There’s a different kind of thinking that walking supports compared to running. Obvious, maybe — but for me, walking is analytical and problem-solving; running is creative and idea-generating.

I usually run or march from A to B — but rarely meander. Lately, I’ve meandered more, and it reminded me that before I wanted to be an adventurer, I wanted to be a flâneur. Two sides of the same unproductive coin, I now realize.

As I meander through familiar places, reality begins to brim with overlooked details—curious architectural elements, bizarre ads and pamphlets, games of shadow, geometries, crawlers, cracks — the world at a different resolution.

To vindicate myself, I revisited Russell’s In Praise of Idleness — always a comforting case for doing nothing. And yet… watching the pollinators and the flowers that lure them — cogs in nature’s beautiful machine — make me feel strangely complicit.

No song captures that feeling better than Helplessness Blues by Fleet Foxes.