Easy and Fun, but the Opposite.

They saw it takes 2-3 weeks to build a new habit, but let me tell you, it only takes 2-3 days for your body to go into a very unhappy kind of shock when you try to build a new habit.

This is day 3 of my new daily life routine and my whole body hurts. 

Not all of this is the fault of my new schedule. I jammed up my shoulder pretty bad last week and have been experiencing some very real low grade pain since then. A reasonable person probably would have waited for that to heal before trying to completely reform their physical and mental routines, but I have never been accused of being a reasonable person!

So right now my shoulder is throbbing pretty much all the time, weird parts of my body are sore from the new yoga routine yesterday morning, and my legs are all knotted up from the last two evenings of trail running. I’m just kind of physically miserable, but here’s the thing: that’s probably good.

This is the kind of miserable that comes from actually DOING THINGS. The shoulder pain I could do without, but the fact that last night I fell asleep faster than I have maybe since the start of quarantine, it seems like that’s a god thing since I’ve been plagued by bad sleep for months.

I slept in a little today because I don’t think my body could do anything this morning, but also because I didn’t wake up already stressing out about my job and already disappointed by the thought that the day ahead of me was already a waste of time before I’d even gotten started with it.

So it seems like that counts for something. I’m 3 days in and even though I feel absolutely terrible, I actually also kind of feel … better? All this soreness, all this unpleasantness, this is what it costs to make changes. What did I think? That I was going to alter how I live for the better and that it was just going to be easy and fun? If it was easy and fun I would have already been doing it, because easy and fun is like my favorite, but it’s not necessarily good for me.

So here’s to sore muscles and tight calves and good sleep and actually feeling hungry for food for once. Here’s to goddamn trying. Here’s to sticking with it.

I’ll keep you posted.

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