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November 28, 2005
mortality 
Well, I went to the gym today, just to tell my body what's what. Here's a taste of what's coming, dearheart. You might as well just get used to it.
You might be wondering what scared me straight. I mean, really. Or not. I got a wakeup call this weekend.
By and large, the weekend was very good. Thanksgiving was full of food and hanging out and total relaxation, Friday and Saturday full of doing work-work in my jammies while the animals came up begging for attention, and yesterday, a trip to the mall, because I had forgotten how much I hated that.
At some point, I started thinking about my homework for mister career dude, which is seeing myself at work in 5 years. So what would that look like? What would I be doing? Who would I be working with? Hell if I know. I have a hard time seeing til the end of next week.
Part of this is just a sense of futility. Why bother looking for a new job when it'll just be more of the same, and probably a paycut? I'll still be stressed out; I'll still be self-medicating with food or drink or exercise. I think about one cow-orker who quit a few years back because he couldn't stand it any longer... and ended up back here. That could be me. On a treadmill.
I get caught in this sort of thinking and I might as well just get out the ice cream. It's hopeless.
So I start reading some blogs, cuz that'll make me feel better, right? And I read about someone who has one of the same stress illnesses that I have, and he developed cancer and died. Horribly.
Now I'm an awful hypochondriac as well as quite the drama queen, I'll give you. But I have the precursor to the cancer that this guy died from—I got diagnosed with it a couple years back.
A lot of the time, I am rather blase about whether I continue to exist in some form on the earth, but I admit, I hate the thought of pain. Dying is fine as long as there isn't pain involved (isn't this the story of my life?!) So what would it take for me to love my life, and guard it?
I don't have an answer to that. But pain, damn.
So, baby steps. I rode my bike to work today, made myself go slow (which is to say: really, really slow). I made myself stop for every stop sign. Yeah, so what if a car isn't there to see me stop? So what that it takes a huge burst of energy to come away from a stop? So what? It's not like I'm getting too much exercise. It's not like I'm too butch. Get over it and do it. It's not painful, it's just unpleasant.
And the ride in was great. It's seriously cold today, and the office, and the Sweetie, are all abuzz with hopeful talk of snow. There were patches of ice on the roads. I got downtown, and I felt cold, and sweaty, and alive.
I went to pilates at lunch, and felt like I had lost my fool mind. What was I thinking? So I did some of that, did some x-country ski machine, some treadmill, some weights. And when I got my burrito at lunch, I did not get the super hot sauce that I'm addicted to.
This is small stuff, I know. But I gotta start somewhere, and some time.
Posted at November 28, 2005
Comments
Mon dieu, bike commuting today = not small stuff! It was cold and windy out there and even my dog didn't campaign for a walk. I salute you.
Hot sauce is unhealthful?
Posted by: Holly at November 28, 2005 4:51 PM
Hi VJ, congratulations on getting to the gym! What kind of illness do you have? Have you talked about it here before? I certainly understand if you would rather not talk about it, I don't remember reading about an ilness in previous posts. I can relate to your fear of a treadmill like existence. I often feel like my motto is, to butcher a quote from a poem, "no matter where I go, there I am."
Posted by: Liz at November 28, 2005 6:55 PM
I just read a great article in the SF paper this morning.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2005/11/28/findrelig.DTL
Some good thoughts there. Hugs. :-)
Posted by: neca at November 29, 2005 5:44 AM
good (encouraging) Gina Kotola article on this in
Science Section of today's new york times
Posted by: Theo at November 29, 2005 9:52 AM