The Great Saunter!
This weekend we continued the tradition – three years and counting – of walking the 32-mile perimeter of Manhattan in one day. The Great Saunter. An event of such magnitude deserves a name of a certain calibre, and the Saunter does not disappoint. Today the ten of us who walked on Saturday are most likely nursing bruised feet, popping blisters and being gentle on our creaky knees, but the “foot hangover,” as one friend put it, is well earned. 32 miles is no joke.
The Great Saunter is my favorite day of the year. It’s everything I love rolled into one event: an early wake up, city tourism, endurance exercise, and an excuse to meet new people and introduce friends. Each year our group has looked slightly different, but the beautiful thing about a walk is its accessibility. You don’t need to have trained, or own any special equipment. The only requirement is an open mind and a willingness to spend a few hours talking to people you don’t necessarily see that often or know particularly well.
Given everything that’s going on, and the cancellation of the original day back in May, it’s a miracle we were able to pull it off. Ask ten young adults, living in New York during a pandemic, to find a Saturday that works for everyone and be prepared to wait a long, long time. But a unique event like the Saunter – which you can read about here for some flavor – is worth the extra effort. And so we came together, on October 10th 2020, for what was without a doubt the best Saunter yet.
Some of you are most likely reading this and shaking your heads. “That sounds so stupid.” And honestly, if you really don’t like walking, the event is most definitely not for you. Even for the most ambulatory among us, the Saunter is generally a tough sell. Does anyone, sitting on their couch with the newest season of The Good Place to watch (highly recommend), really want to spend their entire Saturday walking? Do most young New Yorkers want to miss a day of drinking, or college football? I doubt it. But somehow, year after year, with a growing roster of Saunter converts numbering in the twenties, every single person ends up having a great time.
And in the end, how could they not? Particularly now, at a time when the majority of us are seeing fewer friends and family each week than we’re used to, the opportunity to talk to each other, uninterrupted for an entire day, is so rare. As we walked, I could feel myself filling up with all the positive offshoots of so much direct companionship: happiness, joy, thankfulness, excitement, pure physical energy. The greatest thing about the Saunter is that, despite the tedium and eventual pain of walking so damn much, you are able to feel so positive for so long. I would go so far as to say it is the most pure expression of group friendship I’ve experienced since college. And I love it.
I believe there are many, many more Great Saunters out there, waiting to be discovered. I think a dinner party, hosted not at a restaurant but at home, is a mini-Saunter. I think that aimless Zoom reunion calls are mini-Saunters. Picnics, multi-hour stays in a coffee shop, group road trips and a whole host of others will work. All you need are the key ingredients: friends, uninterrupted time and an open mind.
WFH: Expectations vs. Reality
I have mostly enjoyed working from home since March. I’ve regained almost an hour of commuting time, I’ve vastly improved my lunches, and I can go for walks more easily than I could at the office. Not to mention that work itself has, for the most part, continued as usual.
But I’m starting to find that more and more friends and coworkers don’t feel that way. They may agree about the commuting, and the proximity to the kitchen, but many people are finding their work life balance much more uneven after literally moving the office into their home. I guess that shouldn’t come as such a surprise.
Anne Helen Peterson writes about this in her latest newsletter:
“The pandemic has forced millions of us into remote work and companies are starting to get curious. For a CFO, getting that expensive downtown real-estate off the balance sheet is starting to look pretty enticing, especially when you factor in cost of living deceases if and when employees move out of the city. And then there’s the efficiency: no more commutes means more time to answer emails! Some of the biggest companies in the world have decided to make the switch and offer remote work as an option for employees in perpetuity, which, as with almost any business decision, means they think it could be lucrative. And their cost savings will be shouldered by you, the worker.”
It’s an interesting perspective that I hadn’t really thought much about – that work from home could become a negative for employees and a positive for employers. Peterson and her husband are writing a book on the future of remote work, and I’m looking forward to reading it. So much of my own experience has been driven by individual circumstances: a good company culture, empathetic leaders and my own personal initiative to firmly disconnect after the work day. A rapid shift of knowledge economy workers away from the office and into the home is exactly the type of monumental change that, without foresight, could lead to another social media moment. Overworking people in their own homes is a sure fire way to jumpstart the next phase of our mental health crisis and it will be interesting to see how it evolves, particularly as we get back to life after coronavirus.
Parkinson’s Law
Parkinson’s Law states that “work expands to fill time available for its completion.” This is now the second Sunday in a row in which I have spent the better part of the day tinkering on this newsletter, making almost no progress until the sun has fully set. It’s no way to live, I can tell you that much. Writing the newsletter is a far more pleasant process for me when I work on it in spurts throughout the week, as things come to me, than when I save it all for the last day of the week and give myself ten times as much time as I need to write it. Lesson learned.
– Emmett
Recent Posts:
Money? Happiness. QED – From Bill McKibben, 2007
“Be Where Your Feet Are” – Be present in the moment
What I’m Reading:
Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed – David Cain, Raptitude, 2013
“I’ve only been back at work for a few days, but already I’m noticing that the more wholesome activities are quickly dropping out of my life: walking, exercising, reading, meditating, and extra writing.”
Happiness Is a Glass Half Empty – Oliver Burkeman, The Guardian, 2012
“All too often, the Stoics note, things will not turn out for the best. But it is also true that, when they do go wrong, they’ll almost certainly go less wrong than you feared.”
What I’m Listening To:
Scott Adams: The Man Behind Dilbert: The Tim Ferriss Show, 2015
“What I write about instead is what I call a systems way of looking at the world. In which you are continually looking at ways to improve your odds in some favorable area, some favorable focus without being too specific.”