Follow That Feel Good

Back when I went to Write Doe Bay , there was so much I unlocked within myself, words that I wrote then that I’m really learning to embrace now.

One of the exercises was to write our present-day selves a letter from ourselves in 10 years with that wisdom—what our future self wanted our current self to know.

I was reminded of this exercise this past weekend. I went out to Rockaway for a surf lesson with Luna (as part of their sponsorship with the NY Women’s Surf Film Festival). I love to say surfing is my favorite thing that I suck at. I am so, so laughably bad at it, and I don’t care. Any millisecond I do stand and ride a wave is worth every fall—and, if I fall, I still get to be in the ocean, and the ocean makes me happy.

When I posted the above photo on Instagram, I was looking for associated hashtags to use, and I found #followthatfeelgood.

In that letter, I wrote to myself: “if something feels good, run in that direction. Do more of that.” Surfing is one of those things for me. I’m trying something new, I’m outside, I’m at the beach, I’m in the ocean, I’m active—it’s so many of my favorite things.

Last night, I told one of my friends how I’d had such a good morning, and then had a massive anxiety crash for reasons I wasn’t sure of.

“OK,” she said, “what were you doing that made it good?”

I’d woken up and taken a yoga class at a new studio, then walked down to get a latte at one of my favorite coffee spots. It was a temperate day, and I took my latte and sat in Madison Square Park and enjoyed the nice day and the trees and the people watching. I came home and tidied up my apartment a bit, and finally started working. (If you saw my Instagram story yesterday, there was also a spider incident…) I felt content. Like really content.

I’m going to start recording what I was doing when I was feeling really good to look for patterns—so I can follow more of that feel good.

Surfing and my data set of yesterday morning point to being outdoors and exercising (either together, or separately), being key to that feel good for me—which totally aligns with another exercise we did at Doe Bay, writing about what we saw as our ideal creative morning.

Mine involved an early morning run and coffee, and spending time in the sunshine.

I’m going to keep following this feel good.

What do you run towards that makes you feel good?