I couldn’t decide if I was planning to work this week or not so I blocked off my calendar before we all disappeared in December. I didn’t know it then but it might be the smartest decision I made in 2020.
This morning I decided that I would go back to work slowly. I have a daily meeting with my manager and I decided I would attend that and pretty much nothing else. So today, instead of my usual 10 hours of meetings, I had 2 hours of meetings. It meant that I could:
– stay on top of my incoming mail – send some emails to do work – eat lunch – plan some of the work that is coming – exercise – stay calm and spacious all day
It was the most incredible start to the year. And I plan for it to be this way all week!
I might have to make a tradition of this every year. In fact, maybe I will do a week like this every 6 weeks or so to cleanse and catch up.
Yes to ramping up slowly. Yes to creating more space. Yes yes yes.
Tonight is our last night of “vacation.” Kids “go” back to school tomorrow and I am still deciding whether I will work this week and how much. But even if I decide to sit out most of the week, the email barrage will definitely start as others go back to work.
I find myself alternating between feeling excited to get started with this year already and feeling not ready. I am still tired emotionally and still hurting physically. I could use another month of just lying around and reading and numbing.
But I also know that sometimes the best way to get to that next phase is to start. Sitting on the couch, I might never feel ready.
So bring on the routine. I miss journaling and have so much in my head that it might take me pages to get it all out. I miss drawing. I miss having a plan.
I can’t go out and do things just yet but I can bring back some structure into my life and my plan tomorrow is to say yes to routine, even if I don’t feel ready.
And the plan for tonight is yes to a few more hours of relaxing and then getting a solid night of rest.
I’m learning that sometimes saying yes is about saying no. I’ve had sciatica pain for the last 58 days or so. I kept living life and exercising on the bike. I kept hoping it would just disappear on its own.
But it did not.
Finally, I had a videoconference with my doctor and she recommended that I take a continuous dosage of aleve and stay away from the bike for ten days. When she saw me balk, she said ok start with 5 days. Try it for five days.
She also said that if aleve doesn’t work she’d have to move to more serious medication and this particular medicine has caused huge issues with me in the past so I reluctantly agreed to give it an honest try.
Despite my fears that if I stopped riding, I’d stop permanently, I stopped riding. Instead I’ve been doing pilates, strength, arms, meditation and yoga. But no bike.
Today was day five and I feel about 20% better. Not much to write home about but also considering how acute the pain usually is and how much the next medication scares me, I plan to email her tomorrow and see if she’d recommend I continue this Aleve plan another five days. I might even do the stretches she sent me.
I’m still scared I won’t ever go back on the bike and I’m scared to say no to it but I also know that if I want to say yes to being healthy, I need to give myself space to occasionally rest and heal.
So here we are. No in the short term so I can hopefully say yes in the long term.
I’ve written about little boy’s shiny hunting machine before. He’s rigged up an arduino, using an RGB sensor, a solenoid and a servo motor and some cleverly placed clamps (and a penny!) to have his game start and see if the pokemon is a shiny one and if not to reboot and start again.
After months and months, I basically sat with him while he spent many many hours working on it and he finally got the whole thing working.
It ran last night, broke again this morning, and he spent another 6 hours debugging it and finally it’s working again.
Yes to preseverence. Yes to crazy ideas. Yes to time together, encouraging each other’s dreams.
So here we are. A new year. For me, a new year usually comes with much anticipation. New projects. New dreams. New plans.But alas 2021 is filled with so much unknown that I wasn’t sure if I should make any plans at all.
I’m still not sure.
I spent a lot of time thinking about my word this year and about what I want and what I don’t want and in the end what I wanted more of in my life was just yes.
Yes.
Yes to trying new things. Yes to how things already are. Yes to being open. And yes to accepting what is. I like that for me it’s both daring and zen.
