Monday, and I wake to my youngest daughter still being with us. We have coffee and breakfast as she prepares to return home. I wave her off at about 10 o ‘clock and set about getting ready to train. After doing some chores I go to the garage and strap into the rower. No mucking about, this is resurrection Monday so its going to be an hour at my normal resistance level. My oncologist commented that once you stop exercising how difficult it is to get back to it. He was right and I am furious that I have let myself go and put the weight on. It is true that I have had COVID, a UTI and a kidney infection in the last 66 days so I am probably fortunate that I was as fit as I was prior to those events, however the weight has piled on and that was not helped by my sweet tooth. So strapped in I set off. An hour later I have enough left in me to sprint the last two minutes. This is a good start to my renewal.
As I row I am able to reflect on where and why I am at the moment. I’ve mentioned already how angry I am with myself for letting myself go despite the illnesses but all I can do is go from where I am. Basically that means training regularly and controlling what goes in my mouth and the amounts of it. On the face of it that should be simple but it means confronting my habits and the internal dialogue that goes with all of that. At the end of the day it comes down to an act of will.
My other thoughts whilst grinding out my hour was about what having really retired actually means. The loss is the work environment with all the people I used to interact with on an almost daily basis. This is highlighted by the fact that I wake most mornings to the sound of my partner talking to work colleagues over the internet as part of her working from home. I makes me realise that I need to make sure I put effort to keep my relationships with family, friends and old colleagues. I need to find new ways to keep communications going and to go on building relational histories with people. I know that this will be different for different people but I need to attend to this or they will die. I remember watching a farming programme in which a 90 year old guy explained why he still got up early everyday to get involved in the family farm. He had observed how so many people stop and just stare or watch the world, in his words “people waiting to die”. I think he was right, it is an insidious peril that awaits the retired as it is tempting to become someone in the world not of it, and to wait passively for it all to come to an end. I found myself actively wanting to be 75, one year at a time will do me with my condition. Every year is a victory. For me to get there I need to work not only on being the poetry coyote and being fit but also on the quality of the people in my life. I am not sure how I am going to do this yet, I am sure there is a self help book out there somewhere, although if I am lucky I will be spared that, so some of you might experience my efforts at this, so bear with me.
Training and reflection over I change and make myself lunch, yesterdays excess pie filling, and watch the last of the World Athletics Championships on TV, only to be interrupted by Amazon delivering and then close on their heels, Tesco. So there is food to eat and things to be doing in the afternoon, which starts with drafting the blog. The evening is taken with entertaining a visiting friend of my partner and catching up with Lucifer. Tomorrow’s priority is training, writing and thinking.
