“The perfect day,” I thought. “The sun is shining, birds are singing, and the boy is off at day camp. That leaves me with an entire day to anything.”

I wrote for a good long time. I drank coffee. I watched a bird smash into the window over and over again.

It’s nice to see birds up close, but this feathered friend wants to join me so much he bashes his beak into the window repeatedly. I feel bad. I call him Hitchcock. He’s been coming for about a week now.

After some time, I finished watching Hitchcock suffer. I went for a run.

I ran six-miles or so in the middle of the day, because that’s when my brain was done writing. Ninety degrees be damned, any time is a good time for a run.

You might ask, “What if you ran first when it was cooler, then wrote?”

My mind doesn’t work like that…logically. So, I ventured out in the hottest part of the day, and ran way too far. I didn’t hydrate properly. I suffered.

All that happened yesterday. Today, I ran a couple quick miles and hydrated. Life couldn’t be better…except…it’s garbage day.

If you’ve never run on garbage day, give it a try. You can pick out every neighbor who should be composting.

If you’re an optimist, you realize running on garbage day isn’t always a bad thing. It helps increase my time and flow as I speed past rotting bins baking in the sun. That is, until I realize the whole strip has these bins and escaping the stench of one only puts me in range for the next. To improve matters, the garbage truck itself caught up with me, stopping, going, stopping, going, pulling ahead enough for me to enjoy the refuse of the entire town.

There is a moral to this story: Life stinks, but there’s always a positive takeaway. I increase my mile time exponentially on garbage day, and I have fun with fitness regardless. Then, I get back to writing sooner.

As for Hitchcock, who’s back to banging into windows while I write, I have a lesson for you, too. Stop banging into windows. If you look hard enough, there’s always an open door. Use it. Life will be much easier in the end.

Maybe that’s true for all of us, not just stubborn birds.