Thursday, March 07, 2013

Something Else I Had To Change

Life is full of change.   Lately, I’ve done nothing but second guess myself at every turn.   Seemingly, I can’t do anything right.   I can’t make my boss understand that, I can’t let myself relax, I can’t seem to tell people how I care about them, and even my doctors are telling me I can’t seem to get it together.  Its so exhausting to seem like a failure at every level, all at the same time.

Today I took a quick step off to the side to fix one problem.  All while I’m listening to Ziggy Stardust bemoaning “five years, its all we’ve got,” I realize I have to make changes.   As much as I want to talk about and fix the other things first… especially my relationship with Someone else, I know this is probably the most important thing I need to do.   The cardiologist was quite unhappy with my “progress.”  It has to change.

I took my most recent stress test in mid December, following a nasty run of shit at work… way too much overtime and stress… during an already stressful holiday time of year, where I’m not eating right, I’m exhausted, and I had a huge personal falling out with Someone very important to me.  No kidding Doc, I look like shit!  I feel like shit.   But I don’t feel like I’m going to have another heart attack.  He isn’t so certain about the future.  We talked about the heredity, my awful genetics, my age, my previous condition, my arrhythmia, my stress, my exhaustion, and my diet.   There wasn’t a lot of positives in that conversation for me to hear.

In a way, I needed to hear it all of it.  I heard it all before.  But I was never really ready to listen to it.  Here I am, absorbing it like a sponge today.   So much changed in so little time, within myself, I needed to hear it again.  On one hand, I needed to hear how lucky I’ve been so far.  But I needed to hear what I need to put work into going forward.  My body isn’t going to keep up with what I do to it for the next thirty-years, If its like the last thirty.  That’s the message.  That’s the inside, high and tight pitch at my helmet. 

So, we talked about who to see, and what to do.  So today, I walked in, prepaid a year of gym membership, and called in a consult with a recommended trainer from my cardiologist.  Larry and I sat down and talked briefly, while he got some of my medical charts faxed in.  He thinks its doable.   He said, that once he heard me talk about what I need in my life, he said he’s convinced I could do about anything.  That’s excellent news.  That’s something that takes a few wrinkles out of your soul, after feeling like its been crumpled up and stomped on the last few months.

Larry wants to get me in and run me through a bunch of shit to see what I’m really like.  He told me the medical stress test results aren’t what he reads for progress or improvement.  I got to start somewhere.  He agrees it shouldn’t take much refresher for me.  Having worked out extensively for baseball, rehabbing leg injuries, and the whole ROTC time frame, he thinks its going to come back to me pretty quick.   He told me that the long term motivation is what most people lose. I told him my three motivating things for my life right now.  He didn’t know what to say!

I have to look at making myself stronger and better from the inside out.  I told him that I have to understand me and live with me the rest of my life.  The longer I live, the better I will get at that.

I told him I’m scared of dying thinking I left too much behind that I could have accomplished.  I worry that I’m wasting time in my life, instead of valuing it.  The things I want I need to start working for, to see all the effort will tell me I worked hard enough to earn  what I get in the end.

Lastly, I told him I’m motivated by one other person.  She means enough to me that I have to make some changes in my life.  Even if its hard, or it scares us, we need to realize that we really effect and mean that much to each other.  Its important for me to let that happen, and be there for that change for both of us.

Larry thinks I’ve got solid motivation.  Now he wants to see my sweat.  

So I joined the gym.  I prepaid the year and for Larry.  But it’s a commitment to all of those things and myself.   Its time that something else had to change for me.

 

S