when we first moved to the small northern island we live on, i would wake up before my family and hear the beach call my name.

the winter sun does not rise here until after 8:00am so this happened in dusky pre-dawn light and it confused me. because it wasn’t just calling my name. the words i was hearing, clear as day, were:
run on me.

i scoffed.
and laughed to myself at the weirdness of a universe where a person like me would hear a message coming in with no sound whatsoever to do something that was the last thing i would ever choose to do.

thanks but i don’t run,
i would silently answer.
and then turn over in bed to listen to the breathing of my family.

but i kept hearing it,
again and again:
come, run on me.

but i kept hearing it,
again and again:

come, run on me.

the message came for weeks, always in the same dusky pre-dawn light, like some kind of tether pulling my gut to the sandy spit of land not one hundred meters away from where i lay, trying to ignore the universe and just go back to sleep.

one morning, i walked reluctantly out to the beach and set my timer for four minutes and awkwardly jostled myself towards running, saying to the beach: okay okay i am here, i hear you (assuming i would never do this again).

what happened next was joy
in something i thought i hated,
was remembering a part of myself that needed wind, the heaving of my breath, the bursting heartbeat of movement, sweat.

this unexpected feeling brought me there the next day, curious for what i might find.

curiosity is a kind of magic.

four minutes led to six and i wanted longer, hooked by feeling my own strength build, sparked by remembering my body as a vehicle for change, movement as a form of channeling.

lately i have been thinking of the ways discipline can be a movement towards what nourishes.

this culture has a twisted-up sense of discipline that is shrouded in “shoulds” and the violences of the panopticon.

but discipline and disciple are related.

and discipline can be a pull toward the beloved:
an act of devotion to what nourishes you and sparks your curiosity, creativity, joy. commitment arises from watering the seeds in us we want to see ripen into fruit.

what would it look like to trust the parts of you that can see new forms over the parts of you that tell you it’s impossible?

what would it look like to heed the messages that are right now coming in over all the “shoulds”––maybe even take a break from phones and screens and podcasts (and newsletters ;D ) for an hour or two just to listen, dream, bathe, channel, sleep?

there are countless parallel practices that nourish my creativity and that my education and training told me were “wastes” of time.

i work to reclaim these and to trust the time i devote to them.

running is one, taking a bath (feeling my body held by water), knitting (letting my fingers touch soft fibers vibrant with color), carrying a flat tin of colored pencils with me almost everywhere i go (because color nourishes and i like to hold a pencil)––these are some of mine.

during this last week of global north's winter, notice what you feel called to do.

what keeps coming up?

what wants to be seen, heard, felt, experienced, released?

in what ways are you telling yourself you’re not a runner when the beach is calling you to run?

what is calling you?