A peculiar sight on one of my recent neighborhood walks:  a car full of tennis balls.

I have developed a new habit as of late.  This practice is barely a week old, so I’m not sure it can even qualify as a full-on habit just yet, but I can already tell this is something that will only serve me more and more as it evolves from its budding new-ness to something I do without even thinking about it.  It is "walking" my errands in town rather than "running" them in a car.  Our little downtown area is about a mile away and it has all the necessities – grocery stores, a hardware store, drugstore, tailor, dry cleaners, ATM, coffee shops, a post office, a Sunday Farmer’s Market and much more.  The last three times I have had to do lists that involved these places, I have walked into town and walked back with various items like stamps, groceries and flowers in tow.  I have giggled a little bit on every walk home, thinking I must look like a woeful college student subsisting without a car, carrying my dry cleaning home over my shoulder.

It is amazing how different it feels to do my errands on foot, and how much less of a rush I feel I’m in when I’m not trying to find a parking spot or worrying about my meter running out.  I feel like I can take my time and make unexpected stops here and there to check something out that looks interesting.  I buy a roll of stamps for the postcards promoting my upcoming show and then sit down on the steps out front to stick them on the cards, enjoying the warmth of the sun.  On my way into town, I listen to music on my ipod and then throw my earphones over my shoulders as I make my way in and out of different shops.

Why is this making such a difference?  It is a lot of little things – the exercise, and being able to get outside and enjoy the sun after working in my studio all day.  It is having that time to myself to sort out my thoughts on whatever happens to be swirling around in my brain at the moment.  It is finding actual enjoyment in these mundane tasks.  It is not getting stressed out when I enter the post office and see a huge line.  It is knowing I’m not wasting gas on tiny trips into town that, over time, can add up to quite a lot.  And the rebel in me gets the tiniest bit of satisfaction knowing that my conscious choice to walk instead of drive in this car-crazy city of LA is a bit of a wild, unorthodox move.  As with so many things in life, it is the small things that make the biggest difference.

I’m already looking forward to my next grocery run.