Chicago man pioneers new pandemic stress-relief technique: Jumping into a lake every day
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Dan O’Conor is an artist and clothing designer from Chicago who’s shown the world a simple method for relieving the stress of living through a pandemic. Each day since June 13th, he’s headed to Lake Michigan and jumped into the water, regardless of the weather. It’s a simple action, but it seems to work wonders.
In a profile from Block Club Chicago, we learn that O’Conor first decided to go jump in a lake while hungover and more stressed than usual about the year. He “rode his bike to the lake, locked it up, and walked along the wall facing Lake Michigan near Montrose Harbor,” the article says. “On a whim, he dove in.”
Five months later, O’Conor’s just finished his 165th consecutive lake jump, freezing his ass off in order to get a bit of peace while the world—including the clothing business he runs—gets rockier with every day. He describes the jumps as “almost meditative” and says the routine wasn’t planned. “It’s just something fun I’ve been doing,” O’Conor says. “With everything canceled, that was another reason I think I started diving. Just to go out and do something. To get out of the house.”
He’s been tweeting most of the jumps, tracking each dive along with the air and water temperature at the time. Some of the days look pretty idyllic—like the ones showing the late summer lake tossing in the sun—but others, like the slow-mo video from today, seem like a pretty brutal way to get the blood pumping, even with some background Motörhead working as encouragement.
O’Conor says he’ll have to shut down his experiment in aquatic meditation before too much longer. “I’m not going all the way to the full year,” he says. He plans to continue “for at least the rest of November” but “knows he won’t be diving once the lake is freezing.”
Even after he’s stopped, though, his guidance will live on. The O’Conor Method seems applicable for just about any situation. Work got you down? Jump in a lake. Family stressing you out? Jump in a lake. The crushing fear that life is nothing but a series of painful moments, strung along an endless line forward that ends in the unthinkable void of psychic oblivion? Just jump in a lake.
Read the entire profile for more.
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8 Comments
slow day
Son: “Hey, there’s a man swimming in the water!”Dad: “No, that’s probably just a dead body, son. You see when the mob kills someone they throw the body in the river.”Son: *nods approvingly*
As native of the shores of Lake Huron, having lived ~8 years in Chicagoland and now only ~20 miles from the Lake Erie shoreline, I agree and fully endorse this method of therapy.
Good day.
My wife and I grew up in Chicago and moved away in our mid 20s. To commemorate our last day as Chicagoans, we went for a walk along the lakefront. We walked maybe twenty feet along Oak Street Beach before a lifeguard rushed over to tell us that the E coli counts were through the roof, and we should not under any circumstances touch the water. It made for a weirdly fitting goodbye.
Though, this time of year or March you typically don’t have to worry about the E. Coli blooms.
I can attest from personal experience that there is nothing like risking your life to help you put everything else into perspective.
Yeah, be careful where you do this. In a lot of places there are very large rocks just a foot or two below the surface right off the kind of concrete platform he is jumping from. They aren’t always easy to see, especially if the lake is just a little bit rough. It would be very easy to dive headfirst into one and then you would either have much bigger problems to stress about, or no problems at all.
Motorhead “You’d Better Swim”? Isn’t that their song from The SpongeBob Squarepants Movie soundtrack?