Morning Walks
In early January I bragged on my blog that I didn’t have a New Year’s Resolution. After completing a year following my passion – retiring from full-time foster care so that I could write as much as I wanted to – what would I possibly want to change? I recall talking about how the two most important events of 2006 actually happened to my sons, when each of them at ages 24 and 26 purchased their first homes (in Josh’s case land and an Airstream).
“So many of my personal goals have been met. I’m just happy now to watch Josh and Dylan manifest theirs,” I said to my husband, Joe, over a New Year’s morning breakfast of soft-boiled eggs, bagels, and Earl Grey tea.
But I did have a New Year’s resolution, one that would soon be staring me in the face, or in the lower back, in my case. A week into the New Year, while down in our cellar putting away Christmas ornaments, I dropped to the ground in pain from a lower back spasm. Like the fist of a bully grabs a collar and twists, I was yanked from behind and forced to admit that I had been sitting at my computer too long, for most of 2006. The clincher (pun intended here) was a political commentary I just finished writing on Saddam’s hanging. It was a dark subject that I struggled with, one that involved too many gruesome details, fact checking, and nit picking.
I started my blog in 2005 to get a break from writing political commentaries, which I began writing when my friend Alwyn and I started a monthly publication during the first Gulf War called “The Bell: A Call to Peace.” Over the years my commentaries, which have been published online and in the Roanoke Times, provided a good outlet for the activist in me. More recently, writing them has felt like my way of yelling at the TV.
I wanted more humor. I wanted to let my writer’s hair down and let the Irish storyteller in me out. So, I posted a photo of me in the Wicklow Mountains of Ireland with a shamrock pinned to my sweater, next to an enticing quote by Michel de Montaigne, Things I would not tell anyone, I tell the public, and I called it Loose Leaf Notes, this blog.
Blogging for this past year and a half has given me a forum and the incentive to write regularly. It’s provided me with a self-made writer’s training ground. “Some people go back to school, but my blog is my crash course in creative writing,” I told Joe. I like that with blog writing, I get to mix it up. A week’s worth of entries might include creative prose, poetry, politics, photos, and even an occasional game, known in the blogsphere as a meme. And I’m not just talking to my TV. I wasn’t long into blogging when a readership began to develop, people who gave feedback, left interesting comments, and invited me to join in on conversations taking place on their blogs.
But there is a downside to blogging, as my recent fall made clear. Like other computer uses, blogging is a sedentary activity that can lead to carpal tunnel, tendonitis, and other repetitive stress injuries when overdone. How strange it is that less than ten years ago, I hadn’t touched a computer and didn’t want to, and now I was spending more time on one than anything else. In the past, I wrote with a pen on paper while rocking in an easy chair in the hub of my living room where life’s distractions called me to take frequent breaks.
The pain in my back turned out to be only the first in a series of signs that all was not right with me. Much of January and February was spent getting my health back on track. I visited with Katherine, the Harvest Moon herbalist, who stocked me up with supplements; scheduled a session with Shirley Ann, a local rolfer; made some diet changes; and had some blood tests done to rule out the worst possibilities out.
This morning, I walked to the mailbox, testing the strength of my back and reviewing the changes of the past couple of months. Our dog Jasmine trotted happily ahead of me, stopping every few seconds to look back, or to wait for me to catch up. Walking felt good, so much so that when I arrived at the mailboxes along the dirt road that parallels the Blue Ridge Parkway, I kept going. The bounce in Jasmine’s step picked-up. She was overdue for a long walk too. By the time I passed the hedgerow of rhododendrons that lead to the old-time neighborhood church on Morning Dew, my arms were swinging and I was enthusiastically vowing to make walking a part of my everyday.
So there you have it. The 2007 New Year’s Resolution I didn’t think I had. My back feels better already. So does my dog.
March 6th, 2007 7:47 am
ugh, back pain is the worst! Computers are also bad on the eyes. Blogging could be considered hazardous to our health. 😉
March 6th, 2007 8:27 am
Would you believe walking more is one of my goals too? I have taken to wearing a pedometer and my “goal” is 10,000 steps a day. It’s a big goal but one that I’ll keep chipping away at.
Sorry about your back!! I missed this somehow. Glad you are much better!!
As I started reading your entry, I thought “OH no, she is about to say she won’t be blogging anymore.” To learn your resoluation was to walk more, put a smile on my face. hehe
Susan
March 6th, 2007 8:48 am
That’s a great resolution, Colleen. I’ve always heard, read and found,that with fibro/CFS, you need to keep moving but know the line which you don’t cross that will give you more pain and very sloe recovery to the muscles. I have been Nordic Walking, or Urban Poling, with the proper poles I bought, and it’s been going great. I do it 4 times a week and try to give my body a break every 2nd day.
Good luck with that!
March 6th, 2007 9:05 am
I feel the same way….everything in balance. So quite a few months ago I gave up computer time to walk every day to the cemetery, downtown, JUST walking. It got me back in balance.Hope your back continues to improve.
March 6th, 2007 9:09 am
Ruth, I remember seeing a photo on your blog of you poling and I asked something like, “where’s the snow?” I jump on my big trampoline but apparently I was doing it less and sitting at the computer more and needed a wake-up call.
Susan, If it gets that bad I’ll at least post photos and do my weekly 13!
Terri, you know you have the best cemetery I’ve ever seen to walk to!
Hi Carmen, so good to hear from you.
March 6th, 2007 9:38 am
I think blogging is hurting my posture. I have noticed I am slumping more. At work I was on and off the computer and my screen was set up so that I was eye to eye with it, not looking down. I didn’t for such long periods like I do when I am blogging and visiting you guys. I am trying to catch myself and sit up straighter while typing. I am also trying to cut down little by little my time at the computer. It is hard…I have these friends now that I feel I need to visit every day I can. I may have to start alternating some. Or me not posting as much!
Sorry about your back Colleen. I’m glad you enjoyed a nice walk.
March 6th, 2007 9:40 am
You’ve expressed it very well. It is so easy to become sedentary and, I too, have limited my time in front of the computer. Walking is a great way to get the brain going, as well as the body.
I thought of you while in Cedar Key and it was fun to know that you’d been there too.
March 6th, 2007 10:50 am
This could be the only disadvantage of online communities, no walking down the road to the next front porch…Last summers heat and this winters rain pretty much put the kibosh on my daily walks. I have been trying to restart the habit with this beautiful weather we’ve been having.
Enjoy the walk Colleen.
March 6th, 2007 10:51 am
Getting outside is so important. Glad you are feeling better. I need to walk a lot more. Not today. Wind chill is -10. Brrrr….
I was afraid for a moment that you were leaving the bloggin world. ACK!
March 6th, 2007 11:37 am
walking is my salvation on many days…i miss it tremendously in the winter months. there’s not much else that can give you that emotinal and physical “lift” as much as fresh air and a brisk walk. and so cool that the parkway is right out your door. glad you are starting to feel better!
March 6th, 2007 12:02 pm
I’ve begun walking this year too, and it feels so good to get out and breathe deeply. I hope you’ll keep writing too.
March 6th, 2007 2:27 pm
Yes, yes, yes. It’s a vicious cycle. We sit and sit and get so stiff (for me it’s my left leg – I can now barely move it and have gone for a series of tests – nothing conclusive yet) … but then when we have the desire to move (exercise) everything hurts… so we’re stuck sitting some more.
I’m with you. Walking will be a precious time out for me in the coming months and now that I’ve quit smoking, maybe I’ll even be able to! haha
I thought at first, Colleen, that your post was a ‘goodbye’ … got me nervous. Glad I was wrong.
March 6th, 2007 3:23 pm
I so agree and can relate to this post. I love my computer but I am often reminded of its sedentary nature by aches and pains in my lower back, shoulders and hands. I guess the answer lies in moderation.. as is true of most things in life.
Thank goodness for my dogs (now two). They get me out and walking at least twice a day.
March 6th, 2007 5:28 pm
Seems to be a challenge for everyone who sits at the keyboard. I keep an oven timer at my desk and on days when I’m really focusing on my work I set it to go off every hour. Then I get up and move around for 10 minutes – do the laundry, take a quick walk around the exterior of the house, go prune my roses, whatever – and then get back to work. It really helps if you break up the time you’re sitting there and the timer is key.
March 6th, 2007 5:56 pm
Walking is great, glad you can enjoy it now. And I know Jasmine must be happy! My Max loves a good walk in the neighborhood. My doctor, I think I’ve mentioned her, is a freak about nagging, er, encouraging her patients to walk, daily if possible.
March 6th, 2007 7:10 pm
blogging has to be a bigger vice than tv since it’s interactive. there’s only so much someone needs to say to anybody about anything. surely people who are sedentary won’t fair well healthwise.
March 6th, 2007 8:19 pm
Some people would point to the interactive part of blogging as a positive in that it provides a social exchange where TV does not. As a writer, blogging isn’t the only thing that brings me to the computer and so I probably shouldn’t single it out so.
March 7th, 2007 1:54 am
I had a bout of that sort of back pain, with the sharp pain coming on suddenly and just about knocking you down. Even though it hurt like Hades, I found that if I did hard work or kept moving it got better much quicker than if I heated it, iced it and nursed it along. Hope you are feeling better.