It’s been almost three weeks since I transitioned back to living full-time in Philly, and while I’m glad to be here, it hasn’t exactly been seamless. There’s nothing serious, mind you. I’m not going out late at night, looking for booze or hard drugs or illegal street races or underground fighting pits. It’s not like I’m out there hunting for something, anything to make me feel alive. It’s nothing as dramatic as that. Frankly, my issues are so prosaic, it would have been hard to foresee them.
The main sticking point here in Philly is that I’m having trouble rediscovering the shape of my day. Over the course of seven months in Florida, I apparently became phenomenally well-adapted to the formless contour of days spent in relative isolation. I would wake up sometime between 6 and 7am, I would drink coffee and read, then I would head into the nursing home (or before that, the hospital) to visit mom around 9 or 10. After that, I would promise myself I’d do some work around the house, then most times put it off to the next day. Instead, I would do a puzzle, watch TV, read a book, whatever it took to pass the hours until I went to bed and started the process over again.
It was enervating, to say the least. But it is surprising how quickly you can internalize even the most deadening routine—and how easy it is to miss it happening. Only now, back in Philly, where I’m trying to reestablish a rhythm, do I fully understand how detrimental that routine was, and how hard it can be to break away from those habits.
What complicates this quest to reshape my days is that I was already working hard to reinvent (or at least reconfigure) my life in the months leading up to mom’s heart attack. I had only been working remotely for a month or two, and I was just beginning to settle into that routine—and a regular paycheck. Even before the job, though, I was investigating ways to better use my time, to find ways to be more personally and professionally productive.
And so here I sit, the majority of a year between then and now, and I can’t help but feel I’m further away from where I want to be than I was this time last year. I still haven’t met many people in Philly, I don’t have any connection with professional, artistic, or social organizations here, and I remain as unsure as ever about the direction of my career goals.
And then there’s my body.
Woof, let me tell you—I’m in trash shape. Florida really did a number on me, folks. I ate like garbage, partially as a response to stress, but also thanks to the poor selection of fruits and vegetables I found at most grocery stores. It’s a lot easier to justify eating a Tombstone pizza if the only way to buy most vegetables is in prepackaged containers big enough to serve a family of eight.
My training was also…uneven. I did keep up with my weight training, thanks to the 24-hour gym less than five minutes from Mom’s house. I may have actually put on some muscle, meaning (I hope) that not all of those extra calories went to my gut. But all of that lifting was in lieu of cardio training, and I’m paying for it now. The heat and humidity made outdoor running a virtual non-starter, and even while on the treadmills at the gym, the humidity combined with the heat radiating from the windows to leave me gasping for breath within minutes.
Plus I just hate running on a treadmill.
But perhaps the one factor that I’ve discounted throughout the past several months is the physical toll of my various struggles with mental health. I’ve spent a lot of time and effort telling myself I was fine—and that I continue to be fine—but the truth is that I think the difficulties of my mom’s health and of being stuck in Florida had far more of an impact on me that I realized. For so long, I was operating in a crisis mindset, and even now I get minor panic attacks when I hear my ringtone, even when it’s coming from someone else’s phone.
Stress is, I think, a difficult thing to define. It’s a relatively diffuse concept, one that is highly personal, both in terms of experience and release. What bothers one person may roll off another person’s back, and the various techniques to handle that stress may or may not work for every individual. The way that stress impacts the body can vary widely as well. Some people can experience stress in short bursts, letting it go as quickly as it comes; others hold on to every stressor that crosses their path, internalizing each element in a complex web of self-loathing and resentment, until it eventually burns through their hearts.
So, you know, different strokes.
And thus, here I am, trying to figure out what daily life is going to be like this time around in Philadelphia. Thus far, I’ve done a lot of wasting time, in the interest of “recharging” and “finding my feet.” I’ve done some shopping, some cooking, and some cleaning, but by and large, I’ve been, for lack of a better term, slacking. But I am starting to turn things around, and it starts with the physical side.
It’s not surprising to me that lifting doesn’t seem to be a problem. While it’s not as good as having a full set of weights and machines in a fully air-conditioned gym a super-short drive away from the house, I have enough equipment to keep up my work, although I could always use a couple more plates. And there’s a gym associated with my wife’s work, and it’s only about a 20-minute walk from the apartment.
Dietary changes are also in the works, although not without missteps. It’s a lot easier to make healthier eating choices living in a place with ready access to a wide variety of fruits and vegetables, all of which are significantly cheaper here than they are in Florida. Plus our CSA is in full swing, and we get a full bag of produce every week, which challenges us to find new and interesting ways to prepare food. This week I learned I actually don’t mind cabbage, at least when it’s prepared well.
Of course, I still eat way too much, and often add in the wrong things. The last time I was at the store, I fell for the ol’ brand extension trap, and I bought three bags of Herr’s potato chips because they had Philly-centric flavors, and I just had to know how they tasted.* No matter how well I understand intellectually that food is not comfort, it’s hard to ignore the sense of well-being you get when you’re full of tasty food—at least until you stand up, and you feel all that tasty food bulging in your midsection.
* The verdict? They all tasted pretty good. So…okay.
Conditioning is where I suffered the most loss. Back in November, I managed to run a full-on 10K without stopping, and while it wasn’t my fastest time, I didn’t finish last, either. Now, I can hardly make it to a mile before I’m forced to drop my pace to a walk, my legs leaden and my lungs full of fire. At times, my calves get so tight they cut off the circulation to my feet, and I have to stop and stretch in order to get the blood flowing again. And I wonder: how did I get here? Did I really fall so far?
I suspect my running problems are threefold: 1) I haven’t been running nearly enough, and the time I spent not running was mostly spent sitting in a wooden glider chair with thin cushions and broken springs; 2) I put on a decent amount of excess weight, at least fifteen pounds, and I can assure you most of it is not muscle. My legs are struggling to keep up with all the extra weight; 3) There is surely some lingering stress and fatigue hanging over me, sapping my resources and making running more challenging, both physically and mentally.
But I’m still trying. I’m glad my wife has been running these past few months, not just for her own physical and mental wellbeing, but because it encourages me to get out and work on my own runs, even when I feel like I would rather be doing anything else. And when I’m done, even after the shittiest runs, I do feel better, at least for a while, and that’s totally worth it. Having lost so much of my constitution is difficult, and any encouragement is appreciated. I mean that.
Take this past Saturday. My wife and I went out for a run around 8:30 in the morning. I was planning on walking for the most part, another step in trying to get my legs back under me. But after ten minutes of walking, I decided it was worth getting my pace up, just to challenge myself to at least a mile of running.
That single mile was a mighty struggle. About halfway through I had to slow to a walk. My breath was too fast, my heartbeat too rapid, and my legs too cramped to continue at that pace. I walked for about a tenth of a mile, turned around, and started back towards home, ramping up to my current running pace, which is currently below 12 min/mile. Still, I pushed, and told myself I would finish the entire mile.
On my left, a shaggy-haired runner passed at a much faster clip. He had the slender build and careless wardrobe of a college-age jogger, perhaps newly graduated and hanging out over the summer. As he passed, he gave me a quick smile, called out “good effort,” and let his pace carry himself past.
There are a number of days in my life where I would have heard that phrase and taken umbrage. What did he mean, good effort? Was he being sarcastic? That son of a bitch. He doesn’t know my life! He doesn’t know want I’m trying to do, or what I’m going through, or anything about me! Just because he can run fast and looks good while doing it doesn’t mean he has any right to criticize me!
But that morning, during that run, that simple utterance—“good effort”—meant a great deal to me. I don’t think he was being sarcastic at all. I think he saw someone who was trying, who was clearly pushing himself pretty hard considering his baseline, and he wanted to encourage that runner to keep pushing, and to recognize him for putting in the work. He wanted me, in that moment, to feel seen.
It helped. It helped that morning, and it helped the next morning, when I managed two miles of running (okay, I also walked a little bit of that). And it’s helping me now, as I sit here writing this blog and considering my next run.
Good effort. That’s what I think will help me find the shape of my days over these next several weeks. I can have all the goals, all the plans, all the best intentions in the world, but without the effort, it’s all fairly meaningless, like window dressing on a brick wall. Putting in good effort doesn’t mean having to succeed, at least not immediately. It means being willing to do the work, to make changes and be willing to try something different, and to be understanding if that effort doesn’t necessarily pay off the way you think it should.
What does that mean, specifically? I have no idea. And that’s okay, at least for now. It’s a starting point, and that’s kind of where I am, both physically and mentally. After a long interruption, I’m still at the beginning of this next step in my life. As much shit as I gave myself for wasting time “finding my feet,” there’s still some truth to it. I am trying to get myself settled, and that starts with finding a good foundation.
Still, that idea of “good effort” seems like a good place to start. Just like Mike’s “What’s the endgame,” I think that simple phrase, “good effort,” is a pretty dang good foundation for moving forward. Let’s see how it works when I put it into action.
MetaFrizzics 