The Things I Do Not Want to Do in Everyday Ramblings

Today it has been six months since I had the second sports performance test. I was talking to a student last night that is quite healthy, just two years older than me who out of the blue, it seems, has developed high blood pressure. That is how it happened with me too.

All my life I had no visible risk factors for heart disease (except that my father who was not diagnosed with heart disease had a sudden heart attack and died when he was 72) and then one day…

To me it seems with the weight of time and loss and so much suffering around us our hearts become heavy on many levels and stop functioning quite as well.

Or at least our arteries.

Since that test my whole focus on the activity I do each day has shifted. While I was participating in Weight Watchers it was getting consistent activity every day. To even out say a long hike or bird watching trip on the weekend with more activity during the week.

Now it is all about cardio.

I don’t know if you have noticed this but getting cardio is more effortful than a walk around the block looking for things to take pictures of.

I have been so dragged out with all the crazy stuff at work and getting my hearing aids and finishing up all the medical testing that I don’t really want to do anything effortful.

This would be a conundrum.

On Tuesday I didn’t have anything scheduled after work and it was cold and windy out and about to snow and I am thinking all through the work day about all the things I have on my “Need to Do This Next!” list in my head and I realized I didn’t want to do any of them.

So I made an actual list, with a fine pointe orange marker (it is right next to me here) labeled “Things I Don’t Want to Do” with the date March 5th.

It is okay, you can laugh.

There are lots of things on it. Things like calling my cable company that provides my Internet and negotiating a lower rate and cleaning the carpets.

My theory was if I write them down I can stop having a repeating list in my head to resist and end up eating too much, listening mindlessly to distracting podcasts and going to bed absurdly early to avoid them and plan rationally and calmly how to do them incrementally.

In practice I felt a lot better offloading the list on to paper and much to my surprise surfaced some things I want to do!

Remember the Union Counselor kept asking me what I wanted?

I bought this DVD (remember those?) a couple of months back that has a couple of exercise programs for runners to help with overall fitness and cross training. I did take it out of the package but that is as far as I got.

After I made my list I actually started to watch it and do some of the moves. Some are absurdly hard because these are super fit runner people but they have a person modeling modifications that I can in fact do.

One thing on my list is push-ups. They do push-ups on the DVD. Did you know that if you can do 10 boy pushups your life expectancy improves significantly?

I want that. :) Life after work. 69 weeks and counting.

Last updated March 07, 2019