Obstacles in New Beginnings

Why is it whenever you resolve to take on some new challenge, the universe seems to add to its difficulty? I’m not just talking about the additional work associated witht the new task. I’m talking about how completely unrelated problems pop up making your new goal that much harder to work towards.

I’ll get specific. I have been attending Gracie Jujutsu for a month. I resolved to go to class twice a week. It’s an easy change to make to my normal routine, and I want to be cautious about burn out. If I attend every Saturday class, which I can easily do, I only need attend one of the weekday classes to meet my goal. I reason that if I do so long enough, attending class will become a natural habit. However, in the past week, I’ve pulled a muscle in my back, somehow hurt my shoulder, had my dad try to get me to spend 10 hours on the road this weekend, and now I’m sick.

First, let’s talk about my back. I’m only 33. Am I really supposed to be this weak? As a part of my normal workout routine, I used to be able to crank out 12 chin ups. I don’t remember ever stopping that exercise, but I tried to do some chin ups at the gym a couple of weeks ago, and I could only do six reps. I resolved to not let the grass grow under my feet, especially considering that 50 year old man who broke the world record this week for doing 4,321 pull ups in one day. I went to a sporting goods store and bought a chin up/pull up bar to mount in one of my door ways. I figured I could do 4 sets of five reps every other day, which would let me slowly work back to where I was. I suppose that new routine is what pulled one of my back muscles. You’d think that being an accountant that works at a desk all day would spare me from physical discomfort, but just sitting up right was enough to make my back hurt. Somehow, I was able to do my normal gym workout last Sunday and attend GJJ on Monday, but after Monday, any physical exertion was personally blacklisted. Right at this moment, my back feels better, but that may just be because I’m sitting my recliner.

To add a heaping measure of guilt to the ordeal, my dad wanted me to pay him a visit this weekend. One of my dad’s brothers passed away, and somehow the funeral evolved into a family reunion, which my dad wanted me to attend with him. I kind of can’t stand my family reunions. Not that my extended family is unscrupulous, but the reunions feel so phony. I almost never see these people, and I barely even know them. If we saw each other on the street or had to sit next to each other on a bus, we wouldn’t recognize each other and wouldn’t otherwise develop a connection. Yet, when a reunion comes along, they all want to talk about how important and meaningful our family is and how every positive trait in their nieces and nephews (and great nieces and great nephews) is a sure fire sign of the “Jones blood” they have in them. The whole event comes across as…whatever the adjective is for “blowhard.”

Still, I wanted to go for my Dad. When I think about how hard he worked over his life to give his children everything we had, putting up with a few weirdo relatives for a few hours on a weekend doesn’t seem so bad, and it wouldn’t be if my dad didn’t live three-and-a-half hours away and the reunion weren’t two-and-a-half hours in the opposite direction. With my back giving me the pain it was, I couldn’t spend 10 hours on the road this weekend. Now, the pain seems to have migrated over to my shoulder, but it still hurts if I sit up right for too long.

Not that my back/shoulder pain is relevant any more, because I woke up today with a fever and a sore throat. I haven’t been sick in two years, but as soon as I committ to taking a class, I wake up spewing a color appropriate for St. Patrick’s day. I feel a little bit better now, and I’m almost guaranteed to feel better by Monday, but I really hope this is just a 24-hour bug, so I don’t miss class tomorrow. At least I continued my pattern of only getting sick when it’s convenient for work. I’ve yet to wake up all snotty and pukey during a quarter end close. If nothing else, I have a solid excuse to spend a Friday overdosing on ice cream while binge watching Net Flix. Things could be much worse.

Last updated March 20, 2015