Good morning, Baltimore. A thread on walking and writing. It will be boring but possibly helpful if you wish to walk or write more.

In my pre-pandemic life, there was lots of incidental walking. I averaged 2.4 miles a day, or 5,662 steps.

Pandemic life ended most incidental walking -- not daily walk to school, then coffee shop, fewer errands. In June, after finishing a book, I decided to shoot for 6-7k "deliberate" steps a day.

On December 1, I decided to up my daily mileage to 5 miles. That required more planning -- I couldn't get that done in the pre-dawn hours while my daughter sleeps. I would need to add a second walk, maybe a third.

Then I noticed that I was close to averaging 8k steps a day by year's end. Kind people here on Twitter, using this strange magic called algebra, calculated that I would need to average 10.5k miles a day to up my year average to 8k.