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Change

You know what they say is the definition of insanity. I feel like I have been caught in a cycle of doing the same things over and over again in my life, trying to make changes but falling back into old habits. In a few areas of my life, I have decided to make a radical change.

Personal Updates

In regard to my body, as I realize I have continued to give updates on my physical health in pretty much all of these posts, I made a pretty big leap this week. After months of not knowing what was wrong with my hip, and being concerned that I may further hurt myself by doing the wrong thing, I finally figured out the issue. I got an MRI and spoke with a doctor and trainers and figured out that the source of my pain is the underdevelopment of some muscles and the overdevelopment of others. In certain movements due to lack of training or overtraining my body was recruiting different muscle groups to perform exercises which put unnecessary strain on my hip. 

I will have to put more thought into how I was neglecting training these certain muscle groups and whether this was something that was inevitable with my training style or just a freak thing. Moving forward I am taking a different approach to training than I have been over the past few months, and changing up some of my routines. I am hopeful that through these changes I will be able to prevent injury and build up the strength and stamina necessary to help me perform on the field this coming season.

Following up on last week, I have yet to take the time and do some writing/journaling outside of this site, but I think maybe this upcoming week as I will have some more free time I will be able to. I think I will enjoy that process and it will hopefully get me ready for going back to school because I will have to write a lot. I also have some other updates in my life regarding my thesis and some new developments with my work, but I think that I will save them for next week as I will have more to say by then.

Books/Other

I downloaded a lot of new books this past week and have been excited to get through them. They are a lot of the ones that I had on my list for a while but kept prioritizing other books for one reason or another. It is nice to see a list that I really have only been adding to over the past several months start to shrink. I think I want to get into a groove of reading at least two books at once, one physical book for before bed, and an audiobook to listen to while doing other things like cooking, cleaning, or in the car. I think this will form a nice balance and help me with my sleep cycles while not slowing down my reading. I am undecided on when I want to take a dive into the Bible as I have never read it cover to cover and think that would be an interesting endeavor.
 

I have continued to listen to the podcasts I have been listening to, and also I have been trying to read more news articles to be informed on current events. I will do this either through podcasts, Twitter, Morning Brew, or the WSJ updates that I get on my phone. I have been trying for a few weeks to use my phone for social media less, and decided last night to try to delete Snapchat and Instagram for a week to see what happens. I opted to keep Youtube and Reddit on my phone because I feel like I get some value out of them through learning, or at least I have convinced myself of that. Twitter I do not really consider social media because I only follow people that post content that is educational which makes it less of a black hole that can suck away my time. 

I realized a month or two ago just how much time I was spending scrolling through social media. I deleted Tiktok around that time because that was a very blatant waste of time as there was not any social aspect of it that I participated in. Snapchat and Instagram were a bit tougher to get rid of because there are some friends that I really only communicate with over those mediums and I used that as an excuse to keep them on my phone, although I moved them off of my home screen and added screen time limitations (which I extended nearly every day so they were helpful but not to the degree I hoped). I think that taking one week off of these apps will not hurt any relationships and once I see just how much I did not miss them, I think that (hopefully) I will have a hard time going back.

Gratitude

I know I have probably already said this in a gratitude post before, but the context this week is different. This week I am thankful for my health. In the past few years, I very rarely have gotten sick. When I would get sick it was usually allergy symptoms, i.e. mild headaches, congestion, slight fatigue, all things that I could just take some over-the-counter medicine and deal with. That is why my reaction to the COVID vaccine was a pretty big shock to me. I was expecting some symptoms due to a friend's anecdotes and what I had read online, but I thought I would be fine as I believe I got COVID already and was pretty much fine, and I also very rarely get sick. I was wrong.

The day of the shot I was fine, a little fatigue, but I thought I could get out ahead of it. I tried going to bed early, taking some vitamins and preemptive medicine, hydrating and did not sleep all that well the first night. I woke up quite a few times had mild chills, nothing too serious. The next day I decided to just take the day off and relax as I did not get much sleep and was pretty fatigued. I was feeling much better towards the end of the day, the day after I got the vaccine, but then got hit almost out of nowhere right when I was getting ready to go to sleep.

I was in bed and got the chills and was shivering pretty much uncontrollably for about an hour. Thirty minutes in I very shakily texted my parents to bring me more blankets and some medicine/fluids which was extremely helpful. I knew I would just have to tough it out so I got under blankets and embraced the suck. It was pretty terrible just shivering for an hour straight never being able to relax as I was trying to go to bed, and then once I stopped shivering I knew I would have to sweat it out. I leaned in and ended up getting through another hour or two of very hot and sweaty heart-pounding-in-ears-uncomfortableness alright. I definitely lost about 4 lbs of sweat that night but was able to replenish and felt more or less better the next morning but took it easy all day to be safe. 

It was in this time of severe discomfort that I realized how much I take for granted that I do not get sick often. Some people get sick a lot or get migraines, bad allergies, or other recurring illnesses. I am one of the lucky people who does not suffer from these things and thank God I do not because those few hours were pretty terrible. There is a saying that I have heard a few places that says you could be retired on an island sipping drinks with beautiful women feeding you grapes and if you had a sore throat the only thing you'd be thinking about every time you swallow is "I really wish I could get rid of this sore throat." I think this has been an important reminder to always prioritize my health because everything else does not really matter if I am feeling terrible.
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