Welcome to the 86th edition of Content Nausea. You can read No. 85 right here. Please let me know what you think. Thank you for being here. Here is the welcome blog.
I don’t think I have many good habits. I brush my teeth every morning and night, I don’t chew with my mouth open and I use soap when I wash my hands. I say, “Thank you,” when someone holds a door for me (unfortunately, I say, “No problem” instead of “You’re welcome” when someone thanks me after I hold the door for them). I read at least 15 minutes from a book daily.
But I’ve never found any consistency when it comes to bodily health, other than staying hydrated. I eat the same breakfast almost every day (16 oz lemon water, banana, two tablespoons peanut butter) and I have honed in on the perfect formula for my coffee maker (four scoops of Folgers Black Silk, fill with water up to the six cups line; two tablespoons oat milk creamer poured into mug for the coffee, splash of cinnamon). In 2020, I was nearly fanatical with my devotion to doing a Yoga With Adriene video every day. That has waned.
In June, I tried something that I didn’t think would become a habit, but I wanted to see how close it could get. I set out to get 10,000 steps every day. And according to my Fitbit, I did it:
I’ve been putting “10K steps” on my to-do list for the past couple months right next to “Run/Walk.” It’s mostly aspirational because 10,000 steps is a lot — for me, it’s about five miles — and I also live in an area that isn’t friendly to pedestrians. I can’t justify walking a mile for coffee from Panera Bread or one-and-a-half miles for coffee from Starbucks. I have done it for coffee from Sheetz before, though. But the point is there’s nothing really within walking distance, and it’s not as feasible to walk longer distances. So more often than not, I don’t get those steps. These first two days of July were a good example. Even with running errands and carving out time for a 40-minute walk, I hit 8,694 steps Friday, and as of this writing Saturday, I’m at 8,301 steps.
This 30-day step streak reminded me a lot of Dry January (which I did this year) or Sober October (which I’ve done twice) where you accomplish something and you have that internal satisfaction, but overall, the benefits are hard to find because so many other habits are intertwined (mostly, I’m referring to eating). Maybe others might notice a difference, but it’s difficult.
Still, it was nice to be anchored to a task for a full month, to give life some gravity toward something that wasn’t work or… more work. And it was hard. It turns out that running doesn’t help you get the steps easily. And it can quickly get into the evening and you realize that you need a couple thousand steps. On Wednesday, I left a bar downtown at 9 p.m. and still needed 4,000 steps, so I walked around campus and saw more rabbits in one place than I’ve ever seen in my life. (My friend said this is a post-pandemic development). At one point last week, I almost got caught out in a thunderstorm. Thursday ended up being a brutally busy day, and I got my 10,000th step at 11:45 p.m. or so — always procrastinating — while walking back from an arbitrary trip to check the mail. I’m also thankful I live in a long apartment. And shout out to Jack for being my brother in steps.
Is getting 10,000 steps per day a habit for me now? Probably not. But I think I’ll be making the effort to spent a half-hour or an hour out on a walk and knock out a podcast where I don’t check my phone. And that whole running thing sort of started to make a comeback in June. My reward is not being so maniacal about anything in July. Let’s see how that turns out.
Some content I wrote this week
A coach sees the benefit of stability.
Some content I listened to this week
I finished the 062k22 playlist, and it turned out quite nicely.
This might be the most rocking song Martin Courtney has ever released. It reminds me of… Bob Mould, maybe?
I attended the University of Maryland between 2012 and 2015 and also lived in Philadelphia between 2016 and 2019, so I’m obligated to say that I like the new Alex G single. It’s good.
Launder is DIIV-adjacent so it doesn’t feel the most original, but as I outlined last week, that doesn’t really matter to me.
I can’t believe “STILL” by jj is getting an official remix in 2022? What? This was a featured track on the original “broadtrip” mix to go see Cloud Nothings in Albany in January 2011.
Some content I read this week
I made a trip to the library Saturday morning to get a bunch of books for vacation, so we’ll see if I actually make it through them. I’m currently reading Mercury Retrograde by Emily Gould. It seems like a good time capsule of an era in both tech and New York that I missed.
Josh wrote eloquently about leaving sportswriting and leaving journalism this week. Much of it resonated with me, and I identified with plenty. I guess this is growing up? Also, I appreciate the subtext of his writing that it’s dumb to care about if people get married during the fall.
Good piece by Kirsh in Slate on the Big Ten adding UCLA and USC, which is something I didn’t see coming and have a lot of thoughts on that I may or may not take the time to write down at some point (probably not).
Jay Caspian Kang’s newsletter for The New York Times is becoming a staple here. I really liked this one about trying to get on Antiques Roadshow.
Thank you to Discourse Blog for acknowledging some humor that others aren’t willing to.
Sophie Haigney on product placement in The New York Times.
Good Gawker piece on infographics.
Kind of a nuts story from The Athletic on events stemming from last weekend’s brawl between the Mariners and Angels, and it doesn’t even include that an Angels pitcher broke his elbow trying to jump over the dugout railing to join the fracas.
Alicia Kennedy on control.
Fun column by Ryan McGee for ESPN about Ole Miss winning the Men’s College World Series.
Some other content I saw or thought about this week
Twitter killed the TweetDeck desktop app Friday, and I’m too lazy to take the blue bird off the dock at the bottom of the screen, so my muscle memory keeps opening it. Speaking of habits…
Spotted in the wild:
Not sure what we’re doing here?
I can be a bit of a funsuck sometimes, especially when it comes to the way people tweet about the NBA, but some of the memes coming from the weird Brian Windhorst appearance on ESPN are funny. I laughed at this one, which is relatable:
I’ve been listening to a lot of Lana lately, but I’m not gonna think too much about it:
This is the best post I will have seen this year:
Thank you for reading the 86th edition of Content Nausea. It will get better. Thank you, and see you soon.
I know you, at lеast I knew that I'd know you someday
You're no more a stranger than the
Smile that shines out from the moon
And I'm not in the mood to be lonely no more
So I act like someone on familiar terms
With the uneasy side of love
—D.G.