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Like every other mother, working woman, and human being in America, I'm always looking for ways to have more energy. Of course, my search usually starts and stops in a coffee cup. But of all the alternative ways to get more energy -- eating better, avoiding energy-drains -- I have to admit I've never considered flying.

Let me explain. I was reading this interesting article about how researchers figured out that squid sometimes fly. That's right, according to Nature.com, "squid of many species have been seen to 'fly' using the same jet-propulsion mechanisms that they use to swim: squirting water out of their mantles so that they rocket out of the sea and glide through the air." Until recently, scientists thought squid did this gliding thing to avoid predators. But the squid were doing it even in captivity, when no predators were present. And migrating squid were moving much faster than they should have been, considering how fast they swim.

“It makes perfect sense that these species are using flight as a way of saving energy,” says Ronald O’Dor, a marine biologist at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada, who has calculated that propelling themselves through the air could be how squid travel long distances. That's all well and good for squid and the scientists who love them, but to me it all began to sound like a metaphor.

After all, here I am, slogging through the water like any ordinary squid, stopping now and then for another shot of caffeine which I know will just slow me down in the end. Maybe I need to rethink my whole concept and, so to speak, fly a little. Try something unexpected. Try something physical. Move more. Move differently. Take a deep breath. It can be as simple as reading a newspaper or Twitter feed from a source I don't usually check, or walking a different route to a much-visited place, or talking to someone I don't usually talk to. There are so many ways to rethink the day! And it just might be that instead of tiring me out further, trying something unexpected may even save my energy.

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