Have you ever been completely knocked off your feet by some small thing that completely changes how you view your seemingly perfect life? Maybe your life isn’t actually perfect, maybe it’s just very pleasant and you are totally content with how everything is unfolding around you. Then an honest answer to a simple question, or a returned email, makes you question a choice you made, or decided not to make, everything unravels and you wonder what your life would be like if you had done ‘this’ or ‘that’ instead.
You start picturing how your life would be different if you had made that move, had made that phone call, that trip, that choice. Would you be able to tell someone that perfect, successful thing that you can’t tell him or her right now? Would that honest answer be the same? Would there even be a question to answer? You go back a year, two years, three, and then back to just yesterday. Should I have? Could I have? I would have been happy. I would have been successful, on top of the world. Then this bad thing wouldn’t have happened, this bridge wouldn’t be burned or even a little rickety. I wouldn’t have had to suffer through this pain or that stress. This bump in the road would have been smaller, or completely avoided.
So why didn’t I choose the other path? What did I see in the road that made me walk the other way? If it was so simple to pick this life, why was it too hard to choose the other? Or was it hard to choose the other? It shouldn’t have been. It wasn’t. I missed out. I turned the wrong way. How can I go back, where do I fix this? The answer isn’t really clear. There’s another decision, another choice. Stay or go? Go, but how? What would I be missing? Who would I be missing?
Then things start to disappear from your picture. If you had done ‘this’ or ‘that’ instead, you would have never had that one experience, which lead to that realization. You wouldn’t have grown in this way. Laughed at that moment, cried with this one, then learned from them both. Yes, something else would have made you smile and think. A different lesson learned, different trouble, different pain. Maybe you would be better, maybe you would be worse. You definitely wouldn’t have this life, this knowledge, this person and this love. Could you live without it and without them? Now, after you’ve held it in your hand, could you live without it? Can you guarantee that you would actually be happier, more successful, on top of the world?
You realize that you can’t guarantee anything. Not then and not now. You can change something and try to get back to where you think you would have been, but it wouldn’t be easy. It would be hard, and you might be giving something up. But instead of knowing you did make the right decision, you just hope you did. You have to believe that you did, even if there is a small part of you that wonders, and will always wonder. It would be terrible to give some of this up. Now that you have this life, how could you live without it?
There’s still something in that returned email that aches. Something totally correct in that honest answer, and so very valid in the question you asked. It makes your eyes go fuzzy while you drift away and think, “Maybe…” But there is no time machine. You will have to live with the questions, keep it small, keep it back. Some of it is not worth anymore thoughts. It will always be there, but just as a fragment of the life you may or may not have had, that may or may not have been better than this one.
You just have to use the rest of it, the changeable aspects of your current situation, to push you forward and to be the reason why you get up in the morning. It IS the thing that makes you come back to the desk everyday and work. Reminds you to bite your tongue and smile when the She-Devil parades her accomplishments in front of you. IT was why you asked that question, because you KNOW there is more to do. To get to the place you want to be, to be successful without loosing anything, something needs to be done. You just don't know exactly what it is yet.
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Friday, April 1, 2011
22/minute
I had a very interesting doctor appointment the other day. It was for my whiplash injury from a car accident nearly two years ago, which is still giving me problems. So, I found myself sitting in a room, hooked up to a computer that monitored my breathing, heart rate and temperature. As I watched the colorful lines and balls on the screen in front of me go up and down, the Doc told to me all about the sympathetic nervous system, and how it triggers the “fight or flight” reaction in the body. While it was all very interesting, I was wondering when she would get to the point about why that had anything to do with the fact that my neck is still in pain.
Then she pointed at the blue ball going up and down rapidly on the screen, “That’s your breathing rate. When the ball goes up, you’re inhaling, when it goes down, you’re exhaling.”
Okay, I thought, simple enough.
Then she said, “Normal breathing rate is between 6 and 10 breaths per minute”, she pointed to a number at the bottom of the screen, which was flipping around somewhere between 19 and 22, “Those are your breaths per minute”.
She went on to explain that by breathing fast, I am keeping my body in the “fight or flight” mode, telling it constantly to be ready for something. This is keeping the trigger points in my muscles on hyper drive. So, every time I put my head/neck in an uncomfortable position, or move it just a little bit too quick, they trigger the muscles to tense up, causing pain.
She looked back at the computer and said, “Usually when I tell people they are breathing fast, they slow down… You’re not.”
I laughed and the little blue ball jerked around on the screen.
The next bit of information was about breathing with the diaphragm, or “belly breathing”. Which I don’t do. She explained how the muscle works to bring air into the lungs, which all sounded very elementary, yet when she told me to take a breath, my belly stayed still and my chest rose.
Wrong!
More explaining, and ‘watch me’ and then, “Well, your diaphragm is weak from never using it, so we will have to work on that, it will take some practice.”
So we started the practice. I was told to watch the yellow ball on the screen and inhale as it went up, exhale as it went down. It paced up and down the screen very smoothly... and so effing slow! I tried to follow it with my breaths and the red heart rate ball started flipping out all over the place. She had to speed up the yellow ball for me because she could tell I was about to pass out. Even the quicker one was kicking my butt. Apparently, I am hyperventilating all the time.
After a few more minutes of struggling, I was sent home with some homework. I read through the information about hyperventilation and found that it causes stress, anxiety, forgetfulness, exhaustion, contributes to PMS and muscular pain.
The answer to all my problems.
I’ve been trying to slow down my breathing and use my diaphragm at night and even a bit in the morning before I wake up. Yesterday at work, I installed the other piece of ‘homework’ on my computer. It’s a breathing exercise that you can set to pop up at different intervals throughout the day. Instead of a yellow ball, it looks like a tube filling with color. When the color goes up, I inhale, down I exhale. I have it set to pop up every 45 minutes, for a two-minute exercise. I like it so far, it makes me stop, breathe, and relax.
I’m not so sure how much I believe it will heal my neck, but I’m hoping that it will at least help me to be a more calm person. I wonder what that's like?
I just hope it kicks in before Old Coworker #1's wedding tomorrow. My banshee of an old boss will be seated at the same table as Croomie and I! At least I will have boyfriend with me to shield some of the rude side comments that occasionally spew out of her. I just hope that I can come up with some cool work related stuff to tell her. Even though she'll just nod with raised eyebrows in her, 'I really don't care, but I'm going to look like that's impressive anyway, so they'll think I'm impressed even though I'm about to say something snotty in 3,2,1 -' way.
Damn, where is that breathing-tracker?
Then she pointed at the blue ball going up and down rapidly on the screen, “That’s your breathing rate. When the ball goes up, you’re inhaling, when it goes down, you’re exhaling.”
Okay, I thought, simple enough.
Then she said, “Normal breathing rate is between 6 and 10 breaths per minute”, she pointed to a number at the bottom of the screen, which was flipping around somewhere between 19 and 22, “Those are your breaths per minute”.
She went on to explain that by breathing fast, I am keeping my body in the “fight or flight” mode, telling it constantly to be ready for something. This is keeping the trigger points in my muscles on hyper drive. So, every time I put my head/neck in an uncomfortable position, or move it just a little bit too quick, they trigger the muscles to tense up, causing pain.
She looked back at the computer and said, “Usually when I tell people they are breathing fast, they slow down… You’re not.”
I laughed and the little blue ball jerked around on the screen.
The next bit of information was about breathing with the diaphragm, or “belly breathing”. Which I don’t do. She explained how the muscle works to bring air into the lungs, which all sounded very elementary, yet when she told me to take a breath, my belly stayed still and my chest rose.
Wrong!
More explaining, and ‘watch me’ and then, “Well, your diaphragm is weak from never using it, so we will have to work on that, it will take some practice.”
So we started the practice. I was told to watch the yellow ball on the screen and inhale as it went up, exhale as it went down. It paced up and down the screen very smoothly... and so effing slow! I tried to follow it with my breaths and the red heart rate ball started flipping out all over the place. She had to speed up the yellow ball for me because she could tell I was about to pass out. Even the quicker one was kicking my butt. Apparently, I am hyperventilating all the time.
After a few more minutes of struggling, I was sent home with some homework. I read through the information about hyperventilation and found that it causes stress, anxiety, forgetfulness, exhaustion, contributes to PMS and muscular pain.
The answer to all my problems.
I’ve been trying to slow down my breathing and use my diaphragm at night and even a bit in the morning before I wake up. Yesterday at work, I installed the other piece of ‘homework’ on my computer. It’s a breathing exercise that you can set to pop up at different intervals throughout the day. Instead of a yellow ball, it looks like a tube filling with color. When the color goes up, I inhale, down I exhale. I have it set to pop up every 45 minutes, for a two-minute exercise. I like it so far, it makes me stop, breathe, and relax.
I’m not so sure how much I believe it will heal my neck, but I’m hoping that it will at least help me to be a more calm person. I wonder what that's like?
I just hope it kicks in before Old Coworker #1's wedding tomorrow. My banshee of an old boss will be seated at the same table as Croomie and I! At least I will have boyfriend with me to shield some of the rude side comments that occasionally spew out of her. I just hope that I can come up with some cool work related stuff to tell her. Even though she'll just nod with raised eyebrows in her, 'I really don't care, but I'm going to look like that's impressive anyway, so they'll think I'm impressed even though I'm about to say something snotty in 3,2,1 -' way.
Damn, where is that breathing-tracker?
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