alt Hacker NewsPlus mowing a lawn is meditative
Copying another comment I made earlier
When I was laid off a couple months ago, the first thing I did was go out and mow my lawn. One hour of simple, clean labor, with clear progress, goals, and solitude. It helped me stay out of a bad mental frame, and when I finished I went inside and sent out a few hundred applications
Over the next several weeks, I spent a lot of time that wasn't spent on finding a new job working on my yard. Fixing sprinklers, cleaning up the edges of the grass, turning, peating, and mulching garden beds, and more
While this job search period took longer than any of my past ones, and ostensibly should have been more stressful, it wasn't. Is that because I spent most of the downtime working outdoors? Probably, who knows? It was certainly a better use of my time than sitting indoors moping
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Absolutely agree. I could easily afford to hire a lawn crew to cut my lawn, but I enjoy doing it every weekend or two for similar reasons. I have a little under half an acre to mow, but I still enjoy doing it manually with a push mower.
Gets me outside and moving, accomplishes something tangible, can catch up on a podcast or two or just get lost in my thoughts, often leads to fixing other odds and ends around the house I've put off.
I always thought this song was about mowing the lawn during tough times, but apparently not:
https://genius.com/The-all-american-rejects-move-along-lyric...
There is something beautiful about getting hands dirty with actual dirt/earth. Its such a REAL feeling.
> Plus mowing a lawn is meditative
Not when its >100F and >30%RH and a bright sun in the sky.
I'm not much of a workaholic, I don't really like going outside or getting my hands dirty...
But mowing the lawn is nice. It's like doing a giant coloring page with a big thick marker.
The past couple of years I've lived in a place with no lawn to mow and I miss it.