The past few weeks, I have been battling a respiratory infection which has caused me to significantly cut back on my exercise. OK, I've pretty much stopped exercising. This illness came on just a couple weeks after my doctors told me to end my low-carb diet and introduce carbs back into my meals. Coincidence? I think not, but that's another blog. Any way, this sitting around resting, blowing my nose and coughing, combined with new carbs equals slightly tighter pants. Disappointing. I was getting a bit down on myself, to be honest.
But then this morning, I joined a group of students at the school where I work on an excursion downtown. Our founder's birthday is today, and to celebrate, we visited several historical sites in town to learn some history. The students were broken into three groups, and it was my goal to rotate between the three of them to photograph each group at a different location. I walked with the first group up to the historical building, up a small hill. Save for the need to stop once inside and cough a bit, I didn't think twice about the walk to the site.
Once that talk concluded, I headed off for the furthest location of the excursion to meet a different group. Down the street I went, around a corner, up a slightly bigger hill, up some stairs around the back, find an open door, down a flight of stairs to the lower level to find the group. I was slightly winded, but once I stopped moving, my breath returned to normal. Up a set of stairs, pause for a quick talk and some photographs, up another set of stairs, pause for a quick stop and some more shots. Down the stairs and out the back door, I left the second group to join the third group at the final destination, the cemetery where our founder is buried.
As I walked up another hill, around a bend and down a path, I caught a glimpse of the group still underway, so I paused and snapped a few shots from the distance. Standing in the silence of the cemetery in the early morning, the sunshine illuminating the group standing by the gravestone listening to stories about the past, I realized that I was absolutely fine. While that is usually a good thing, it made me think back to the last time I had been at this cemetery two years ago. Just walking from the bus to the gravestone had me extremely winded, sweating and feeling utterly exhausted. Today, I walked from the car, to a destination up the street, including a hill, back down the street even further this time, up another hill, up and down staircases, more hills, and I was, for the most part, completely unfazed by the excursion. I was keeping pace with the group, wasn't overly exerting myself and I hadn't even considered the fact that a year ago, I couldn't have done what I just did.
To know that I had let myself get to the point where I couldn't do the simplest of things, a quick walk through town for example, well, that's sad and rather unfortunate. To know that I have lost out on several years of enjoying the world around me because it was too much work to get out there and move around is a rather depressing thought.
What happened this morning though reminded me that I have come so far, and that I deserve to keep going down the path of success. I need to stay focused in my personal goals, decide what is best for me and my health, and do what I need to do. No more feeling down, just look forward to what will come.
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