Three major projects, on top of normal work, and family, and a dog, and eating healthy and keeping fit, and injury rehab, holiday planning and home maintenance, and I decided to write a trilogy.
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A month ago my physio told me that I should remove pressing, pushing and lifting exercises from my gym routine, in addition to his previous ban on riding the stationary bike. This was on top of the bans on running and leg exercises that my hamstring doctor had already enforced.
During most of my previous gym comeback tours this probably would have been enough for me to suspend my direct-debit indefinitely and never return, but in 2019 I decided to stay strong and continue exercising anyway. I divided my workouts into pulling/upper-back exercises, core, and rehab. Instead of giving up, I decided I was going to focus on pulling up.
The last time I performed a pull up was in 2008, when I was 23 and had never had surgery. Since then I believed I would never pull up again. But in the last six months I have watched Vanessa's progress from someone who watches fitness documentaries on the couch, to someone who competes in novice CrossFit competitions. While parts of my body have betrayed me, that's nothing compared to the rigour and violence Vanessa has suffered through chronic endometriosis, a shattered shoulder, and countless other undeserved afflictions.
Vanessa was the one who inspired me on my own journey the last few months, and when I pulled my chin up over the bar on Saturday for the second time it was her I immediately messaged to share the news. (Because you haven't done something until you've done it twice.)
It takes strength to pull yourself over a bar from a dead hang, or snatch an olympic bar over your head, or get out of bed and go to work when your insides are in chaos and your head and body ache. Vanessa has that kind of strength, I see it everyday, and she gives it to me, and I try to give it to her. We give each-other power. Together, we are strong.
More money, more problems, is what Grammy nominated mathematician Kelly Price once sang on a Biggie hook.
If her theorem is accurate, and behaves according to accepted algebraic principles, that means problems minus money equals less problems.
And that is why I will spend all my money on chairs until I find one I can sit on, or I go bankrupt (also known as tendinopathy of the savings account).
It's a challenge to write a new journal entry lately. Not because I have nothing to write about, but because of what I can't write about, or don't want to write about. So as is tradition in times of no new material during a long running series, here's a clip show:
There are pros and cons of the gym I've been going to so far in 2019. Pros: price, location, low number of other gym members at the times I visit. Con: No soap dispenser in the showers. When I'm paying almost $15 a week for gym access I am most definitely factoring in a couple cents worth of all you can pump generic, industrial strength soap into the cost. The bradism.com Body Wash
So I'm now responsible for bringing my own soap to the gym. For this I created my own bradism.com body wash, and I think the recipe represents me quite accurately as a person. It started as regular body wash, but I worried that there might not be enough hospital-grade antibacterial ethanol in that, so I mixed some through too. And I store it in this body lotion bottle I took from a hotel in New Zealand.
Like my words? Want to buy one of my books? I think you'll like this one:
If you met yourself from the future, what would you ask your future self?
What if they wont tell you anything?
Chase: A Tomorrow Technologies Novella. Available Now for Less than a dollar!
Or maybe this is a normal way to poop?
I was already running late on my drive through the hills when the boom gate lights began to flash and I was forced to pull up to my front row seat for the freight train that was lumbering through. Exasperation was so tempting, the urge to feel frustrated, hard done by. But a part of me overcame the negative feelings. I breathed, and reasoned that it had been years since the last time I'd idled at a level crossing. Maybe this was a chance to meditate; a silver lining. Perhaps, even, an opportunity! Could there be something to a freight train's long stream of carriages that I might learn from? Some message from the universe concealed in the dieselly-smelling procession of steel and goods. A hidden lesson to be learnt in a moment of reflection?
The answer was, no, there is nothing good about five minutes of watching a train go by. I share these findings so you don't need to learn it too.
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