Actually went for a run with Nathan for the first time in…well, we never ran together in New York. I ran one evening with friends when we were there. It’s been a while.

But we ran this morning! There will be more of this.

My body celebrated by giving me a headache. Thanks, body. I hear you, and I dig where you’re going with that, but I’mma see what happens when I drown your feelings in Headache Tea. And naps. And the cat? And not doing my work.

I am THISCLOSE to making myself an actual sticker chart like a five-year-old and putting stickers on the days I have a productive morning, and the days I have a productive afternoon. I’m finding, post-illness, that my initial “YEAH DO ALL THE THINGS” enthusiasm has fizzled into “I LOVE MORNINGS” followed by “no, I can’t, everything is impossible, I should just not leave the house again” afternoons.

Ideas I have had to counteract this:

• literally a sticker chart
• do not go home for lunch
• timebox lunch/mid-day break
• aggressively schedule day
• start going to a gym or some kind of fitness-y class

Maybe you got to that last one, and went, “Wait, what?”

I’ve been trading my usual “bike commute twice daily” for “go for a walk to the coffeeshop twice daily,” and this is the opposite of the intensifying I wanted to do (since, uh, forever-ish). (It’s been making me way less of a baby about walking here, though, even though it takes much longer. That part is great.)

Everything I have ever read from people who work out regularly (whatever that means for them) is like, “yeah, this is the thing I can’t make optional, this is the last thing to be cut, I will cancel meetings for this,” because it trickles down to everything else. It helps you sleep. It improves your mood. It reduces stress. It makes you feel like a card-carrying badass (maybe).

My days are full right now, but in a way that I choose. This would be a rad time to test-drive some changes, because I have that freedom right now.

Tomorrow, maybe, there will be no headache and I can get out of my way.