December-ish (but still November-ish)

Every year I tend to get a bit sentimental and reflective when December rolls around.

As I close in on the end of my second full year of this blog, I’m hoping to channel some of that sentimentality into some productive creative motivation here (and also in other online and offline spaces I’ve been inhabiting lately.)

Following my strict-ish rule of trying to keep this blog as fuzzily attached to my real persona as possible, I won’t point you in the direction of those other creative pursuits, things like posting a daily watercolour painting, writing fiction every day in December, and taking one photo per day. But I can let you know that I’m opening up my creative floodgates here too, particularly so, and plan to relaunch my December-ish daily blogging effort once again and fill your December reading with some of that aforementioned sentimentality.

Each day I’ll try to write and post a little something on this site based on the same prompts that I wrote to on the same day of the month as last December.

And if you are clever, like I know you are, you can find when you click on an actual post (like this one and not just the front page or an archive list) on the side bar (or bottom if you read on a phone) there should be a little widget called “on this day” that points you at the post I wrote on the same date but in previous years. Handy right?

It’s cold outside right now. I walked a couple city blocks outside this morning and the wind was gusting and biting a raw cold that is hard to explain unless you’ve felt it. Walking in minus twenty five degrees Celsius is like touching a frying pan that has cooled enough not too burn yet is still far too hot to hold… that, but with cold. And with your face.

It’s a good kind of weather to sit inside and dream of warmer days and write.

So, stay tuned. Here comes December. Ish.

Un-Wounding

I hate blog posts that are just excuses for not writing.

That said, I have been quiet for quite a while.

That deserves at least a little excuse for not writing.

The summer was a bust. Back in July when I wrote about my knee I was still moderately hopeful that whatever my self-diagnosed ailment turned out to be, that it would (at most) result in a couple weeks of healing and I’d be back at it. Hiking. Running. Doing things I loved to do.

What I didn’t expect was that finally seeking some medical intervention would set me on a path that has sidelined me for what is now almost exactly four months.

It turned out that yes, I damaged my MCL, a ligament that runs up on the inside line of the knee, but no, it’s not a simple injury. I’ve been going to physiotherapy and have severely reduced my participation in the things that would have brought me a bit more balance this past summer through work and life stress. There have been days I can barely walk. Sleepless nights. Urgent calls to medical professionals. And a lot of frustration and…

It’s been a tough span. Nor one I wanted to remember, let alone raise up and publicize online. Thus… no blogs were writ.

I mean, there was not much for adventure either when you’re injured, to be honest. Some car travel. Me limping around the local park to make sure the dog was walked. Watching the weeds grow in a garden I couldn’t bend down to deal with. Getting fat off sourdough bread.

That’s my little excuse.

Like I said, I’ve been pushing through physiotherapy … and things are improving. Slowly.

I’ve started running a bit. Mostly short thirty second or one minute intervals until the pain builds up and I need to stop for another day. My physio has me working towards a big goal, running the Chicago Marathon, which I (reluctantly) signed up for as I had a free entry leftover from a deferral from the 2020 race cancellation. That’s next October. Eleven months from as I write this. I’m hopeful.

And then the weather arrived in force this week. It started snowing on the second day of November and hasn’t really stopped for more than a few hours here and there. It went from a mild autumn to a blustery winter in the span of a single night.

Winter adventure is a thing, right?

I haven’t written for a while, and that’s my excuse. Not a great one, but an excuse nonetheless. And now I’ll keep writing. I haven’t left. At least… not yet. Hopefully not soon. Stay tuned.

Knee-hab

Ten days ago I was climbing up a mountain trail near the Crowsnest Pass, a low peak along the continental divide on a sunny Sunday afternoon, looking at views like this:

I could feel the start of some bit of twinging in my right knee, but like anything else for a guy in his mid-40s, aches and pains are sometimes something to worry about … but usually just the biological squeaks of rusty joints and complaints of underused muscles.

That logical gamble didn’t pay off for me this time, and after a week of continued mumbling and grumbling noise from my knee joint, it finally stopped pulling punches and objected outright and fully to my continued lack of care to it’s needs.

I’d say it walked out on me, but walking is something that we do together and not as much for the last few days.

I seem to have developed a bit of a strain or a tear in my MCL, or medial collateral ligament, an important tendon on the inner side of the knee joint that is pretty important (I’ve found lately) for doing things like standing, walking up stairs, and (of course) running.

I’m on a break from running for at least a week or two.

Instead, I’ve grudgingly renewed my municipal fitness centre pass and paid up for a whole year of access to the weights, machines, and lap pool. I’ve been reintroducing myself over the last week to the joys of lane repeats. It’s a kind of cross-training, rehab, knee therapy that I hope will reduce my down time.

But in the heart of summer, despite the heat and humidity, I’m more than a little sad to be missing the sunny trails and green-lined river valley paths because of an injury I don’t even really know the origins of: suddenly it just started aching, and progressively got worse.

In the meantime, I may be able to use some of that down time to write a few more posts about hikes, runs, and my recent adventures in the mountains.

After the Storm

Exactly one week ago, almost to the hour of me writing these words, I finally tested positive for COVID-19. By all accounts and on a severity scale of one to ten (one being no symptoms and ten being the most severe fatal variety) I would rank my infection experience at a 4 or maybe at most a 5.

There were a few hours in the middle where I considered asking my wife to take me into the hospital, but that feeling was short-lived and a good-night-sleep later I was back to slouching it off on the couch and sick-napping through a Netflix marathon.

This morning I feel almost normal.

I mention here for two reasons.

First, I feel like I need to explain why I haven’t posted in over a week. (Answer: I was sick.)

But second, this was a blog (and now blossoming project) that was conceived out of the rippled effects of this global pandemic. I can’t say for certain, but I doubt you’d be reading any of these past three-hundred and twenty-five posts if it were not for COVID-19. That pandemic provided both the space and motivation for me to start a little more self-evaluation and personal reflection and refocusing of priorities… and all those fancy things that make one take stock and dive into a new hobby, or reinvigorate an old one… even if it was just me stanning on cast iron cooking and raving about trail running adventure.

Living through the pandemic, which we’ve all done in some shape or another, has likely left an indelible mark on each of us, the scale and scope of which will only be understood in time.

For me, living through the pandemic in the first year of that event was marked not actually by a personal infection but rather by being on the front lines of my job, putting in erratic twelve hour days, burning out, being crushed emotionally and physically by the effort and the decisions and the reactions and the uncertainty of it all. I pounded a stake into the metaphorical sand and anchored myself to words and ideas and a reinvented self that I projected outwards through this space. It may have seemed trivial to those who were reading, but this was me tethering myself back into reality and hand-over-hand pulling myself back towards normal.

None of it is over. Many others have their own COVID stories to conclude, but I realize that by living through the actual infection, even a mild version I’ve kind of put a pin in my pandemic adventure, at least the first volume of it:

Learning about the pandemic, going through lockdowns and panic and societal shift. Working from home to avoid catching the damn virus. Mountains of PPE, masks of every shape and colour. Three vaccinations. Symptoms and tests and dozens of negatives, false alarms. The slow toe back into the new reality of post-COVID life, work and play. Demasking and lowering defences and then finally getting the damn virus and taking it on the chin for seven full days of fever and cough and headaches and utter fatigue, until…

Reaching healthy?

And in the blur of that two-and-half-years-long story, learning a lot about my own self, what I believe in, cherish, value… and how I want to write the sequel to it all.

The storm has passed. At least, my storm has, and I’m just pausing here for a deep breath — literal and metaphorically — as I look around and ponder where next.