As time goes on I am starting to notice specific patterns in how my body behaves.
One of the patterns relates to how much i move each day. The best days are the days when I pick a single goal (rest or adventure) and then optimise the day towards that goal. Days which are mixed tend to go badly.
On a rest day I am aiming to keep myself comfortable and physically well rested. Trying to avoid doing things which cause pain flares or consume a lot of energy. Avoiding too much movement is key. Especially prolonged periods holding myself up and tiring out or straining my side muscles.
I’ll spend the day in bed or other places which are very low pain. Doing what I can from my phone. Trying to keep demands low and avoid walking around the flat to much.
On adventure days I have support and I go and do stuff. It could be something mundane (hospital) or something fun (trike ride) but the key thing is that I am outside.
I still carefully manage my movement and pain levels, but I am accepting that I will end the day in some level of discomfort. Noting that to much, but more than baseline.
The focus is making sure the discomfort was worth it. That I achieved something of importance to me in return for the pain and tiredness.
To quote Yoda. “Do or do not. There is no try.” Days when I try to do something in the middle tend to go badly. I end up in pain / uncomfortable and I haven’t achieved anything worthwhile for it. While it’s nice to move around the flat lots, it’s not a worthwhile reason to end up in pain. It’s better to stay put
This is kinda tricky sometimes. I don’t really know what’s going to happen each day till I wake up. So it’s hard to predict when I will be able to do things.
By being proactive with my planning I can start to engineer my time better. Making sure that before a big adventure day I have a day or two of resting.
I can then schedule stuff. Moving things around to sit on the appropriate day. Have a todo list of tasks to get done on a rest day, and a list of places to go and things to do for an adventure day.
I move or I move not. I do not try.
