Or walk to the train MWF, or bike to therapy Thursday. Just a little bit of movement to start every day. So my morning stack so far is:
# drink water
/ do 750 words
// do sun salutations or walk or bike
Then breakfast, if you're curious; in summer it's nut butter fruit smoothies like I'm on almond butter cherry right now.
So tomorrow starts week two of this Power 30 challenge, and I've been thinking about this. My backstated goal is to re-establish my self-care routine: sleep, hydration, hygiene, nutrition, movement, and meditation. I started with hydration because it's easy, remember EMILY's list? Early Money Is Like Yeast, it makes the bread rise? So, hydration: early in the challenge and early in the day, get two birds started with one stone. Now what? Sleep, hydration, hygiene, nutrition, movement, and meditation is written roughly in the order that I encounter them in the day, obviously circularly. I didn't start this challenge with sleep, sleep to me is the hardest and most important. I'm working on it all the time. I'm working on it now. I mean, not right this minute. Though I sort of am—everything that you do all day contributes to how you sleep at night. Anyway, I've written about it before. I guess I'm counting words as mental hygiene, and otherwise I'm all right with hygiene. I'm depressed, but I do still shower. So next would be nutrition? I hestitate to say this, because every time I say something like I'm falling apart but dagnabbit I've got [fill in the blank] together, that's fill in the blank's cue to burst into flames. But ::throws salt over shoulder:: nutrition is actually on point, has been for months. So next would be movement, which might be where all this trouble started.
I was super great about joyfully resting and healing after I got out of the hospital, and I thought I was starting small, very small, with putting movement back in. Not small enough, apparently. Or maybe small enough, aggrieving my undermind at how small like when I first realized the tiny cube that 1 oz of cheese is. It'll get better, I don't even really like cheese anymore! Or maybe not social enough, after all my physical self has been my social self for eight years. Whatever it was, I was getting sick hand over fist for like a month straight and then I got depressed.
Now when I say "social" I mean a tiny drop of social like those butterflies that drink the tears of turtles. I don't have social anxiety. I like being social, just in microscopic amounts. Pretty much the way I used to drink, which I don't at all anymore because being drunk is too much like having a stroke, not that I have PTSD about that, just that I don't want to be having a stroke and be like, nah it's just that thimble of wine I drank at dinner. So Saturday was Biggie's wedding and it wiped me out. The only reason I didn't stay in bed all day Sunday was to get brunch with Shanna who was in town from Atlanta. We had brunch at Stax Cafe and then we walked a bit on the Bloomingdale Trail until it was time for her to go to the airport, before which she did me a solid and confirmed that she also has no signal in my apartment on her T-Mobile phone--that might be a future goal, tackle this business of switching my cell service and upgrading to a smartphone. I'm mostly excited about Instagram! So then I got back in bed and stayed there for the rest of Sunday, watching CSI. Monday was horrible, but I knew to expect that and then it's not as bad, then after work I get to lay on the bed and meditate, and then I'm supposed to tidy the kitchen but the sweetie man came home and said he was going to do the kitchen so who was I to stop him. I ice bucketed my ankle instead, while doodling in my notebook what my next Power 30 goal could be.
Finally I figured out that I'm certainly not going to solve my whole movement problem this week. I just need a little thing that I can do, a little thing that represents movement the way drinking 12 oz of water represents hydration (and I suppose 750 words represent mental health, lol). I do hydrate like a champ for the rest of the day. Or actually, I guess I've been blogging again since I started the 750 words. So I decided that after the water and the words, every day should start with just a little bit of movement. On work days, that's actually already covered with walking to the train to work—so that's like the free square you get in Bingo, well three free squares. Though I haven't been running the stairs like I always do, obviously. For the past, what, five years I've had this commute, I'm often tired and often think to myself on the platform, is today an escalator day? And my inner mom says, Are you injured? And finally last Friday I answered back, I sure as shit am! And I rode that escalator like the Queen of England, waving at people and shit (in my mind). I mean, that only takes out one of flight of stairs, there's still three others. Boy that Friday I was crutching down the stairs and somebody bumped me from behind and I twisted around with my face full of rage, but it was a blind woman with a dog. So it was okay, she didn't see my rage face. So MWF walk and eventually get back to myself on those stairs, Thursdays bike, and NEW! SuTuSa is going to be a little bit of yoga, a little sun salutation:
- Google "sun salutation"
- Pick a sun salutation. Yoga Journal was near the top, I like Yoga Journal.
- Actually Yoga Journal had like six sun salutations to choose from, I picked Sun Salutation A
- Which weirdly is by Kelly McGonigal, the identical twin sister of Jane McGonigal who does the SuperBetter site that I was talking about earlier.
Yoga is beautiful, yoginis are beautiful, so much love and light and all that. If you were looking for a yoga video that's all dark and I have to keep checking WTF I'm supposed to be doing next because you have to start somewhere, look no further because I'm your gal.
ETA: Sun salutations are actually making me sore! So, Tuesday and Saturday only.
