Ten free Christmas gifts

Yesterday I woke to rain sluicing against my bedroom window. I hate cold winter rain. I am not alone in that; the parking lot at Erickson Fields was empty.

Of course, it wasn’t as bad as I expected. Inclement weather is almost never as bad as it looks from indoors. When it is, the excitement usually outweighs the discomfort.

I ran into my friend J. She’s not only an avid dogwalker, she’s also a doctor. I told her how little exercise I’ve gotten in the past month; it’s mostly been walking from the hospital parking ramp to my daughter’s room and back. The more sedentary I was, the more anxious I was and the more inclined I was to have a few glasses of wine at night.

She agreed that being out every day in nature is a terrific balm for one’s worries. Walking—which is free and available to almost anyone—is a two-part gift.

Ten free Christmas gifts for the artist on your list, i.e., you

Given a choice of flying, driving, or walking, I’ll always go with the slowest practical option. I see so much more on foot. The things I notice engage my mind and spark painting ideas, but nature is in itself soothing.

Then there are the physiological benefits of exercise. They’re the best free Christmas gifts you could want:

1. Exercise makes you happy. Just 10-30 minutes of sustained exercise is enough to improve your mood. It increases our response to serotonin and norepinephrine, which reduce feelings of depression.
   
2. Exercise helps control your weight. I didn’t believe this until I saw how quickly my weight rose during my forced inactivity.
   
3. Exercise develops strong muscles and bones and delays the loss of muscle mass that comes with aging.
   
4. Exercise helps with pain. My mother, a geriatric nurse-practitioner, used to say that people with arthritis had to keep moving. Since I never planned to get old, I didn’t pay too much attention. But science says she was right.
   
5. Exercise helps build bone density in the lumbar region, neck, and hips. I’m vain enough that the number one reason I don’t want osteoporosis is to avoid a dowager’s hump. You might be more practical.
   
6. Exercise can increase your energy levels. Of course, if you’re daft and you start off by overdoing it, you’ll have exactly the opposite result. But if you build slowly into an exercise regimen, you’ll find you feel much perkier.
   
7. Exercise will make you healthier. I’ve now had cancer three times, but it hasn’t killed me. I take that as a win. I don’t have the chronic diseases of aging like diabetes, heart disease, hypertension or high cholesterol. The rates of all of the above are reduced with exercise.
   
8. Exercise will make you more beautiful. It helps delay skin aging, and reduces the free radicals that wreck our skin. Clearly, I am the poster child for this.
   
9. Exercise can help your brain health and memory, which is probably why I’ve been feeling so scrambled recently. It also slows down brain aging.
   
10. Exercise helps you sleep.

The most important tool for an artist

Everyone else is going to nag you about an exercise program on January 1; I’m starting now. Your chances of acclimating yourself to being out in winter are better in mid-December than they’ll be next month.

The cool thing about walking and hiking is that they cost nothing more than the price of shoes, which you were going to buy anyway. No membership fees, no fancy equipment, no special foods are required. If we want to paint into our extreme dotage, a healthy body is perhaps the most important tool of all. There you go, ten free Christmas gifts. Treat yourself.

Of course, if you also want to spend money, you can use the promo code XMAS100 to take $100 off your choice of any paintings on my website.

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

• Canyon Color for the Painter, Sedona, AZ, March 10-14, 2025
• Advanced Plein Air Painting, Rockport, ME, July 7-11, 2025.
• Sea and Sky at Acadia National Park, August 3-8, 2025.
• Find Your Authentic Voice in Plein Air, Berkshires, MA, August 11-15, 2025.
• Immersive In-Person Fall Workshop, Rockport, ME, October 6-10, 2025.