Megan Crane & Caitlin Crews

What this means—among other things, like very intense debates over “proper” time travel— is that we spend a lot of time far, far away.

In our heads.

Slumped over our desks, panicked and over-caffeinated, brutal deadlines hanging above us and laughing maniacally…

(Oh yeah.  Deadlines laugh.  Loudly.)

It also means that we don’t have proper work weeks.  We try.  I rant on about boundaries and free time and refilling the well, but if something’s due, it’s due.  And that means we sit there until it’s done.  All night.  All weekend.  To the exclusion of everything else, and I do mean everything.

That’s a lot of sitting in one place, no matter the traveling we might do in our imaginations.  And the funny thing about sitting that long?  Day in and day out, focused that intently on stories inside our heads?  We go a little crazy.  We breathe less and worry more.  We crumple in on ourselves, stress leading to stress, until it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy of panic and deadlines and more panic and more deadlines…

And by “we” I mostly mean “me.”  Especially the “not breathing” part.

Recently, we decided we had to be a bit more proactive in our attempts to clear our heads.  It gets crowded in there, after so many years of so many stories, so many deadlines, so many long nights and blurry weekends spent writing and drawing and pushing our own envelopes just that little bit further on project after project. 

So we instituted Outdoor Office Day.  Once a week we lace up our hiking shoes and we… go outside.

We’re lucky.  We live in southern California and the ocean is our backyard. 

(Well.  If you consider an hour’s drive to Malibu your backyard, which, frankly, I like to do.)

We’ve been teaching ourselves how to breathe again. 

How to play. 

How to jump for joy in a grassy expanse without another soul in sight, only mountains and the sea and a blue sky above. 

We’ve been learning how to focus on the beauty in a perfect view, in a hard climb up a steep hill, in the wonder of a pretty morning spent far, far away from our office.
We’ve been learning that happiness is cultivated as much as encountered, and I’ll tell you that I’ve worked out more story problems whilenot thinking about them somewhere outdoors than I ever have spending fifteen hours a day procrastinating on social media. 

(Ahem.  NOT THAT I WOULD EVER DO THAT.)

So my advice to you is this: go outside.  It doesn’t matter how long, or in what weather.  It doesn’t have to be during the work week if you have a boss who wouldn’t take too kindly to that idea.  Take a walk in the rain without caring how wet you get or how long it takes to splash around around out there.  Give yourself permission to get muddy.  Bundle up and move around out there in all that snow.  Make a snow angel or two.  Throw a snowball.  Better yet, start a snowball fight.

Move and breathe and play and marvel.  Let the world remind you why you’re here in the first place.  It’s amazing how much better things seem when you’ve spent a few hours physically far away instead of just mentally elsewhere. 

Just go outside.  I promise, it’s a concrete step toward joy, no matter where you are.

(This post originally appeared in slightly different form here:http://girlfriendbooks.blogspot.com/2013/03/friday-is-outdoor-office-day-by-megan.html)