I use the term “fail” here in the internet meme/youtube video sense. As in kids trying to backflip off the roof onto a mattress and literally almost breaking their necks. Little kids tripping and falling flat on their faces. That sort of Fail.
I made a promise to myself, and to all of you yesterday that I’d start getting back to my normal routine. Instead, slept over at a friend’s house last night (something I had decided I wasn’t going to do), got up this morning feeling like shit (begging your pardon for the language), and proceeded to drive home in the pouring rain around 8:00am. Really, I’d been up since about 5am since that’s when my body wants me to do my breathing treatments, but I stayed in bed hoping for just a little more sleep.
I got home, immediately did my nebulizers, took my morning meds, and just got back into bed. I didn’t wake up again till around 11:30, and even then, I was still tired and cranky.
I get nervous when after two weeks of absence from work I write an article, submit it on time, and then don’t get any feedback on it. My brain starts to worry that my editor thinks the article is garbage and just doesn’t know how to tell me. Logically, I know that because she basically works 2.5 jobs (an internship during the day, then the company I work for in the evenings where she is basically doing the job of one and a half people) she’s probably just been too busy to get to it and will send edits my way when she can.
But still, that “oh fuck, I screwed something up” alarm goes off in my head, and it has been all I can do to quiet that and still get a few things done today.
So let’s go through the checklist to see why I’m calling today (at only ten till 4pm) a full on Fail:
Diet: Ok, check. Good there. Except that’s because I’ve hardly eaten anything today… So no. Fail.
Exercise: I walked back and forth to my car several times. I carried laundry up and down the stairs. I did do my Tai-Chi, but was interrupted and stopped halfway through. So yeah. Perhaps not major fail, but still. Fail.
Meds: Didn’t even do my breathing treatments last night because I was out. Plus I missed a dose of my antibiotics. Plus I took some of my anxiety meds when I probably didn’t need them. Fail.
Blog: Ok, well I’m writing this. So I guess this is the one area I can say Success!
Meditation: If you count napping in a chair for 20 minutes, then I can check this one off. Otherwise…Fail.
I’ve felt a little off today. And by “off” I mean I felt like shit. And by “felt like shit” I mean I wish I could just throw in the towel and bag this whole damn routine and eat whatever I want and do what I want: the equivalent of a three year old throwing a temper tantrum when his mom won’t let him have Kraft Mac & Cheese for the fifth night in a row.
I’ve had a sucky attitude. And I still do. The saving grace of all this is that I can laugh about it. Yeah, so I had an off day. I’ve had a bunch of ‘em the last couple weeks. That doesn’t make it ok for me to give up. Because despite the fact that today has sucked, the entire weekend, from Friday on, has actually been pretty great. And actually, Thursday was great too.
Giving up because of one bad day is the equivalent of throwing the out the baby with the bathwater. In other words, ridiculous. I mean, come on. What parent would be stupid enough to throw out their baby, and besides, bathwater goes down the drain, we no longer bathe in basins filled with kettles of hot water and then throw the water out into the gutter afterward. Sorry for the rant on this defunct colloquialism. Especially after I just used it.
To all my readers, let this be a lesson to us all: it’s ok sometimes to effing fail. It’s not ok to give up.
Peace to you and yours,
-Nathan
The Wellness Quest 