No Idea

  As this month begins, I am doing well. I go to the YMCA once a week. I walk every day—no less than 2,000 steps—which, if you know me at all, you’ll understand is a big step forward. I’ve gone from 250 steps at the end of December to 2,000 now. My weight is finally below the 200 lb mark, coming in as low as 196 lb, but mostly around 198 lb. By the end of April, I hope to bring that to a steady 190.   How I’m going to get there is fairly simple. My plan is threefold: Continue my weekly Aquafit class and add some chair yoga at home Take a daily walk—sometimes as an adventure, sometimes just to enjoy the sun Prep and eat only what I prepare (no takeout), including a weekly trip to the local farmers’ market I’ve created a system for food prep, a realistic budget, and a journaling structure that allows me to be both practical and artistic. That part feels steady now. So this month, I’m turning my attention outward—mainly toward my environment. The first is getting out in...

This is the last post for March, and spring has started to show up in small ways. I saw a robin at the beginning of the month. This week, the geese came back. Now I’m waiting for the buds and the dandelions.   It doesn’t happen all at once. And I think that’s what this month has been like for me too. When I started this series, I didn’t expect it to be this hard—or this revealing. I thought I would see progress clearly, something I could point to and name. But what I’m noticing instead is quieter than that. The days don’t feel quite as heavy. There are moments where my energy lifts just enough for me to notice it. Not a big change. Just something beginning. This month didn’t go the way I planned. I thought I could handle more—two Aquafit classes, a couple of studio classes—but it didn’t take long to realize I wasn’t there yet. One week of that was enough to put me out of commission for the next. So I adjusted. By the end of February and into March, I was down to one class a week. N...

🌱 Steady Growth I didn’t think this week was steady. After effort, I expected steadiness to feel clearer. More structured. More predictable—something I could recognize right away. I had a plan for this month: one class per week, a 5-minute minimum movement rule, protein after classes, prep day consistency, and a weekly reflection entry. Small inputs, visible progress. And in many ways, those pieces were there. I showed up. Not perfectly, not in a straight line, but often enough to count. The 5-minute rule held, even on the harder days. I made it to class. I moved regularly. I followed through in small ways that don’t look like much on their own, but add up when repeated. What steady looked like, it turns out, was not dramatic. It looked like writing things down so my thoughts didn’t loop endlessly in my head, and paying attention to what I was thinking so I could understand it, and then returning to the plan after a rough patch instead of letting everything fall apart. It looked like ...

Living with Fibromyalgia changes how endurance has to be understood. It isn’t about pushing harder or going farther. It is about learning how to move through everyday life in a way that respects the limits of the body while still allowing room for growth. Gentle endurance is built slowly. It shows up in small choices: pacing a walk by time instead of distance, leaving an activity before fatigue turns into a flare, and returning to things again and again until the body gradually adapts. The progress can be quiet and sometimes almost invisible, but it is still progress. This post looks at what endurance means in day-to-day life when energy is limited. Not heroic effort, but steady resilience. The goal is not to prove strength in a single moment, but to build a rhythm of activity and recovery that allows life to keep expanding, even if the pace has to stay slow. Training With Limited Energy To understand how this works in real life, it helps to start with the question of what my current b...

March has a theme for me: Recovery is not a reward. It is part of the program.   That idea sounds simple when written on a page, but living it is something else entirely. For a long time I treated recovery like a break you earned after doing the real work. Push hard, finish the task, then rest afterward if you had to. That approach worked well enough before fibromyalgia entered the picture. With fibromyalgia, it doesn’t. What I’m learning slowly is that recovery isn’t something that happens after the work. Recovery is part of the work. Protecting it is what makes everything else possible. Since January I’ve been experimenting with what recovery actually looks like in my real life. Not the textbook version, but the daily version. The one that shows up when I’m deciding whether to go to class, whether to walk to the YMCA, or whether today needs to be a heating-pad and stretching kind of day. Some patterns are beginning to appear. Learning to Read Pain Instead of Fighting It For most...

  I have begun to notice that if I create a plan sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. When it works it includes space to breathe and rest. When it doesn’t, it’s because there is absolutely no structure — or very little. For a long time, I thought the problem was over-planning . I assumed that needing structure meant I was trying to control too much. But what I’m starting to see is the opposite. The plans that fail aren’t the structured ones. They’re the vague ones. The hopeful ones. The ones built on the assumption that I’ll “just manage.” When I leave my days too open, I drift. I underestimate fatigue. I say yes without checking tomorrow’s cost. I end up reacting instead of choosing. But when I build in shape — not rigidity, just shape — my days feel steadier.   Shape looks like this: A recovery hour placed on purpose. A walk measured in time instead of distance. Meal components stored in a way that protects future energy. Evenings that are intentionally simple. ...

1. The Currency I Didn’t Know I Was Spending I used to think time was my most limited resource. Lately I’ve realized it’s energy. The shift didn’t happen in a doctor’s office or during some dramatic health scare. It happened in the middle of making lunch wraps. I had everything laid out on the counter — tuna mixed with Greek yogurt, sliced turkey, steak, spinach, tortillas. I was assembling them automatically, thinking I was being efficient, when I stopped mid-roll and wondered: Will this still be good in three days? Should I freeze it? Should I store everything separately? It wasn’t really about food safety. It was about tomorrow. If I assemble everything now and it goes soggy, I’ll have wasted both food and effort. If I freeze something that doesn’t thaw well, I’ll feel frustrated and start over. If I store the components separately, I give myself options. I reduce friction for a future day when my energy may be lower than it is right now. Standing there with a tortilla in m...

  At 4:50 a.m. on Sunday, I learned something new about my blood pressure This week was not about transformation. It was about steadiness. Which, when you’re managing chronic illness, fluctuating blood pressure, blood sugar, and a nervous system that apparently believes in dramatic entrances, is no small thing. Clearing Space (and Not Just on My Screen) It started innocently enough: deleting old chats and managing digital memory. But while I was clearing out old threads, I found myself wondering how much emotional clutter I carry around the same way. Archived. Saved. Revisited. Not everything needs to be stored for future reflection. Some thoughts can be acknowledged and gently released. Some seasons don’t need replaying. There’s a quiet relief in deleting something and realizing the world does not collapse. Maybe the same is true internally. Energy Is the Real Currency I used to think I needed better time management. Now I know I need better energy management. I can have an entire...

Why I Keep Showing Up at the YMCA Even When It Feels Hard I want to start this honestly I have already gone In January I attended one Aquafit class one meditation class and one Chairfit class That matters because trying something once when you live with disabilities takes effort courage and a fair bit of mental negotiation The YMCA is slowly becoming a place I am willing to return to and that says more than any fitness goal ever could For about 30 dollars every two weeks the membership feels manageable and realistic especially on a fixed income Pricing can vary by location but the value for choice and accessibility feels solid Aquafit My First Yes Aquafit was my first class and it felt like the safest place to begin The water supported my body in ways the floor never does My joints complained less my balance felt steadier and I did not feel rushed What surprised me most was how normal it felt Nobody was watching Nobody cared if I paused or modified I just moved and that was enough Th...

 Looking toward 2026, I know one thing for sure. I do not want another year to drift by without intention. I am tired of feeling lost and disconnected from my own life. This is not about dramatic reinvention or chasing some ideal version of myself. It is about choosing steadier ground and building something livable, one small decision at a time. Age has been echoing loudly in my head lately. Sixty five feels heavy, not because it is old, but because it comes with awareness. There is time left, real time, and what I do with it matters. That realization is uncomfortable, but it is also clarifying. I do not want to spend the coming years frozen in place by fear, exhaustion, or habit. If I am going to move forward, I need to do it deliberately. Health is an unavoidable part of that picture. Not in a perfectionist or punishing way, but in a practical one. I want to walk regularly, in all kinds of weather. I want to use my weights to build strength and practice yoga or gentle stretching ...

I was going through my blog recently and realized something important: December 2024 came and went without any kind of year in review. At the time, I did not think much of it, but looking back now I can see how much that missing pause mattered. I do not function well without some kind of plan or reflection, and this past year really shows that. Skipping that moment of looking back may be one reason I have felt so lost moving through 2025. When I reread my posts from early 2025, I noticed something else too. Things are better in some ways, yet emotionally I am still close to where I was in January. Winter has always pulled me inward, and December and January seem to amplify everything. I know this is common and that many people struggle more in the colder, darker months, but it always feels heavier when it is happening to you personally. Awareness does not stop the feeling, but it does help me name it. This past year carried a lot of emotional weight, especially around family milestones...

 The last one read like the manifesto of a suicide I know but I am not one of those. I've just been going through a rough patch. Something  else is on my mind today and has been for awhile. Winter gives you nothing but time to think and December especially seems like a month for introspection what with the season of good will towards men turning into the lead up for a brand new year. For years I started this process right after my birthday in October but with all the shit I'm dealing with to get myself set up for the next 20-40 years,(turning 65 is no fun), I have just barely started the process. A long time ago a doctor told me that obesity is a long slow death so that it what I chose but these days I am actually unhappy with my weight because it has begun to interfere with the thing I like best like travelling to new places and exploring them. I have become more and more unhappy with myself over the last couple of months.  It has got to the point that I order in my groc...

 Some days I get in my own head so deeply that I lose track of where the pain ends and where my words begin. When that happens, people sometimes get hurt — even the ones I care about. I don’t mean to. I don’t even fully understand why. If someone asks how I feel, I tell them… but the truth is, sometimes I don’t think they’re prepared to hear it. And if I’m being honest, sometimes neither am I. Talking has never been easy for me, especially when emotions run high. The words vanish when I try to speak them, but when I write, they come out — raw, messy, and real. Writing is how I manage the pain. It’s also how I avoid interacting with people when I’m struggling, because I’m not great at it. The words feel safer on paper than in conversation. Today they come slowly. I’m sitting with a lot of sadness and regret for the things I said yesterday. I was angry — more than I realized — and I let it spill onto someone who didn’t deserve it quite that way. He asked how I was feeling (or did h...

I am lost in my head today and my heart hurts. I've had to close my window to the out-siders and I have told them why. If I don't I risk losing my apartment and I will not allow myself to become homeless but then I'm accused of lying. I care I care too much but I can't afford to lose my apartment I just can't going out in the cold it makes my knee go haywire and I can barely walk. Yeah E I know I should have told you that but I still want to do the week-end we planned I will just have to wear my brace The tears won't stop but at least they are silent, when I first was ordered to stop I burst into loud noisy tears as soon as I closed my window. The outsiders are so used to being homeless that someone withdrawing support to keep the roof over their head seems to them like I was faking the whole time my window was available to them because now it isn't. I understand them being upset at me I'm upset too. I will not give up my home for them I can't.  With...

 I had the pieces of this short story in my poetry journal today I'd like to share it with you as a single chapter from a possibly larger version. The Bridge of Aszis How very sad, I used to think, that a mind can live its whole life locked inside a skull. On Earth, that thought came to me in crowded trains, in noisy cafeterias, in classrooms where people’s eyes were dull from too many facts and not enough wonder. I would look at all those faces and feel it — the sense that we were all carrying entire galaxies of thought and feeling, and most of it would never be known. Many mysteries does our mind hide. There is so much to learn. When I was ten, the headaches started — bright white bursts behind my eyes whenever someone nearby felt something intense. I could tell when my teacher was about to snap at the class, when the stranger across the bus aisle was quietly grieving, when my mother was worrying about money and trying not to show it. I didn’t hear their thoughts, not exactly. I...

 This is a poetic version of the prologue from my book, you will find a strange new word in it mycorrhizal which is what the layer just under the surface that connects all the trees is called, I've also heard it called the Wide Wood Web. It is how they communicate and also helps them grow by bringing water and minerals to the trees as they need them. I planned this story to bring awareness of our need to care for our trees and other plants cause if they die we die. An educational version is also in the works. Read it and tell me what you think. All seven of you please. I want to make sure it can speak well. 🌲 When the Forest First Sang Before the first dawn brushed the sky with breath of gold the world lay still, a whisper waiting to be told From soil’s deep heart a shimmer stirred and rose a pulse of life where secret knowing flows The Guardian awoke in threads unseen a song of root and rain between Each droplet hummed a tender tone binding stone and seed as one From dar...