uncropped version of the image.

When you don’t have the strength to do a lot, do a little. Whatever you’re trying to accomplish, find a way to make progress any way you can.

Today was my first full, on‑the‑water rowing class. As I mentioned a few days ago, a friend (Mark) and I are taking a Learn to Row class offered by a club in Sugar Land, Texas. I was feeling apprehensive in the last few days because my first attempt at taking a few strokes tethered to the dock on Thursday night felt clumsy and awkward. We’d spent some time on machines and listening to the instructor in the classroom, but there was a part of the mechanics that I couldn’t make any sense of at all. How in the world was I supposed to know when to feather the blade and when to turn it upright? The instructor struggled to explain it to me, but I wasn’t getting it.

I wasn’t looking forward to revealing yet another sport for which I have no talent, especially with the added risk of humiliation-by-immersion. I didn’t sleep well last night. I lay awake in bed for a long time thinking about all the ways I might suck at rowing.

It turns out that my worries were unfounded.

We arrived at the Oyster Creek Boathouse just before 9:30. The club members had already been out for the 8 a.m. club row, and they had boats ready at the docks for our class. We received our assignments; Mark and I would be part of the crew for an eight-seat boat rigged for sweeping—an arrangement in which each rower handles one oar. We took seats three (starboard) and four (port). All the rowers stowed our bottles of water and adjusted the “stretchers” that would hold our feet.

Marty, the club’s athletic director, would serve as coxswain (or “cox”), the crewman who calls out commands over the boat’s PA system from a forward-facing seat in the stern. Two veteran rowers would sit in seat number one in the bow and at “stroke”—seat number eight—to round out the crew’s six students. Marty gave us a few quick reminders and words of encouragement. He admonished us that from here on out, he was in charge, and that we’d traded in our names for numbers. He ordered “Oars out!” for the port rowers. Then into the boat, away from the dock, and we were off!

The veteran rowers took a few strokes to get us clear of the dock, and then Cox started putting us to work rowing in pairs. I waited nervously while One and Two took their turn. Then he called out, “Three and Four at the finish, ready to row,” and there was no time left for nerves. I focused all my concentration on what we’d practiced, and my problem of mechanics vanished. In that boat gliding along in the middle of Oyster Creek, the turning and feathering of the oar blade was perfectly obvious. Worry instantly gave way to delight! Marty said, “Nice work, Three and Four.” Woohoo!

The next hour and half was filled with a lot more of the same—practice, practice, practice, and I won’t bore you with the details. To sum up: there were some rough spots, I got tired, I bruised my left pinky, there were some smooth spots, I made a few good strokes and a lot of sloppy ones, and I had tons of fun. I used muscles I didn’t know I had. I’ll be sore tomorrow or the next day. Did I mention that it was tons of fun?

The lesson here is one I’ve heard many times from my coach friends, but I needed to learn it again. You have to show up. All the worry in the world won’t make you better or worse at tackling the challenges you face. But if you show up, pay attention, focus on the task, and hold yourself open to learning, maybe something good will happen.

Once in a while, everything comes together to create the perfect walk. There was an afternoon in Los Angeles in January of last year. I’d spent the day in a conference listening to brilliant people talk about their hopes for the future of human progress. I was high on contagious optimism and altruism. One of my new friends offered to show me the way to Griffith Park. I followed her through rush-hour traffic up into the hills, then she showed me where to park and where the running trail started. As I walked and jogged, the sun went down over the hills on one side and the San Gabriel Mountains faded to deep purple on the other. James Taylor sang “That’s Why I’m Here” on my iPod. I break into a grin from ear to ear / and suddenly it’s perfectly clear. It was an ecstatic moment. I’m sure that my feet never touched the ground.

And I recall an early spring day at Memorial Park in some recent year. Dappled sunlight was coming through the deciduous trees, just beginning to fill in with tender yellow-green leaves. The breeze was warm, and I knew it would only be a few weeks until it was too hot to walk at midday. But on this day, the sun felt great on my pasty-white skin. The soundtrack: Indigo Girls, “The Wood Song.” No one gets to miss the storm of what will be / just holding on for the ride. And for a moment, maybe 30 seconds, everything seemed to make complete and perfect sense. Friends I’d made, and lost, the ebb and flow of my career and my love life, the passage of time, the inevitability of change—I understood it all. And then I guess the sun went behind a cloud, and I was back to trudging along on sore feet.

But these moments and a few others are always with me. They remind me that the reward for hard work comes in many forms. There’s the delight of buying the next smaller size of clothing, the knowledge that I’m steadily improving my health, and once in a while, moments of ecstatic happiness.

In writing and exercise, sometimes there are moments of pure, unadulterated joy, and no amount of struggle seems too much to endure.

But on the other hand…

I’m thrilled when people comment on my exercise regimen—or my blog—and say that I’ve inspired them, or that I make it look easy. But I wonder sometimes if “making it look easy” is doing a disservice to people who are working hard on their own projects for self-improvement. So tonight I want to come clean—it ain’t always easy.

I spent an hour last night trying to come up with a blog post. It was the end of a very long week with mountains of work, many hours of writing, two rowing classes, and a workshop to finish preparing and to teach. In that hour, I banged out about a thousand words, but around 1 a.m. I conceded that I was too exhausted to write anything coherent. I resolved either to write two posts today, or to be content with trailing a day behind for the rest of the July Project. I went to bed disappointed that I couldn’t deliver the goods.

The exercise routine presents a different kind of challenge. An uncomfortable, reluctant, grouchy six-mile walk gets the job done just as much as a graceful, eager, enthusiastic six-mile walk. The only audience I’m trying to impress with exercise is myself, so quality isn’t an issue in the same way it is in writing. But a rough walk still has consequences. It affects my energy level, my sleep, and how much enthusiasm I can muster the next day.

Last weekend, I went out for a late walk in Galveston and got caught in a squall. When I turned around to head back to where I’d started from, the wind blew sand into my face. I started jogging to get the walk over with faster. My eyes squinted tight against the sand, I tripped over the ruins of someone’s sandcastle, landed hard on one heel, then stumbled for a few paces to avoid ending up face-down on the beach. I decided to abandon the treacherous sand for the stability of the Seawall.

I don’t know whether my graceless sand-dancing or jogging on a 17-foot-thick slab of concrete was to blame, but I woke up the next day with a sore lower back. I’ve been treating it all week with stretches, ibuprofen, and generous application of the mantra “I’m sure this has nothing to do with my age.”

In exercise as in writing, sometimes it’s a struggle. Do your best to get through it.

But on the other hand…

Tomorrow morning I’m teaching a workshop to about a dozen participants. The topic is using new online resources to grow an audience and communicate effectively with it. I know the subject matter reasonably well, and I’m confident that my expertise is at least a little greater than that of my students, so they’ll learn something of value. Even though a lot of the specific details are tools and techniques I’ve only learned recently myself, I know that I can teach with authority because of years of experience with design, communications, marketing, personal computers, and so on.

Contrast that self-confident attitude to how I spent my evening: the second Learn to Row class at the Greater Houston Rowing Club. Tonight I climbed on an Ergo rowing machine and worked on stroke technique until my arms were ready to fall off, and then we started playing around with actual boats. We stepped through picking up the “shells” and carrying them from the boathouse to the dock, swinging them down from shoulders to waist to water, and placing the oars in the oarlocks. Then we practiced getting ourselves from the dock into the boat—the most astonishingly awkward and difficult maneuver of the evening…until the time came to get back out.

I felt overwhelmed by the combination of new vocabulary, unfamiliar equipment, and alien movements. The only part of the experience that kept me calm, able to focus my attention, and open to the learning was the instructors.

Our teachers were veteran rowers. One has been rowing for six years, another 11, a third, 25 years. Their mastery of the subject matter was impressive. Even more striking was their patience and compassion. They put us through our exercises offering constant encouragement and gentle repetition, with never an unkind word for our clumsiness and discomfort—nor for the prodigies in the group who were eager to show off the hour and a half worth of skills they’d picked up.

I hope that I can teach tomorrow with as much grace and kindness as our instructors showed us tonight on Oyster Creek. We have all been beginners. If we’re willing to work hard, we can all be masters. It’s a good experience to go back to being a beginner once in a while.