It’s now three weeks since surgery and healing is still happening. The only problem is that my body’s healing itself is taking all my energy and there’s not much left over. At least the pain is subsiding and there are times that I even forget about it. I spoke to the surgeon on Friday and he thought I was recovering just fine but said that I can expect to take another couple of months before I am back to 100 percent.
Oh joy.
Well, despite that it’s time that I left the protection of my easy chair and got back into the world. Tomorrow I return to the office and am hoping to make it a full week. We’ll see. I have been working from home the last couple of weeks so this is just adding the stress of driving to the office. Driving has been one things I’ve been finding difficult as the bouncing, bumping and getting in and out of the car seem to just set off the area around the incision making things uncomfortable. Still, it’s better each time I get out so I am hoping by the end of the week to back into the whole working thing.
Not that I wouldn’t mind having another month or two in the easy chair but it is time to move on and pick things up.
I have spent some time in the last week trying to figure out what parts of my life to pick up and what I am just going to leave behind. That’s still a work in progress but I’ve made a couple of decisions. I am dropping some of the leadership work I was doing at my church and instead am going to help maintain the church website and help start a podcast. One of the books I was going to write I’ve decided to drop for now as the publisher isn’t moving very fast and I have different things I’d like to write about.
You’ll remember a few weeks ago I was debating with myself where I was going to go with this blog. I’ve thought of a host of things I could do here but I’ve decided to do — nothing. Yup, I am not going to change a thing and I’ll just belly up to the computer every Sunday afternoon and write for about 800 words and post it. If I can’t think of anything to write, you’ll get 800 words on why I can’t think of what to write about.
There are some new directions I’d like to take with my creative projects. One of the things I’d like to do is more video editing work. This summer we took a lot of video of our grandkids and I had lots of fun editing that into some short movies. I posted one of my other efforts, the mediation video. I have found that to be a fun and rewarding creative outlet so I’ll be doing more of it.
I’ll still be in the wood shop but I’d like to spend more time hiking and being in nature. It’s something that Heather and haven’t done much this year. Early this year we had to put it aside because of my cancer treatments but then other things kept coming up and we’ve not made it out very much. Just about the time I thought we could start doing more a surgeon invited me to the hospital for some fun. It’s been that kind of year.
I do miss hiking and being in God’s creation. There is something in that world that is just plain good for body, mind and soul. Which is the really big decision we’ve made this week – setting a goal of at least one hike a month. Yesterday was the first one when we walked around Alpine pond. All half mile of it. Okay, that’s not much of a hike and it took us longer to drive there and back but it was outdoors, in nature and I even wore my hiking hat. Next month I hope to do a bit longer hike (maybe a whole mile) and will be increasing my daily walking to get into condition for it.
The real problem with our hiking is that it is so easy to find a reason not to do it – it looks windy/cold/hot/rainy/ or we’re not in shape or we walked to Starbucks last week or any of a hundred other reasons. Although you have to admit that just having had surgery is a darn good excuse to stay off the trail.
We’ve come up with a plan to hold ourselves accountable to the task while incorporating hiking with some of the other things we’d like to do. I’ve mentioned doing more video editing and more web site work so the new plan is to create a new website and blog dedicated to our hiking adventures. There will be a hike once a month with pictures and a short video. The website will encourage others to also get out beyond the easy chair and explore their connection to the natural world. Other themes in the blog will include the health benefits, how hiking feeds our creativity and how it helps balance our life. I am also thinking of including a feature called, “the excuse of the month.”
The current working title for this little project is, “The Reluctant Hiker.” Let me know what you think of that title.
I’ll let you know how it progresses and when the site is up and running.
That’s it for this week. Next time I’ll let you know how this new effort is going, plus I am going to revisit my favorite book, “Earth Abides,” to share some new insights I have.
