Ten Minutes at a Time.

This afternoon I’m supposed to start physical therapy on my bum shoulder and I am really excited about it because — I guess — I am middle aged now and that’s the kind of thing I get excited about.

Man, that was tough to type: middle aged.

I have avoided thinking about it that way.

Where have the years gone?

And of course, I know. I’ve had a pretty fantastic life so far. It has been a little inscrutable at times, but I’m proud of (most of) it.

Back to physical therapy though: I’m not sure I ever really understood physical therapy until I had to do it in Portland about three years ago. That was for the same shoulder, but the cause was different. I think I thought at the time that it was going to be sort of like getting a massage, and parts of it were like that, but most of it was lots of small and not that individually different little silly exercises. The guy would be all like, “Here, squeeze this rubber ball for ten minutes.” And I was all like, “Sure dude, whatever.” And then I would squeeze the rubber ball for ten minutes and then he’d come back and be like, “Use your hands to pedal this upright bike contraption for ten minutes.” And I’d be like, “This seems undignified, but whatever dude.” And so I would pedal the upright bike contraption for ten minutes and then he’d come back and be like, “How does your shoulder feel?” And I’d be all like, “OMG, it does actually feel better!”

I have always had a little bit of respect for traditional medicine and things like Reflexology, not because I’m an anti-science magical-crystal hippie, but just the opposite; some of these things do have very long histories stretching back to before we had upright bike contraptions and if you think about the traditional medicines of lots of indigenous people whose cultures were doing their thing for hundreds or thousands of years before what we think of as “modern medicine” came along, you can imagine how enough trial and error over a long enough period of time would likely produce at least SOME usable results. 

One of the benefits we have accrued by existing when we do, is that we have so much built up human knowledge of so many kinds that we can rely on and so many people who know so much about different parts of it. Like, in the Before Times, I could get on an airplane and I didn’t need to know how to fly the airplane, because the pilot knew how to do that. This is a concept called ‘Specialization of Knowledge’. The idea is that over time, the increasing complexity of our world has required that people specialize in particular spheres of knowledge. 

That’s why I didn’t need to understand Physical Therapy, I just needed access to someone who did. And oh man, I am so excited to get access to one again later today.

Wish me luck! I get to pedal the upright bike contraption again.

.

.

.

The Wisdom of The Crowd.

 

This will have to be a short post today because I am running a little behind schedule this morning.

BUT NO! The crowd shouts, HOW WILL WE GET THROUGH OUR DAY IF WE DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU ARE COMPLAINING ABOUT???

Well calm down, that is why I am here at all.

OKAY, SORRY FOR OVERREACTING! The crowd shouts back in unison.

 So I did a pretty good run yesterday, about 7.25 miles and I got really far out into the wilderness and there was ALOT of going up and down hills. And the day before I did a respectable 6.67 miles and that was similarly rough terrain, but add those two things up and last night my body just threw in the towel. Even my hips were like, “Nope, we are done working for the day, sorry.”

It is so weird that this body can be running up the side of a hill and then an hour later I can barely stand up from a sitting position on the sofa.

YOU CALL IT A SOFA? The crowd shouts.

Yeah, what do you call it?

WE CALL IT A COUCH! WE ALL AGREED. The crowd shouts.

My grandmother used to call it a davenport.

WELL FUCK THAT NOISE! The crowd shouts.

Anyway, I guess that all I’m trying to say here is that having bodies is weird. I have spent most of my life trying to make my mind big and make it work good and only the last ten years or so have I even been aware of the fact that a body - even one as C- as mine - can do cool stuff like run up the sides of hills or backpack up into the mountains or propel a kayak out into the ocean. Yet here we are, where doing that makes one unable to bend down enough to turn on the bathroom faucet.

And look, of course I’m joking. I’m lucky for the body I have. I’m surprisingly healthy and my legs work and my eyes work, etc. I’m not actually actually complaining. I think what I’m saying is that I’m aging and it makes me want to squeeze all the luck I still can out of this body while it can still do stuff. There are so many hills out there that I haven’t run up the side of yet. Part of aging is the realization that a life simply isn’t long enough for us to get to run up and down every single hill out there, but I’m happy this body has time enough still to run up a few more of them.

WE CAN NEVER TELL IF THESE POSTS ABOUT RUNNING ARE SUPPOSED TO BE HUMBLE-BRAGS! The crowd shouts.

No, they’re really not, it’s just that these are the things I think about and no one reads this blog anyway and none of you are real, I made up the whole crowd.

WELL NOW WE ALL HAVE EXISTENTIAL ANGST BECAUSE WE DON’T ACTUALLY EXIST! The crowd shouts.

Believe me, I know how you feel.

.

.

.

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.

.

.

.