Caught Up With Me

Good habits to create, then nurture.  For me, getting up when I tell myself I should irrespective of how I feel, then going on the treadmill for the pre-determined session before my first activity.  I've done well since New Year's.  Up at 7AM with few exceptions such as illness following my Covid vaccine, which traded one healthy effort for another.  Then treadmill.  Lapse for an illness like cytokine surge from the covid vaccine or an injury to a part of my lower extremity.  But lapses are few.  To do this successfully, I set a fixed time:  8:15AM, enough time for two 8 oz cups of coffee made in a Keurig K-Express and to review my plan of attack that keeps the rest of the day productive plus at least one crossword puzzle.  And maybe a blog entry, and certainly check overnight messages.

Resumption of OLLI classes interfered with what had been going so well.  To get to my 9AM classes, treadmill sessions were shifted to 7:35AM.  One cup of coffee, retrieve newspaper for my wife, attention to my indoor plants on scheduled days, then about a half hour to get dressed, prepare lunch on Thursdays, review my day if outlined the night before, make an insulated mug of coffee before heading to the driveway at 8:25AM, which would give me enough time to sip from the mug and greet an old friend or two in the auditorium, then settling down for my morning class.

It has a beneficial purpose, but a few weeks into the adapted schedule, I feel its effects.  Legs sore, slightly tired, not always able to squeeze a breakfast together before leaving the house, something I had been doing as an initiative with reasonable success while still on OLLI intercession.  I do not feel particularly tired before my computer or desk clock reaches treadmill time.  And I don't struggle with the session.  But I also have not noticed the traditional benefits of regular exercise at appropriate capacity.  My ability to increase the treadmill rate and duration has not happened.  My muscles sometimes ache.  Knees feel like they have been stressed.  Stretching, which I schedule twice a week, has found my capacity deteriorating.

I sleep better.  I've been perhaps a tad more energetic in the late morning, though hurting by midday.  And being among people, even interacting with a mixture of strangers and friends, has improved my lingering feeling of loneliness.  So I'm not feeling badly with the new schedule, just with some musculoskeletal sequelae of my effort.  

Vacation, with its respite from the schedule, is not for another four weeks, though close enough to anticipate a need for some new scenery and new people.  And at the end of each month I afford myself three consecutive days off the treadmill for my legs to recover.  It has been gratifying to display what some might call grit, doing what I set out to do despite its discomfort.  Though the health benefits and social benefits come at the neglect of some of my mental activity, as my commitment to the things I create has fallen behind.  Now that sleep and exercise are reasonably committed and executed, I can make a similar commitment to perhaps some fixed writing and expression times.