Humbling

I think a little dose of humility every now and then is healthy – an experience we don’t always get, and which isn’t always super fun, but nonetheless, one that is healthy. So, as I was beginning PT, my guy said “please don’t take this as being harsh or critical, but you have absolutely no core strength, so once we build that up, you should be feeling a lot better.”

Now, I have never claimed to be an example of athletic prowess or anything. You would hardly look at me and think “elite level” of anything. So I wasn’t insulted, it was more of an “okay – note to self” thing. But I also have to admit to thinking “but hey…I do crunches and stuff…” and being a little surprised. Clearly, not nearly enough of them, so the flat part of my stomach must truly be luck and genetics, as opposed to the result of any kind of effort on my part. But given that genetics is largely responsible for my crappy back and knees, I think that the least it can do is give me a flat(ish) stomach.

(In fact, in case you’re listening, genetics, could you throw in better muscle tone, too? Given the suckfest of the last few years, I think you owe me.)

I now have a huge stability ball taking up far too much space in my living room and I’ve been doing my stretching and strengthening exercises. I’ve been ramping up my exercises in PT and getting a lot stronger and feeling better. So, I’m approaching the end of my time in PT, and I do feel like it’s helped a lot – but the real trick is for me to keep doing all the things they’ve been having me do after I stop going there. I don’t think anything that I’ve been given to do is too difficult or complicated for me to do on my own, I just need to do it.

Which means I’ll need to write it all down because it’s a lot of stuff to remember – my appointments are a lot longer now than they were when I first started.

So that’s been good and encouraging. I’m not sure that I’m as confident as my PT guy that I can be a runner again, but I’ll give it some time, work on getting stronger, and see what happens. I’m trying to think of what kind of reasonable goal I can set for myself as a next step. (I thrive on direction – if I have neither direction nor accountability, I flounder.)

I feel my life changing again, and I’m not sure what it is. I’m really happy with my job right now – I feel like I’m being challenged, I work for a good company with great benefits that has a conscience, which is another great benefit, and I feel like Special K and I are in a healthy place. I think the first year of our marriage was filled with so much chaos, we were just trying to survive most of it. Fortunately the dust has settled a lot; we’re able to see life as it is, including things that we need to work on together to have a stronger marriage, and we both agree that it’s worth working on. I guess life just feels real now. Manageable. I’m sure we’ll go through phases again where I feel like my life is something that I’m watching on a bad TV show – I’m sure of it, because that’s real life, too. But for now, I’m embracing the real.