My girlfriend and I have been walking in the mornings.
And I'll admit I was slow to get on board; something about waking up at some ungodly hour of a Sunday (8am; midnight!) to walk from Merewether to Bar Beach, all while the absolute paradise that is Newcastle cackles back at your maniacally from the Pacific with the effortlessness of its own perfection. (I'm not being dramatic, you're being dramatic).
"Look at this," I said on the first outing, pointing accusatorially at my Apple Watch about three minutes in, "I've burned nearly 50 calories already - how many more could I possible have to spare? I've only been awake for 15 minutes. What if I run out?"
For reasons that she assures me are not related, we now walk with headphones in.
But look, as much as I was slow to catch on, I have to admit that there is something about the whole caper that's working. There's something about that 30-odd minutes of a morning, along the waterfront at Carrington, or past the marina at Wickham, that clears the mind, knocks out a few cobwebs, and makes the day ahead seem just that little bit more bearable.
I'm not saying that the carrot of a tall, dark and strong coffee at the end, dangling on the very long stick of a raised heart-rate and an absolute inferno of calories, doesn't help with the motivation. But it's undeniable that the mindfulness set might be on to something.
If, like me, you've spent any time walking along the Bathers Way lately, chances are you've noticed the chalk scratchings here and there. Sometimes they're a few benign scribbles on the pavement, sometimes there's a line or two - a kind of transient patchwork of anonymous doodles that come and go with the weather. We've all seen them, but they seem to have gone to a new level recently that's caused a minor stir.
With a half-hour to kill in a lunch break, I thought it was worth checking them out.
There were about 20 in the straight stretch of pathway along the Nobbys headland on Wednesday and, judging by the handwriting, they seem to mostly be by the same writer. A series of mantras and thoughts scattered along both sides of the way that jump out at you from the pavement.
Some of them are clearly meant to be inspirational, like the one that shouts up "Woah, you really do look that good right now". Others are more aspirational: "I hope you find a reason to smile today." And others exist in a blurry space where it's never entirely clear if the message is meant for us or the writer.
"I am in control of my life and happiness." And: "I don't adjust my boundaries for anyone."
I wandered along, reading and - like I'm sure many of us have - trying to decipher the motive. A woman in athletic wear walked past at one point and stopped a second with me at the one that read "Money comes into my life as easily as waves on the beach".
She smiled wryly, "I wish," she said, and kept walking.
"I've recently been in a bit of a rut," said Kia Renee, who had a profound experience with the scribbles a few days ago. "I spent the entire morning scraping up the motivation to make a change.
"I saw the first message ... and thought it was incredibly sweet, but as I walked and saw message after message, it all just kind of hit me.
"I saw the message 'I'm proud of you' and I guess I didn't realised how much I needed ot hear it until I'd read it, written in chalk on the pavement by a stranger.
"I'm a bit embarrassed to say but it made me cry. I felt like I wasn't so alone."
Kia has considered taking some chalk of her own down and adding to the messages. She said it was "the type of kindness that I was really needing at that time".
The response hasn't always been as positive, of course. Some online have called the notes "toxic positivity" and described an "ick" factor about being confronted with good vibes screaming up at you from the pavement; that there was a kind of hollow, Californian "Have a nice day" about the whole thing that smacked of something unsettling with our culture of go-getterism; of getting that bread; of hitting #legday and staying #motivated.
I thought again of my calories.
"I get the whole toxic positivity concept, but with this, I found a pretty deep sincerity in all the messages," Kia said. "Nor did they ever take away from the reader. Instead of saying 'you are okay' it was saying things like 'you are going to be okay'.
"The world's not black and white and it's impossible to be completely altruistic, so instead of focusing on the intent, why don't we just focus on the impact?"
Perhaps the only way to parse the elements of altruism and cynicism of the whole caper is to find the artist, but as Kia pointed out, chasing the creator misses the point.
"Every single person reading those messages will have an insanely different experience," she said.
"I just wish I knew who was doing it because I want to thank them. And I hope they're okay as well. Maybe the writers 'random act of kindness' was just to themselves.
"In this economy, I'm just thankful for the free therapy it gave me."
