As I write this, my fingers are not cooperating with me. I can’t count how many small objects I’ve fumbled in just the last hour, let alone the past few days. I can’t seem to hold onto anything. It’s like trying to diffuse a bomb wearing mittens.
I’ve been here before. The good news is that I know why it’s happening and I know what to do to fix it. Except that I’m not doing that, I’m writing this post. Apparently I am stubborn. The reason it’s happening is that my shoulders are tight and inflamed, and that causes my hands to cramp up and not work right. A lot of people in my situation are diagnosed with carpal tunnel syndrome. And for some people it may be CTS, but in my case it most definitely is not, and I don’t need a doctor or surgery to correct the issue. I just need to stop abusing my body. Then I need to stretch, maybe put on some muscle relaxing gel, and take an Ibuprofen. I’ll be right as rain.
Why is it happening? It’s summer here in the Midwest, which means it’s time to be outdoors doing outdoor things, like building a garden, fixing outside things on the house, and working on my 1966 VW Beetle, Helga. Those are fun things, good things. But they do wreak havoc upon my body, which is something I didn’t deal with in my 20s — or 30s, or 40s for that matter. I just kept going and going and going without any next morning consequences. I’m fortunate that I can still do a lot of heavy physical labor in my 50s. I have no issues doing the hard work, it’s just the after-work body hangover that becomes a problem. I blame myself. I bend terribly, I forget to use my legs instead of my back, I crawl under my car and twist myself into a pretzel while loosening a nasty, stubborn bolt. Again, in my 20s I wouldn’t have even noticed anything amiss the next day — in fact, I wouldn’t have given it a second thought. But these days I give it many thoughts. I need to be better.
I hate being cautious. I tend to forge ahead and shovel the gravel like I have a prison boss standing over me with a truncheon. “What we have here is a failure to communicate.“ In this case, it’s a failure to communicate to myself that I need to slow my roll.
I don’t want to slow down. I resent the need to slow down. I hate that I need recovery time. Then I remind myself that it could be worse. So I do the stretching, I apply the ointment, I take a day off. And when I feel fine again and I start the next project… I’ll forget this whole post ever happened.
Photo by Ekaterina Kuznetsova on Unsplash
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