I had saved a weekday in my calendar to head off to the Adirondacks for what I hoped would be a beautiful fall day of running the last of the big trails I had planned for the year. I’m working with a team on a new trail running book project and trying to write and photograph most of the East Coast trails. I had planned for epic vistas with (hopefully) a rainbow landing on beautiful peak foliage but ended up running mostly in the clouds on very wet and slippery rocks. Long story short, the run didn’t go according to my schedule.

The Radiolab episode last week was about strategies for making time feel longer. This is something I’m always trying to figure out but I’m especially mindful with my son. Like everyone says, “they grow up so fast.”

The first strategy in the podcast was to just do really boring things like wait for the bus or stand in lines, the second was to do as many novel activities as possible, and the third was to pay attention, like really pay attention. The host quickly disregards the focus on boring tasks and opts for filling an entire week with as many new experiences as possible, which she calls control save moments, to see if it feels like two weeks. She succeeds at making the week feel long but gets very tired and a little burnt out. The story ends on the same lesson as the time travel movie About Time: pay attention to how sweet the world can be. This is kind of my motto for my daily photo project too.

I like to think about living my life planning for serendipity while taking lots of little risks and slowly taking roundabout routes to my longterm goals. I’ve never really been someone searching for a consistent career and have always been more interested in being present whether that’s making portraits for work, walking with Ezra to daycare, volunteering with the Portland Wheelers, or biking home from a concert with Emma. I love having time and space for wrong turns but it’s becoming more challenging to plan for that while trying to be a consistent parent. I often think of this short little blog post from Cup of Jo on slowing down as a parent to just observe your kids. That’s how I want to live my life and that’s how I want to parent (when possible).

The desire to slow down and show up for my family came into conflict last week when I was running the Adirondack Great Range Traverse because I was running late but wanted to stay out exploring in the cold rain. I knew I had to stick to my turn around time in order to responsibly make it back to the car in time to charge and head home. The weather conditions were wintery and much slower than I had hoped for. I desired to meander up Mount Marcy and take it all in but instead stuck to my plan and jogged the 10 miles down. Back at my car, I felt equally equally inspired to go run all these trails again and cuddle up on the couch and watch Harry Potter with a hot cup of cider. I think this is a balance I’ll be working on for the rest of my life.