Not walking today

Yesterday while I was coming back up Harris Street toward home I had some pain in my left ankle that made me slow down my pace, and this morning after I got out of bed I could feel some soreness along the outside of my left foot when I put weight on it. For these reasons I decided not to go walking today, so I am staying at home this morning. I have to go into town tomorrow morning across the Pyrmont Bridge to go to the dermatologist, so today is a good opportunity to take a day off walking.

Also yesterday was the first time that I put on a pair of 42 trousers, instead of my usual 44s, and they fit - albeit a bit snugly - so  I wore them on the walk. (The 44s had been snug, too, before I started my walking regimen.) It's rewarding to know that the effort of walking almost every day is resulting in some weight loss.

I did the ironing this morning instead of walking, as I had just done the laundry yesterday. There were six shirts, five of which needed ironing. Doing the ironing reminds me again that I need to buy a new ironing board cover, as this one is starting to tear in a part of the outer cover near the sweet spot, where most of the contact occurs between the iron and the board's top surface (which is a metal mesh).

So having done that chore I am at a loose end somewhat, and so naturally I thought about doing a blogpost to keep myself occupied. I have also been attending to social media. There was one video that I found especially rewarding that was posted by a FB friend who lives in the Blue Mountains. The video showed a group of progressive young women participating in a discussion group where they are talking about social theory and gender politics. Then the partner of one of the young women - the one sitting at the top of the table - comes into the room and starts behaving in a way that clashes with the politics of the group. The young women who are discussing gender politics are very earnest, whereas the partner is flippant and sarcastic. She is trying to make a point about them. The young woman who is leading the discussion group makes apologies for her partner, but the bond securing all the participants together is broken by the newcomer's intrusion, and the discussion is interrupted. The video ends.

The video made me think about how Twitter, especially, used to be a lot more playful in the beginning, than it has become. The video's poster actually himself made a point like this in his FB post. To a significant degree Twitter has become a place where people tend to launch judgmental attacks on others in a competition for supremacy, and I think that this change is a shame. Things used to be a lot more loose and casual. Now, people are paying more attention to what they say, out of fear of saying something that might attract someone else's opprobrium.

Anyway, this was just one thing that I have been thinking on my day off walking. I hope to get back to blogposts in my role as flaneur later in the week. Let's hope those calories keep burning off!