This year has been crazy, the last few months in particular, and I’ve been working myself down to nothing. When the awesome Tanya Gold started the #StetWalk movement in the editing community, I really wanted to participate, but I kept saying I had no time. I have too many things to do. I never have time to exercise.
And then on Monday morning, on the day that most people were chilling, I was lying on my couch with chest pains, and all sorts of things were running through my mind. Like how I had no time for being sick. Or how I really needed to get up. And then how I really needed to stop making excuses about being healthy. Most especially, I thought about how stupid it would be to keel over and die at the tender age of forty just because I couldn’t use my recently honed productivity management skills to carve out half an hour of my life from work to not die.
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Unlike me, Edie doesn’t look like she needs to get fit, but we are both overworked and stressed, and our jobs require us to sit in a chair and stay focused. It can be tough to get motivated to get up.
My chest pains went away after some relaxation and a nap, but it was a wake-up call, one that I desperately needed. I decided that I could go to bed a little earlier, wake up a little earlier, and do fifteen minutes of exercise before any of the pressures of my inbox or to-do list kicked in. There’s no way I’m carving out a full hour and a half to go drive to a gym and work out for an hour, not with three kids and a business to run. But I can do fifteen minutes, and I can walk the dogs in the evening to help calm my brain down after Doing Words all day long.
And so that’s the plan. I also finally hopped over my mental hurdle and scheduled with a new GP so that I don’t have to drive half an hour to my current one. Because I refuse to die at forty.
There’s no time for that.
I needed this encouragement, Crystal. Thank you.
You’re welcome! I hope to keep it up and get and stay healthy. 🙂
I go through bursts when I realize that I have not left the house in days. My nose has been in my computer all day and in a book all night. I am trying to develop the habit of taking myself to my favorite park in the evenings after dinner to walk along the creek down to the river. It is a short, pleasant walk with lots of trees. I’ve made it two days in a row. Now all I have to do is continue doing it for another 19 days in a row and the power of 21 days makes a habit should kick in.
That is a LOT of days in a row.
I just bought myself a Fitbit today to help me keep track of how sluggish I’ve been.