This is my 3rd summer counting up hours outside, and my 2nd summer monitoring my "Blue Mind Days."
The former is pretty straight forward, and it stems from a website promoting 1000 hours outside during the course of the year--so 250 seemed like a reasonable goal with a straight seasonal division by 4.
My "blue mind" days are days I've purposefully spent by or in water. Sitting just next to my backyard pool doesn't count--I have to be in with that. Bathtubs and kitchen sinks also don't count.
Summer seems optimum for this little personal experiment because time opens up in different ways during the teaching days of the school year.
Both numbers for me were down this summer, due in large part to orchestrating a lot of tech PD and set up for this Covid-centric school year that we're embarking on. Many weeks were 9-20 hour work weeks during my "summer off." (Already a misnomer for teachers!) Add in, it was pretty steamy midsummer, making my outdoor work habits an indoor activity. But, I was surprised to see how respectable they were in comparison to the last two years (check out the two links above).
I know for me (as I was outside almost the entirety of the 3 days of Labor Day weekend just last week) are the great equalizers for me. The breeze in the air, the vibrancy of color, the scampering and fluttering of wildlife, and the buoyancy and reflectiveness of the water do all the things that physiologically, emotionally, spiritually, and mentally they are supposed to do. It's always a sad goodbye when temperatures start to drop because I haven't transitioned the magic of all of that into the mindset of winter quite yet. But lucky for me, we've got a lovely fall days ahead. With these Covid classroom teaching days, I plan to be outside as much as possible!
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