The Bounce-Back

So, stop me if you've heard this before, but I think I'm starting tOKAY FINE YOU'VE HEARD THIS BEFORE FUCK YOU MAN ILL SAY IT AGAIN ANYWAY.

… ahem…

I think I'm starting to find it.

At least… part of it. But that's better than it has been.

Weather was gorgeous the weekend after my last post. Rather than get bottled up with more projects, I decided to go try out a driving range nearby that I hadn't visited yet. It was beautiful. Natural turf, blue skies, greens to aim for… I had knocked an entire large bucket out there, then Bruddah showed up to join in and I went and got a second.

Wandering out on my own to a new place to try something I'm not so familiar with. That's not something I'm comfortable doing when I'm in the thick of the bullshit. But it was fantastic.

That week I ignored my aching old man golf shoulders and started gearing up to move again. I went and bought some XL shirts so I could feel comfortable in them while exercising. I had been stubbornly refusing to give up my larges, insisting that I'd be back to that size soon. It finally just felt silly. I can always go back for more once I'm shrunken down again.

I went out and invested in a Yeti gallon jug to serve as my all day water intake. $130 is fucking bonkerlusional for a drinking vessel, but I have been way under-watered for quite some time and it was time to take drastic measures. I got the yellow one. It looks happy. I've been wearing a path between my desk and the bathroom since.

I invested in a fitness tracker watch. Garmin. All the GPS, heart rate, sleep tracking, workout tracking bells and whistles baked right in. Battery lasts over a week and the screen is always on. Can even load up Spotify playlists so I can pop in an earbud and go on walks or runs, no phone needed. It also allows me to clear any notifications around the house, no phone needed. Getting away from this phone was a big part of the appeal, now that I think about it.

So. I spent money on things. How's it working out so far?

I uh… actually? It's really, really good.

Sleep tracker immediately started highlighting that I was only getting 4-5 hours a night, with practically no REM. That's probably been going on a long time, huh? I picked a bedtime and stuck with it and within a week I noticed that I was dreaming again. Activity tracker showed that, if I'm working from home and not exercising, I may walk under 1000 steps in a day and my heart rate hardly ever gets over 100. Yikes. Okay, ramp up the exercise. Calorie trackers show that I'm burning over 3k kcals on a day with a weight training session and a long cooldown walk. How many calories have I been eating? Most days I'm making breakfast, having a tiny snack for lunch, and not being very hungry for dinner. So… 1600? Maybe? Could this be why my metabolism has been garbage for the last year or so? Ramp up the calories and let's see what it does.

Within a few days, energy started picking up. I don't bounce out of bed in the mornings, but I'm not laying there on my phone until the last possible minute and then dragging for hours anymore. Sleep feels more restful. I'm starting to get a little peckish by lunchtime again. And I've had the energy for daily exercise again. It's only a week and a half or so, but the 3 days a week weights and 3 days a week HIIT cardio are feeling good. Even a few extra 3-4 mile walks and some yoga, just because I wanted to.

More importantly than any of that, I've started doing things I enjoy again. Genuinely relaxing, rather than project project project go go go all the time. And not feeling guilty about it? Well… less guilty anyway.

I had ordered a novel recently after seeing it was the top review getter on audible by a large margin. Didn't know what it was, but I made a point to sit down and try to read it. And… I was terrible. I could not get my brain to focus. After several attempts I hadn't gotten more than 5 pages in. I'd stare at the page for a few seconds and my brain would be racing off to health problems and their potential causes, work deadlines, embarrassing moments from the last few years, projects to take on noise noise noise noise noise. Suddenly I was on my phone researching solutions to things. I was far from reading.

But I stuck with it.

After several days of trying, I started making a little progress. I found that, when my brain started to get away from me, I could pull it back in with a few deep meditative breaths before trying again. And then it got easier. I remembered how to settle in. Yesterday I rolled through the last 150 pages, finished my book, and chose another to dive into.

I tore through the latest season of Stranger Things last week. Left my phone upstairs and went down to the theater and watched it and loved it. It was fantastic. Season had my favorite character from any, the tone has matured with the actors (Harry Potter style) and it was a joy. I was actively looking forward to my evenings after workouts to be able to sit and watch another episode.

And I started playing guitar again. Even started singing again. My voice isn't as strong as it once was - that's also a muscle that's out of shape - but I haven't cared. The songs I'm playing haven't all been intricate technical show off pieces, and I haven't cared. Just belting out underpowered vocals to 4 chord songs because it feels good. And it has been feeling good.

… where in the blue blazes has all this been the last few years?!?

Trying to get a bird's eye view on all of this, I think there are a handful of victories that have been had and lessons that I need to internalize to be able to keep this going for any meaningful stretch.

Lesson 1 - Too much comfort is death. I have (rather ironically) put so much heckin effort into making my life as comfy as it can be for a long time now. I've worked my house to have every little comfort I could think up, my job to where I can work from home in my PJs most days for a good salary, and my schedule to where i can spontaneously do as I please most every day of my life. Comfort, or the promise of future comfort, has informed a huge number of decisions. And where did that get me? Tired. Dragging every morning. Unmotivated. Unwilling to venture too far out of the carefully curated cocoon I'd crafted. Being willing to go outside for a sweaty 3 mile walk on a painfully humid 92 degree day is important. It's the discomfort that keeps me alert.

Lesson 2 - Relaxation is just like squats, bench, or deadlifts - I need to work at it and train it and keep those muscles engaged and in shape. The amount of difficulty I had in getting my thoughts to focus on reading was, and I don't say this hyperbolically, terrifying. I genuinely wasn't sure what was wrong with me, or whether I'd ever get back to normal. The meningitis had brought memory loss, nausea, light sensitivity, vertigo, all that other brain shit. Why wouldn't difficulty focusing be a possibility? Would I even know if something had been permanently affected? But I stuck with it. I practiced. And it came back. The ability to get outside of my immediate surroundings and responsibilities and stresses for awhile came back. I can lose myself in a book once more, and it feels amazing. I don't want to lose that again.

Lesson 3 - metrics force accountability, and accountability goes a long way. When I bought this watch, I did it mostly for the sleep tracking. The fact that I was so tired every morning and hadn't remembered a dream in months was starting to freak me out and I wanted something to tell me what was happening. My previous experience with these was with the original sleep tracker watch. Like, the first, when it was a brand new concept. This was when I was 22, living at home, learning to get in shape, and throwing the kitchen sink at it for any edge I could find. So I spent $300, roughly a week's worth of pay at the time, on a dedicated sleep tracker. It was this big clunky wrist watch looking device that only tracked sleep. I'd put it on at night and take it off in the morning, and I had to plug it in to my PC via a cable to download the data from the night before. But that was 15 years ago, and I thought it was worth another try, and boy was it ever. Seeing how badly I was sleeping, or how little I was moving during the days, or how little I was eating vs my daily calorie burn, really forced me to recognize and correct bad habits. Things become much easier to fix when you have data pointing out the problems, and it's hard to ignore a problem when it's plain as day.

Lesson 4 - Health spirals quickly. I had a decent chunk of this stuff sorted out last year. It wasn't perfect, I was still reeling over Vally and struggling to find joy in anything, but I had put together some good habits regardless. All it took were 2-3 weeks last Xmas, spent hyper-stress-working to finish the house in time for hosting, before those habits crashed and burned, taking my physical and mental health with them. Conversely, looking at how quickly I've started to feel better since putting all these new measures into practice, things can swing back the other way almost as quickly. At least, once I can break out of the horrifically negative headspace I wind up in. Point being that, at least for the first few years, these new habits are powerful but delicate. To be guarded at all costs. It may not seem like a few days off will bite me, like one big project will be enough to derail me, but until these habits are once again solidly baked into my subconscious it is not worth the risk.

I think there's more, but the clock just ticked to my bedtime and this mundane, prosaic post is hardly worth staying up for. I've got a long way to go here. It's for sure going to be several years of effort to be who I want to be again. Who I think of myself as. But I think, for the first time since I lost Vally, I've got both my body and my head pointed in the right direction. I'm ready to be happy again. I'm comfortable allowing myself to be happy again. And I'm willing to put in the effort, forge the requisite discomfort, and maintain the consistency needed to get there. Winter may be tough. It usually is for me. But I'm not even worried about that yet. Stay in the present. Trust myself to deal with the future problems when I get to them. Keep the legs churning, whether it be uphill or downhill, fast or slow. I'm gonna get there.

Cause if I don't, I'm pretty sure my watch will yell at me again.

Be cool, watch. I'm gettin it.

-M