Force of Habit

One of the things I plan to do this year is make a few things that I should be doing regularly into actual habits. I mean, I kind of had those as goals last year, too, but well, last year was an odd year in so many ways, I just decided that I wasn’t going to dwell on what didn’t happen, and concentrate on making it better this year. Fits in with the Forward theme, right?

To help with that, I am using the habit tracker in the planner I have. Accountability, right? However, one thing I have discovered is that trying to focus on too many things at once means I don’t focus on anything. I backed down a bit, and am concentrating mainly on one. Once that is a part of my regular routine, and I don’t have to think about it too consciously, I will move on to the next. That doesn’t mean I have abandoned the rest. Just that whatever gets done for those is what it is for now. It’s helped, I think. The habit that I am concentrating on has become almost automatic at this point. And that is progress.

The other thing I’ve discovered is that I have some resources to help with my daily dog walking. I had let the fact that my knees are in less than great shape slow me down on that front. I mean, they do hurt but it’s not like I can’t walk or anything. I just let the pain take over and become the excuse for slowing down and sometimes, cutting the walks short. And that’s not fair to Lambeau. He really benefits from a good, reasonable paced and length walk most every day. We did walk just about every day, but a lot of times it was slowly and I didn’t enjoy it. I’ve decided I have to try to fix some of that. One thing is I am back to taking ibuprofen regularly to help manage the discomfort. And, I was looking for something in one of the hall table drawers and I found the TENS unit I have. I originally bought it for my back, but it seems to just aggravate that instead of helping. I had used it before with my knees but it got tossed in the drawer and I forgot about it. I used it a couple days ago on the knee bothering me most before our walk and it helped. I am now using it on both knees before we go and so far, it’s been good. I have been able to pick up my pace (I am recording walks again to track it), and it feels pretty good. I won’t say it’s perfect but I have been enjoying walking again. If it keeps up, I plan to work on getting some endurance back and gradually adding distance so we can maybe get back to good walks again.

Added to all the stuff I normally do, I guess that’s enough to keep me busy this week!

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