My own plan

I created a new plan for my health and wellbeing. I decided to cross train four days a week, meditate four days a week, and yin yoga three days a week. The yoga is on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. The mediation is on the days I don’t do yoga. Cross training is on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. This switches things up enough so I don’t have the same day too many times a week. Variety is the spice of life.

But then there is life. The past two weeks have been uncharacteristically chaotic. I’m retired and don’t do much in the line of chaos anymore. But we had Christmas early because of work schedules for those not retired. And then there was actual Christmas and then New Year’s Day. And my birthday fell in there and we went away for a couple days.

All in all, I didn’t get much gym time. I was doing some meditation and some yoga, but not really hitting my schedule. The new year started and I was determined to make my schedule stick and then – once again life happened. Really, it was weather. The weather happened.

South Carolina is not the snow belt. I used to live in the snow belt and we had all manner of things stockpiled and awaiting the frigid winter weather and all the snow and ice that befalls Ohio during the cold months. Down here, not so much.

But we got sleet. Then we got snow. A lot of snow fell on the already ice covered streets. There wasn’t a stockpile of salt or ashes waiting to be spread around. What we had was ice covered streets and drivers who are not used to driving on them. Hell, they have trouble driving in the rain here. So the ice was too much and many vehicles hit the ditch.

But yesterday was sunny and bright and much of the snow melted. The cloudless overnight sky let any built up heat escape and the freezing temperatures made the roads all icy again. A local driver lost control and killed a pedestrian just a few miles from my house this morning.

My gym was cancelled again. I didn’t do anything yesterday because of all the snow. This morning, I was mostly dressed when I saw the notice. So I finished lacing up the shoes and checking the heart monitor. I wrote my own workout. I vacillated and then made myself do the higher number.

I selected a 20 minute EMOM with even minutes doing 10 kettlebell swings and odd minutes doing 10 air squats. It wasn’t too much, although for the math people out there, it is 100 of each of the moves. My legs were a bit tired by the end. I pushed through and did what I told myself I would do.

I’m rather proud of that. In the last few weeks I’ve been very lackadaisical about my own schedule. This is my schedule. Why is it so difficult to follow it? I have nothing else to do but spend time on my own health, fitness, and wellbeing. Why is that so hard?

I believe we think health is our natural state and should be easy and just happen. But in reality, chaos is the natural state of the universe and all that is in it. It takes a great amount of energy to make something out of the chaos. And so, it takes a great amount of energy to make me do the things I say I want to do.

Perhaps having figured this out, it might be easier to stick to my schedule I created for me to get what I say I want. I sure hope so.