Alas, neither of those going to happen. Instead, I am typing this on a "cigarette" break at the office, wishing I had the energy to lift weights or even do some core work on the therapy ball. Instead, I am praying that the hours pass quickly today so that I can get home at 7pm, get something to eat with the Artist, crawl into bed for Big Bang Theory, and lift the only weight of the day in the form of my covers over my head to pass out immediately after. Instead, I am smiling at the sheer bliss of the past weekend in the Crescent City, while propping my leg up on my desk to reduce some of the swelling in my knee.
Choices and consequences, my friends. Life is all about choice and consequences.
I am a huge, huge proponent of personal responsibility, as I have mentioned before. I knew going in that this weekend would have a potentially profound physical impact on me, and I chose to do everything I did with that in mind. I did wind up in quite a bit of pain, and generally ignored it and kept going. Pain could be dealt with later, after all, but my time in the city was limited. Taking pain killers was an option, but it needed to be balanced with whether or not I was imbibing as well. Again, all about responsibility.
We got stuck in Atlanta on the way home, which led to coming off a cramped airplane and then hauling tail between terminals repeatedly to try to get on different flights. Exhaustion, stress, fury, and pain spiraled into Very Bad Things, and by the time we got home at 3am, I was wrecked. Work for the next two days was a physical nightmare, and then trying to catch up on things at home made it worse. There was a modicum of disappointment in this, because I truly had hoped that losing the weight would help. Less stress on the joints, after all, should equal less pain and inflammation, right? The frustration wasn't so much in the pain itself, as that's an expected part of my life, but in the fact that I do try to do the Right Things to control it, and didn't get the desired result. It was kind of like when I sat in the cardiologist's office and he told me that my losing weight was great, and my watching my diet was great, and he wasn't worried about any of that, but that I was still going on blood pressure medication because none of it would change things for me.
I do actually have a point to this, honest.
At the end of the day, that accountability lies squarely on our own shoulders when it comes to being proactive with our health and our bodies. Disease and injury come from outside sources, but how you handle those things is your own choice. But when the Right Choices don't necessarily work, a crossroads is met again. It's at that point where you decide if you're going to live your life the way you want, or are you going to live your life the way the pain says you should. There are no "right" answers to that question, and on any given day, the answer may change.
But my pledge to myself has always been, and will always be, that my life will be lived on my terms.
So with that, my friends, Laissez Les Bons Temps Rouler!
