Done for the Week: Focus Pocus

If Samson's voluminous hair was the source of his fabled strength, my formerly reliable left foot may have been mine.  

 

It has been months now that I've been struggling with pain and diminished mobility at the aggravated site of a five-year-old injury.  For much of that time, I have been ordered by various health care professionals to "rest" the offending appendage.  While I can bike and swim, and most recently use the elliptical trainer, I am still enjoined from running.  Which makes this newbie triathlete more of a bi-and-a-half-lete.  And not a very happy one.

 

The enforced suspension has kind of muted my overall motivation to train, and dented the athletic identity that kept me moving.  I am getting lazier and lazier about working out.  And that laziness threatens to expand into a general miasma.

 

I did get some things done last week, but I had to lash myself from time to time to do so.

Done for the Week:  Mar. 5-11, 2012

1. Biked once; swam once with my workout partner
   
2. Worked with physical therapist twice to restore injured foot
3. Continued reading Elizabeth George's A Place of Hiding aloud with my husband
4. Read Plain Truth, by Jodi Picoult
5. Continued reading Proust's Remembrance of Things Past
6. Continued to work my two part-time jobs
7. Published 5 Put it to Bed blog posts
8. Continued to participate more in the BlogHer community
9. Continued work on current clients' projects
10. Resumed work on previous client's large project
11. Attended two yoga classes
12. Went out to dinner with my two sons
13. Did laundry 
14. Continued college conversations with youngest son
15. Signed youngest son up for ACT testing
16. Meditated 3 times
17. In addition, attended day long Buddhist meditation retreat, involving approximately 200 minutes of sitting and 60 minutes of walking meditation 
18. Straightened my work room 
19. Attended Social Justice committee meeting 
20. Met with Communications team
21. Attended church service
22. Signed up for Journey to Membership classes at new church
23. Watched an episode of Trigun with my son
24. Survived transition to Daylight Savings Time

Continuing physical therapy on my injured foot was the most important thing I did last week.  I am coming to understand the importance of working through this injury, and the drain it has placed on my energy and exertion in all areas of my life.  So keeping the therapy appointments, and doing my "homework" in between is crucial.  In addition, I will need to keep fighting the urge to sit down and stay seated.  And that will mean forcing myself to get to the gym more often.

Last week's focus goal was "to concentrate on writing and meditating, continuing the approaches that have been working recently."  I would say that I succeeded in holding the line--more or less, and by hook and by crook.  A very intense day-long meditation retreat stood in for some of the shorter daily sessions I didn't manage to squeeze in during the week.  And though I fell short of my goal to write something each day, I did publish five original blog posts, begin work on a new poem, and complete a journal entry that led to a blog post.

I have finally learned, it seems, that I need to stay with a focus goal for at least a month in order for it to "take."  So I have decided to continue the effort to meditate regularly and to write every day for the remainder of March.    


I guess it says something about me, and about my ongoing organizational challenges, that I would attempt to implement a "focus" approach that has more in common with a firefly than a laser beam. . .