A Bag of Peas

I had already wandered up and down the aisles of the grocery store, carefully checking my list and filling my cart with supplies, which I unloaded onto the conveyor belt at the check-out and patiently waited to place the newly filled bags back into the cart, when the cashier grabbed the bag of frozen peas and discovered an open seam, little green balls spilling everywhere. While she continued to ring through my groceries, I hurried back to the frozen section for a new bag of peas, sighing behind my facial mask as I began to see a trail of peas on the floor as if to guide me to my destination. As someone who usually notices the little things, how did I miss a hole in my bag of peas? But I wasn’t the only one! As I hurried to replace my peas, I came upon another woman making a beeline for the same freezer door that I was focused on; she also had a defective bag of peas.

Sometimes things happen through no fault of your own. Life can be a little messy, and, while we only get one life to live here on earth, we have the opportunity to start over, to fix our mistakes, to learn and grow and change. We are not what happened to us, nor are we limited by such things. I am not a terrible person for grabbing a holey bag of peas. The offending bag gets thrown in the trash, the mess gets cleaned up, and I walk out with a new bag of peas. Herniating a disc doesn’t make me weak or broken; it is simply something that happened to my body. The unending nerve pain doesn’t mean I made a mistake with my healing, and it does not mean that I am destined to misery and being less of a person; it only means that there is dysfunction of some sort that may or may not resolve eventually. Every day is still fresh and new and full of potential.

It wasn’t my fault the bag of peas was not sealed properly, but I still made a bit of a mess for someone else to clean up and deal with. But I wasn’t alone. Someone else had the exact same problem. In the midst of our troubles, we might feel as if we are walking through uncharted territory all by ourselves. This is highly unlikely to be true; it is a lie designed to guilt and shame us. If we can shift our focus, even just for a moment, we might see others standing with us, some struggling with the same heavy burdens we’re carrying and some just there to support us.

A bag of peas is only a bag of peas. Life lessons are all around us, if we choose to look for them.

Interrupted Programming

In the wee hours of the morning, I realized that I had forgotten to blog yesterday. Drat! There goes my chance of success for NaBloPoMo. I had intended on blogging but the day got away from me. I woke up two hours before leaving for work and, by the time I got back home I had only 90 minutes until I had to get to bed. Early morning me, sluggishly sipping coffee, thought After Work me would be able to blog. Morning me was foolish, and After Work me was exhausted. For all that exhaustion though, I barely slept because the legs hurt so much.

Hank the herniated disc is 3 years old today, but I don’t really feel like celebrating. Today’s work day was fine, but I am very tired and quite achy and hurting. First thing tomorrow morning, I have an appointment with a neurologist. Other than quite likely another EMG, I do not know what to expect from this appointment. Other people seem to think seeing a neurologist is a good idea, but I had to ask my family doctor for this referral. None of my other doctors has made this suggestion, although one doctor did suggest a rheumatologist. I am not sure if either suggestion will give me any answers or help, but the only thing I can do is go to the appointment and hope for the best.

Difficult Opportunity

In the middle of every difficulty lies opportunity.

Albert Einstein

This is a good reminder for me today, as I am listening to the non-stop spasms running through the entire backside of my right leg and looking ahead to the next few weeks. (Yes, I did say that I was listening to physical actions going on inside my body. Sometimes the spasms and nerve pain hurt in a way that is almost audible, at least to me, the one feeling it all.)

The bones of the upcoming weeks have been exposed for a while. I always know my work schedule two weeks in advance and I schedule my gym time as consistently as possible. But my work schedule has been shaken and stirred up a bit. That’s essentially okay, but it does create some small fires of anxiety and uncertainty when I much prefer consistency. I have a couple of big appointments coming up, one later this week and the other in two weeks, and the nature of those appointments has me feeling nervous and hesitantly hopeful yet also kind of afraid to feel any hope. The changes at work are in a constant state of progress and will remain so for several weeks or more. Most of the changes are good, but there is a lot going on and that can feel overwhelming. The pandemic, the work changes, the medications, the appointments, the disruption to routine, the constant pain, and regular life stuff…difficulty seems to be in my face every day and it isn’t always easy to see anything but the hardness of it all. But there is still opportunity.

Perhaps I will find some answers at the first appointment. Maybe fresh eyes and perspective will see a way to help me that no one else has yet? The second appointment might just be successful in giving me some pain relief. Despite my unbelief, there is potential. Changes at work and with my schedule might provide opportunities I hadn’t considered before. I have the opportunity to grow through the challenges before me and come out a better, stronger person. What if I could be the person someone else needs in a difficult moment? Oh, the opportunities are endless when you shift your focus past the difficulty, only a little beyond it or possibly through it. Difficulties aren’t inherently bad things, not always although we might not see that until the end. Attitude and perspective are so important! Now if I can just remember this for the rest of the day.

Let It Go

Here I am hemming and hawing about what to blog about on this first day of November and NaBloPoMo. Really I have no clue. Despite my intention to take up the 30 day blogging challenge, I find myself struggling to even begin. Stops and starts and uncertainty. There is no shortage of thoughts and ideas swirling around inside my head. The problem is in catching them, holding on long enough to get feel them out, chew on them for a while, and making some sense of order out of them, and my brain is a little preoccupied with more important things and fuzzy from medications. It’s not so easy to grab hold of one thought and work it through to a complete, cohesive post.

I read someone’s blog post the other day and came across a statement that hit me in a tender spot. The poster was talking about struggling with one area of her life in the early stages of the pandemic and eventually admitted to someone else that she didn’t have it in her to focus on that area. This admission made the difference for her. She no longer had to carry the mental load of not being able to do or be all that she wanted or normally would be capable of being or doing. My understanding of that runs deep, but what really hit home was her saying that she no longer had to beat herself up over something else she felt like she was not doing well. Boy, that one stung my eyes just a bit.

The past three years of fallout from a herniated disc has often had me feeling as if I was not doing many things well. I wasn’t too bothered by that for the first few months, because I knew that healing was a process and it was early days still. After the first year anniversary, I was a bit frustrated but still a little hopeful, knowing that this type of injury can take a long time to heal. With the third anniversary in just a few days and my progress essentially stagnant for the past year or so, there are a lot of areas in my life that I feel as if I’m failing or not doing well. It doesn’t matter how much I strive to overcome and rise above the pain and challenges, I still feel like I’m not all that I was or all that I want to be. A few months ago, I decided I needed a break from trying to micromanage my diet and losing the weight I gained post-injury. Essentially I did the same thing as that blogger, and the release of that weight allowed me to stop beating myself up for struggling so much to lose those last five pounds. It was a little thing, but it was one less thing to juggle the past few months. It’s a start.

Blurred Lines

I almost feel as if there is something massively itchy within me and I am on the verge of a most satisfying scratch. This is all figurative, of course. There has been an awful lot of things going on around and inside me for the past month or so, and I am stuck, frozen, as if in indecision. At times I am being forcefully pulled from my comfort zone, while at other times I feel inclined to jump headfirst into the unexplored. My moments of feeling hopeful, motivated, and excited often get swirled into feelings of despair and defeat until I no longer know what I am feeling or if I dare to feel anything at all. Excuses are plentiful, or at least I have some legitimate factors at play.

Hank, the herniated disc, will celebrate his 3rd anniversary in six days, and the fact is that Hank is still an overwhelming presence in my life. There is no vacation from the nerve pain. No soothing salve to calm the burning down my legs and feet. No pill or ointment to relieve some of the pain for a while. Nope. It’s me and Hank. All day. All night. The relentlessness of it hits me with varying degrees of force. It’s really not a big deal (well, yeah it is but I can tolerate it) for small chunks of time, but a lot of the time it is impossible to ignore, not that my mind is solely focused on the pain but it is always there, like background noise or a movie’s soundtrack. You can hear and feel it. Sometimes its’ presence is familiar and almost comforting, while sometimes that background noise drowns out all other sights and sounds. And there is an entire spectrum inbetween.

There is a lot happening at work lately. Much of that is good stuff. Much of it requires stepping outside of my comfort zone and making a lot of changes. Sacrifices perhaps. It involves starting over in a sense, needing to feel out new people and to be felt out in return. Some of those changes were not on my radar, and, while I am mostly open to change and growth, there just seems to be so much happening in a short period of time and it is slightly overwhelming. Into that pot of chaos was added the never-ending trials of my health care experience with Hank. The start of the work changes coincided with going off of one nasty drug and then starting two new drugs. First I ate practically nothing, and now I almost cannot stop eating. My weight is creeping up. I feel drugged and dopey at times. Always a dry mouth. Some headaches. Some of those changes leave me feeling somewhat unsupported and very concerned for my long-term wellbeing.

And yet, there are fleeting moments of being on the threshold of something amazing! For a few minutes at a time, I feel motivated and excited for what’s to come or what I can do, but that positivity disappears as quickly as it came.

I was reminded today that November is, or was, maybe still is National Blog Posting Month. Every year I go back and forth on whether or not to attempt to blog every day for the entire month of November, but usually I do. I like the challenge. I still like the challenge, but can I actually write a blog post for thirty consecutive days while I am in the midst of so many heavy life things? I do not know, but I can try. Maybe that’s what I need. Or not. But even if I set out on this challenge and fail, I will learn and grow and continue on.

The Bright Side of Things

“3000 Questions About Me”

#1386 Does looking on the bright side help you?

As much as I’d love it if looking on the bright side helped with my nerve pain, it just doesn’t. Being positive doesn’t reduce my pain levels. It doesn’t fix my herniated disc. It doesn’t help me a whole lot in a variety of practical ways; however, I do still believe that there is benefit to choosing to look on the bright side.

What we choose to focus on matters. Attitude matters. I have experienced this in my own life and witnessed it, the good and bad, in others. The people who look on the bright side are usually happier, more at peace with whatever is going on in their lives, and they exude a radiance that makes you want to be around them. On the flip side, we all know people who are perpetually angry, bitter, and looking for something to complain about, even if they really have to dig to find it. Nobody enjoys being around those people, because they’re a vortex of negativity.

As much as I am suffering and will occasionally fall into despair and self-pity, ultimately I choose a more positive outlook on life. It isn’t easy to see my injury and pain as a positive, but I don’t think that choosing to look on the bright side means ignoring the negative, the ugly, the painful parts of life. Looking on the bright side is a choice. It is a choice to act, a choice to position our focus and energy in a different direction. This is not ignoring the realities of our situation, but rather acknowledging them without allowing those negatives to keep us small and limited. Make sense?

So yes, I do think that choosing to look on the bright side does help me, not in changing my situation but definitely in spirit, mentally, and emotionally. There are rough days, of course, but consistently choosing the bright side makes it easier to come out of the darkness of those rough days. It is the bright side that keeps me going and gives me hope.

Challenges Into Lemonade

It seems like November started just yesterday, and here we are now on the cusp on December. With one more day to go, I have been (so far) successful in my little National Blog Posting Month challenge. It has been wonderful to have had something to challenge me, even if there were days that felt more challenging than others, but I am also looking forward to being finished. Blogging every single day is hard. It can be time consuming, and I can have nothing to say. 

But a challenge should make us uncomfortable and push us closer to those limits we think exist around us. We grow through adversity and find strength we might not have realized we possessed. Sure, we can pass through a season of challenge and struggle and come out the other side seemingly unchanged; however, I think we also have the opportunity to come out of such struggles having gained new insights and qualities. When we open ourselves to the difficulties and embrace the lessons being shown to us, then we grow and transform into someone stronger, more resilient, more beautiful and gracious. 

Of course, a blogging challenge isn’t exactly high on almost everyone’s list of challenges or struggles in life! It isn’t a challenge that my husband would undertake and that’s okay. But for me, blogging every day for a month is a fun way to push myself a little without over-reaching. A blogging challenge might be easier for me, but it is also a gentle nudge or reminder that I can put my mind to a task and see it through. The past year has been difficult in different ways, and I am still in a place of feeling as if I am struggling against and within myself. As much as I know that I have the ability to reclaim certain aspects that feel out of control, I also doubt myself, because so much feels out of my control. Does that make any sense? 

Successfully blogging for a month isn’t that big of a deal, but it reminds me that I can be consistent and focused in my efforts. Tackling my 1000-piece candy cane puzzle feels like an exercise in frustration, but it reminds me that I can be patient and persistent. I allowed those qualities to get lost in the back of my closet, but a simple challenge like NaBloPoMo has me pulling them out and dusting them off once more. 

NaBloPoMo 2018

November has been all about National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo) for the past number of years. My participation hasn’t always been perfect, but I like the challenge of striving to post every day for the entire month. When I first learned about this blogging challenge, you could actually win prizes for successful completion. I never won anything, but a prize was never my motivation. I don’t know if prizes are still offered. I don’t even know if there is still a formal NaBloPoMo challenge, but I am going to try my best to do it on my own.

Aside from striving to heal my injury, I haven’t really had anything to challenge me for the past year. Healing can be hard work, especially when progress seems to come slowly or not at all, yet it isn’t the same sort of challenge that fans the flames of excitement and competition. At this time last year, I was ready to compete and reach for my goals, and I was successful. In my success, I herniated a disc and began this long journey of healing which hasn’t reached an end yet. The past year wasn’t what I had expected it to be. Survival and recovery took precedence over everything else, so I am kind of looking forward to this blogging challenge. It won’t be easy, because I get busy or forgetful or I have nothing to say, but perhaps this is the little challenge I need to remember what it is like to have some control over the things that I can do.

The Brain Game

In a way it seems odd to think about the fact that November is almost over. I mean, wasn’t it just yesterday that I had the best powerlifting competition of my life?! Well actually that was on November 4, slightly more than 3 weeks ago now. What happened to all that time in-between?

One positive of rapidly inching towards December is that NaBloPoMo is almost finished, and so far I have been successful in the challenge of blogging every day in November. Some years this is a real struggle, whether for a lack of blogging material or an inability to remember to blog. This year hasn’t felt nearly as challenging, although I guess it helps that I have an injury and subsequent rehab to chronicle. Still, thinking of something to blog about on a daily basis is downright taxing.

My mind feels like it is going at full speed these days. This isn’t too far from normal for me, but it seems to be more of a nuisance these past few weeks. I’m not sure if this is merely the result of having more time on my hands than usual, but it is entirely possible. The injury has resulted in a reduction to my work hours for a bit, and I am unable to do a whole lot with all this unexpected free time. Housework is falling by the wayside, and my physical activity level is sorely hampered. Over the past few weeks I have had two completely sleepless nights. The first was due entirely to pain and the inability in the freshness of the injury to find comfort in any possible sleeping position. The second occurrence was just last week and had nothing at all to do with pain or comfort; it was all an inability for my brain to shut off long enough to fall asleep.

Ironically, on that second sleepless night, I was aware that my brain wasn’t shutting off; however, for the most part, I wasn’t actively thinking of anything. Of course, the conundrum of lying in bed wide awake is that eventually your mind will meander down rabbit holes for lack of anything else to do and you can seldom control which holes it dives into. My thoughts that night, or early morning, briefly settled onto a subject that is quite a few months old and water under the proverbial bridge, and yet, I felt anger as I laid there that night. My mind rehashed situations and conversations, and I felt quiet anger at the injustice and all that was wrong about that situation. I allowed myself to feel the anger, let the emotion swirl within and focus my thoughts but only for a short time. Sleep is important to me and especially right now as I am healing, so I know the futility of allowing such negative thoughts to run amok in the night. I entertained them then closed them up tight inside a box, but I still could not sleep. My thoughts did not return to those negative rabbit holes, but the brain was still actively churning, looking for something to grab hold of instead of succumbing to slumber.

Last night I lost a couple of hours of sleep to the brain once again churning and active without any traction. No thoughts to speak of. No emotions to drag about. Just a wide awake brain wanting something to do that wasn’t sleep. Thankfully I did fall asleep, even if much later than I had planned. Even during my non-busy moments of the day, I will often find my brain racing ahead, fracturing into a dozen or more pathways at the same time. It’s rather messy and problematic, and it makes me a little more emotional than I might like. That’s just the way it is right now. But all those thoughts cannot be blogged about. I’m looking forward to December 1st.

Plot Twists

There was a meme a couple of weeks ago that caught my eye with the words, “May the last two months of 2017 be the plot twist you’ve been waiting for.” With the year that I have had, I was more than ready to have a plot twist to finish 2017. Well, I got my plot twist alright, but it wasn’t quite what I had in mind. Or maybe it was just a plot twist with another plot twist tacked on at the end.

I got the good competition I was hoping for: 9 for 9, 27 white lights, a couple of PRs, a whole bunch of records, and a World record. The only blemish was the secondary plot twist of herniating a disc. What will that mean for me in these final weeks of the year? I don’t really know. Undoubtedly there will be lots of appointments! I have a physio appointment next week and an x-ray appointment in two weeks and likely follow-ups to one or both. I’m taking this week off from training, and training will look rather different next week when I do return to the gym. Rehab is the name of the game.

The pain medication I’m now taking allowed me to have a 2.5 hour nap this afternoon…in my bed! Ha! I have barely managed to stay in my bed for 2 hours each night since the competition. However, the pain medication has barely taken the edge off the pain, at least not consistently yet, but it should be more effective in a few days. Standing and walking offer me at least some relief, because sitting or laying down brings nothing but pain. With the exception of using the toilet or travelling in the car, I can generally avoid sitting, but I cannot sleep standing up. Yes, I’ve tried!

The year isn’t quite over yet, which leaves time and space for more plot twists. I still have goals. I still hope to compete at Nationals in February, but I also know that I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me in order to be healthy enough to compete. It’s a good thing I’m not afraid of hard work, and I’ve got skilled and knowledgeable people in my life who will help me get there.