Failure and/or Success.

So I was only partially successful yesterday, but it’s not my fault!

Yesterday was Day One of this sort of new daily life routine I’ve been planning out for a little while now.

Here are the ways in which I failed and/or succeeded:

FAIL: I’d planned to wake up at 6am and go for a short run. I did not. It was 37 degrees yesterday at 6am and I do not have any cold weather running gear.

SUCCESS: I did still get up at 6am though. I used to get up at 6am all the time, but it has been getting harder and harder as quarantine has stretched on, so simply being conscious at an appointed time was nothing to sneeze at.

FAIL: After work, I did manage to go for a run, but after the run and after dinner, I have about 2 hours on the schedule that I am supposed to focus on fancy pants smart things like writing and reading, which huge parts of my life, but which have fallen away during quarantine. Well I did not do any fancy pants smart things because my right shoulder was KILLING ME. I frequently have shoulder problems (I think because I sleep on my side, but my ad hoc quarantine desk set up doesn’t help), so I spent my fancy pants smart guy time last night lying flat on the floor with a heating pad and when that didn’t work, I switched to a bag of frozen peas on my shoulder and that seemed to help for awhile.

SUCCESS: Not to bury the lede, but I DID manage to go run. Not a great run, but it was chilly and overcast after work and it was the kind of day when I normally would have just said, “Eh, it looks gross outside, I’ll go running tomorrow.” BUT I DID NOT DO THAT! I went anyway. I try to at least do a 5K whenever I go out and yesterday I did about 3.6 miles in 47 minutes, which is a TERRIBLE time for a 5K, but did I mention that I’m a trail runner??? So I go running where other people go hiking. I go running up the trails and through the woods where other people go mountain biking. I go running in places where other people hike out with their cameras to get pictures of all the nature. It helps that I live across the street from an open space preserve the size of the city of San Francisco.

FAILURE: I’m supposed to go to bed now at 10pm on the dot (because I have lost of trouble sleeping and so making myself get in bed always feels like admitting my day was a failure (Am I the only one who experiences this feeling?), but I didn’t go to bed until about 10:30 because while I was prostrate on the floor, I found the movie Motherless Brooklyn on TV and OGM! do I have a lot to say about that thing, but I will save it for another time. 

SUCCESS: Okay, just ONE thing about the Motherless Brooklyn movie … I successfully predicted the plot of the movies simply from watching the trailer once a year ago. I didn’t even feel like I’d figured anything out last night, because I figured out the movie a year ago, but still, being SO RIGHT is a kind of success of its own.

Last night I tracked down a Youtube morning yoga video and I replaced the morning run with the video and OMG! It kicked my ass, so maybe I will swap out the morning run with the morning yoga. Interestingly, it did not seem to aggravate my shoulder as I did it this morning. Perhaps that kind of stretching and such is actually what I should be doing to prevent myself from hurting myself while I sleep? This getting old stuff is some bullshit, BTW. Aging is not for the faint of heart.

I recognize how silly it is to be on Day Two of anything, but I do feel better than I have in quite awhile. It has taken a year, but I might finally be figuring out how to get this quarantine life to suck a little less.

Okay. That’s it for now. More tomorrow.

.

.

.