• Jogging in the park after work! No more crowded gym, no more lazing at home!
• Hibernation of SAD.
• Related to the above and to a whole lot more, light therapy lamps might go on sale!
• Actually feeling like there’s still usable time in the day after work ends.
• An extra dose of free, all-natural Vitamin D!

Being without the internet (I am not lame if I call it the internettle) and without most other conveniences was probably the most helpful push into nirvana, but sunset walks were how I maintained my nirvana during my half-homeless, hot-hot-hot summer.

Cheesy, sure, but hang on.

I walk the way I drive. That is, I don’t care how many hours ahead of schedule I am, I just want to get anywhere fast. In crowds, I walk around the slow people (everyone) the way teenagers drive around minivans. I was made fun of in high school for not paying attention to anybody as I gazelled my way to the next class.

I don’t do yoga or pilates or whatever. I mostly just run. Sometimes I jump rope. Whatever I’m doing, it’s always a little bit frantic, always a little too fast to worry about form.

I get why people like the whole sun rising/sun setting thing. It’s so still. Even rush hour gets quiet when the sky settles into a certain smoky-orange-purple. The cars slow down, my mind slows down, my feet slow down.

I spent almost every evening that summer making unhurried loops around my absentee host’s neighborhood. It was an old marketplace-like community, made charming with overgrown palm branches and crumbling brick walls that managed to look like ancient palace ruins.

About a thousand simple, sensible people lived there. They all came home about the same time, in one accidental mass. They kissed their children and turned on their radios and their ovens. Songs from half a dozen cultures in half a dozen languages met in the air. They sounded a lot like jazz when they mixed together – if jazz sang Spanish. Then their meals sort of drifted out into the open; I couldn’t name half the flavors, but they all smelled like home, really.

I was by myself at the time, and every evening I followed the split sidewalks until dinner was over. No massage, nap or meditation has ever put my mind so much at rest. If I can choose my heaven, I want it to be those evening sunset walks, again and again forever.

This was not camp. This was my regular life in the city, surrounded by regular clean people. But I don’t think I’ve ever felt more brilliant, more capable, more disciplined or more rested than I did in those months.

I was between leases, living in the home of a traveling acquaintance. I agreed to check the mail and water a plant, and by the end of the summer I’d crammed like 200 armfuls of my own stuff into his place.

I wasn’t squatting. You know how people make those polite, automatic offers and everyone knows social protocol is to sort of pretend the offer was never made? (“Do you need help painting your house?” “If you ever need someone to talk to at 3am, my phone will be on.” “You’re welcome to stay at my place.”)

So I had rent-free lodgings! Not a lot of amenities, as you’ve read. Then some water pipes burst underground, split the parking lot into sixty pieces and required about four nonconsecutive, unannounced days of waterless frustration. Did I mention the average temperature was 110º? There comes a point when you just have to give up on deodorant.

These were some of the finest months of my life, for two reasons: no internet, and sunset walks.

Without gmailfacebookhuluyahoocnn.com, I read more than two pages a day (my current average). The Wall Street Journal by day, to educate myself, and Faulkner by night, to fill my head up with pretty thoughts. And when it was time for bed I went to bed. There was no late night emailing, make-believe vacation planning or questionable-video watching. Just me, my books, and a mattress on the floor.

There obviously wasn’t a TV either.

That’s why I’m only blogging three days a week for now. That’s why I’m declaring every Thursday an internet-free zone. That’s why I very much want you to get off the internet, just for now.

*Ask me about the sunset walks tomorrow night.

Still, there’s a community in my building. We don’t rap on the walls when someone’s being loud, but we’re not really that loud. We don’t tow each other away when our reserved parking spots get swiped for a night, or two. We may smile at somebody’s kid or dog, but not at each other.

It’s comfort at a distance. When the nameless guys downstairs turn on their TV and make me eavesdrop on Sports Center, I think of them as my big brothers, who I can go down and visit any old time. Like I’m back in my parents’ big house, where from my bedroom I hear forks on plates or the white noise of Matlock in the living room. It was always nice to go to sleep knowing somebody else was still up, somewhere in the house. It was nice to know the creaking floorboards were because of them, and not whatever monster I may have dreamed up. It’s nice to know you’re not alone, when you’re asleep or awake.