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.
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.