Life has ways of throwing curve balls at you. Let me give you some personal examples. For several weekends now things have not gone as I had planned. First, I wasn’t feeling well and it ended up that I had Covid which put me out of the running for even walking for about a week. Now before I got covid I was working to start running through the week as well. The chest congestion that I have had since having covid has made that a thing that has had to be postponed as I was also feeling a bit of shortness of breath. This lasted another week and while I am all for being cautious and not pushing too hard with my health it still felt like a curve ball was being thrown to throw me off. Now I am going to be the first to admit I have had a lot of struggles with this goal, but with every new struggle that comes up, it is like I get even more determined to see it through. Or maybe I have only worn my new running shoes once since getting them due to these curve balls and issues that have arisen.
The frustration level I have been feeling as I have faced these new struggles has fluctuated up and down. My struggles from having covid to schedule changes and other things have been frustrating to deal with let alone navigate. Since covid is the newest one, I have been feeling shortness of breath. Even though I am not covid positive and all other symptoms have gone has made me want to just go screw it and try, I know from experience that is a bad idea. When I tried something similar before, I had coughing fits and got worse. But Covid has not been the only frustration that I have been dealing with, for a while now I have been frustrated with myself for not utilizing my time better for both running and blogging. I guess just in general this has been a frustration. I also have been dealing with just flat-out annoyance that two years in I get covid for the first time, having managed to not pick it up till now.
To add to the frustration level I felt like I am also hiding because before I got covid I had just started to develop a routine for after I got off work. I had started to figure out how to start to chisel out the time when I got sick and was really pushing to keep it on the front burner not push it back. I am not someone who does change well which I am sure you know if you have read any previous blogs. That does not mean that I don’t keep trying, but it feels like my focus is getting pulled in multiple directions. Getting over covid and making sure I do not start ping-ponging it with my roommate has been one. Yet this shift change has moved everything that I would normally do before work to after work this has caused issues in how I feel like I am utilizing my time. The lack of utilization has caused me to be frustrated but I need to be giving myself grace as I navigate this. I mean owning that I am frustrated has been a start, now I just have to put action into it and set that action to turn into new habits. Oh, joy more work, having a full productive life I am realizing is a lot of work. Not just in the sense of being productive but making the choices every day in how and to do it. Setting the habits to do it, is a lot of work.
Getting back into something physical after a sickness makes me a little apprehensive but at the same time excited to get going and find progress again. As I have started walking with some distance in them, I have also been listening to my body to ensure I don’t do serious damage. You also have to remind yourself you are rebuilding the habit you were working on trying to maintain. Thus, I have been feeling for a while now that I fell off the bandwagon. I was just starting to figure out how to implement this into my life on this new schedule and then I got sick, so all attempts are only now being restarted to implement it. This feels a bit discouraging, and going into fall will be harder, so that will be an interesting challenge. Back to the topic at hand though navigating this apprehension but not letting anxiety or fears take control is something I think we all face and so far the best way I have found is just to do it. When you think of it make a point of going and getting the run/walk-in. Otherwise, it will get pushed to the back of your mind, the whole day will go by, and you will get frustrated or mad at yourself that you are not getting back out there. Now if time does not allow at the moment you think of it, maybe try putting a reminder on your phone or having a roommate remind you or ask about it as a way of reminding. I have used these techniques with other things I needed to redevelop habits for and found them to be successful, but a word of warning if you have someone remind you make sure it is someone who will not mind if you occasionally snap. I choose to have my sister be this person for that very reason. And yes I have snapped at her but we have had a lot of conversations about it. Both during the snap, and at other times. I am also someone who does the same for her and we have had the same conversations (more because she is better at communicating than me) for the same reasons.
This period has been beyond frustrating, to say the least. I never had a disease that knocked me as flat as Covid did and at the worst possible time in my opinion as well. Navigating it while making sure to see and feel like I am making actual progress toward my goal has been rough and at times not felt like something I could do. But overall maintaining the goal, and putting the effort in to keep pushing for it has proven to be the most useful. Things like this happen to everyone, you throw one wrench in start getting it figured out then out of the blue a second wrench toward a goal comes and knocks everything further over than before. Or at the very least it will feel like everything got knocked down further than before wrench number two. You can’t minimize getting sick and do everything you can to stay healthy but sometimes it just happens.
I must admit that I am tired of all the disruption and want to get to the point where I can create a successful schedule with these habits. Is that just wishful thinking? I am not sure sometimes but mostly I do not think it is. I feel with all these curve balls I am back at ground zero for habit building but I do not know if that is a bad thing let alone if it is a true fact and not my self-doubt talking. This is still something that I really want to accomplish and as I said above sickness happens. It is something you can try to minimize but that may not always work and that is okay. Just do not let the habit you are building get pushed to the back burner. That is what I am dealing with slowly, I feel like glaciers melt faster sometimes. I am not giving up though, it just seems really overwhelming at the moment.
Lemons or Lemonade 