How to Move Around More (Being an "Outdoor Person") (Shallow Thoughts)

How to Move Around More (Being an "Outdoor Person")

I like to think of myself as an outdoor person. I like hiking, mountain biking, astronomy, and generally enjoying the beauty of the world.

Except — let's not kid ourselves here — I'm really more of a computer geek. Without some sort of push, I can easily stay planted on my butt in front of the computer all day — sure, looking out the window and admiring the view (I do a lot of that since we moved to New Mexico), but still sitting indoors in the computer chair.

Earlier this year, the science podcast "Short Wave" played an NPR series called Body Electric that had a lot of interviews with scientists who have studied some aspect of the health benefits of motion versus sitting, and specifically, the idea of getting up and moving around for five minutes every half hour. They challenged listeners to try it, and featured statements from listeners about their improved health and energy levels.

But keeping track of something like that, all day every day, sounded exhausting. To get around that, I wrote a little Python script, breaktime.py. (It depends on idle.py from the gaijim project, the best idle time detection example I found for X11.) It displays a dialog that shows me how long I've been at the computer, and after 30 minutes, it turns red and tells me I need to take a break. If my keyboard and mouse go idle for five or more minutes, the dialog turns green.

I've been trying to follow the program and go walk around outside whenever my breaktime dialog goes red. Not every time, of course. There are lots of Zoom meetings that go longer than half an hour and there's not much I can do about that. And I've found that half an hour races by amazingly quickly when I'm working on a programming project: sometimes you just need to stay in the zone for longer than that, and I ignore the dialog until I get to a reasonable stopping place. But most of the time I follow program's advice.

And it's been lovely. At this time of year, the yard needs a lot of attention anyway. We have two acres of native piñon-juniper that was infested with various invasive weeds when we moved in. Now, ten years later, we're making good progress, but only if I stay on top of the weed situation. The tumbleweeds (Russian thistle) are mostly under control — I've been finding maybe five or ten per day, which is nothing compared to the thousands (literally) I was pulling every day when we first started. The last few years I've been battling against goatheads (those nasty little caltrops that bicyclists call puncture vine) and making good progress there too. This year we've decided to attach the kochia; I had previously thought there was so much kochia it was futile even trying, but after a few weeks of five or ten minutes every half hour throughout the day, I've gotten most of it, and the only problem is where to put the huge pile while waiting through a month or two of biweekly yard waste pickups.

I don't just pull weeds. There's plenty of stuff to look at. Birds, of course, like the flicker who's calling as I type this. Whiptail lizards and occasional bull or coachwhip snake darting through the yard. There's the changing progression of grasses and flowers: we had a great season for four-o-clocks, which are pretty much done now (Edit: no they're not, as you can see in the photo!), but the cowpen daisies and the few snakeweed that survived the last two drought years are blooming nicely, along with a variety of beautiful grasses most of which I still can't identify. Plus atmospheric phenomena, lots of beautiful sunsets and rainbows and thunderheads and virga.

I thought going outside wouldn't work on hot summer days, but it turns out five minutes here and there, then back into the house to cool down, isn't bad even on a hot day. (It helps that this has been an exceptionally pleasant summer here; obviously the rules would be different in Phoenix or Florida.) At the very hottest times of day, or if it's raining heavily, I can go do something in the garage, or break out the hula-hoop or jump rope indoors.

Anyway, I'd say the experiment is a success and I'm going to keep it up. I have no objective measurement to show that I'm healthier or have higher energy levels; but I'm certainly getting more exercise even on home days when I don't hike or bike, and it's great being outdoors moving around regularly throughout the day. It just took a computer script to boot me off my seat and out into the yard.

And I feel a lot more like that "outdoor person" I've always aspired to be.