Healing

My last post was about my March goals, which are extensive. Today’s post is about how I’m not going to achieve those goals and why that’s okay.

I’ve been struggling with carpal tunnel, primarily in my right wrist, which is the weaker of the two owing to an old injury. I think it’s being caused by the cumulative effect of lots of typing at a too-high desk, excessive one-handed phone use, and poor dietary choices (curse you potatoes for being so delicious and so devastatingly inflammatory to my system).

The good news is that I listened to my body. I didn’t try to push through the pain or cover it up with analgesics. I took the unnecessary apps off my phone. I forbade myself from texting one-handed. I switched to a lower desk, and I forbade myself from typing for two weeks. I found Kinesio tape and a wrist brace for sleeping in.

All this isn’t to say that I haven’t been writing. I write my first drafts by hand, so I was still able to write, not as much as I would have liked to perhaps, but I’ve been making daily progress. But it’s definitely thrown a wrinkle into my process and my plans.

I’m no longer confident that I’m going to finish this draft this month. I’ll come close, but I don’t think I’m going to make it and I’m going to try really hard not to push myself because I don’t want to reinjure myself.

I have a really hard time not pushing myself. Pushing myself is how I function, always has been. I’ve also been known to push myself beyond my limits. In school, I pushed myself so hard that I was always getting sick. In jobs, I’ve pushed myself so hard to perform that I ended up with no personal time and sunk into depression. I have the opportunity now to break the pattern, to take care of myself. To let myself heal so that I don’t push myself to the point where I can’t write for months instead of weeks or where I can’t play the bass or where I need surgery.

Healing is hard and boring and exhausting work sometimes, but it is essential for continued prolonged well-being.

For the foreseeable future, I’m going to keep myself to a strict 20-minute limit on the typing. Then I’ll close my computer, get up and stretch and take care of myself.

Hope everyone is being good to themselves.

Thank you for reading.