Someone said to me once „only boring people get bored“. That statement has been bouncing around in my head for the past few weeks as I put myself squarely in the slow lane to recover. See The Tumble
Of course, recovering from a C-spine injury needs to happen at its own pace and in the context of the person. In my case, I was very fit and active at the time. Life was moving fast - we were preparing for a wedding, I was commuting to Johannesburg for work almost every week, I was building a bank from scratch, I was doing bike tours each weekend and we were trying to spend time with our friends across Europe. It was busy. You could argue it was too much.
I have gone from that pace of life to sleeping 8-10 hours each night, a coffee walk to The Elgin, napping during the day, reading (Calypso and Harry Potter!), watching Netflix (Fauda has been great!) and enjoying the companionship of visitors (thank you for taking the time out to visit!). That is a full day for me, now. One I get to enjoy for the time being.
But even then it is too easy to spend 1-2 hours mindlessly scrolling Facebook, Instragram and the news for some little dopamine hit. Sometimes I crave a little more of a hit and sneak a look at my work emails, heaven forbid. We have tuned our brains for constant stimulation. I think that divides us into two groups - one that creates and one that consumes. I am sad that I feel I‘ve largely fallen on the ‚wrong‘ side of that. I say ‚wrong‘ because I aspire to be more of a creator using consumption as inspiration. Today I feel I consume far to much.
One activity I‘ve not mentioned so far is taking (long overdue) French lessons. As I write it occurs to me that language is of course the medium that facilitates the creation and consumption. Spoken language is one medium vs art or otherwise. I‘m very much enjoying studying the French language at the moment. Être ou ne pas être.
I think you have a choice whether to keep your self suitably busy when in recovery or not. That may need outside stimulus or training ahead of time. I see it important - just as important as the physical/physiological recovery is the mental/psychological recovery. I‘m testing whether creation is a better way to recover than consumption! So, I choose to be / être, at least for the moment.
Of course, recovering from a C-spine injury needs to happen at its own pace and in the context of the person. In my case, I was very fit and active at the time. Life was moving fast - we were preparing for a wedding, I was commuting to Johannesburg for work almost every week, I was building a bank from scratch, I was doing bike tours each weekend and we were trying to spend time with our friends across Europe. It was busy. You could argue it was too much.
I have gone from that pace of life to sleeping 8-10 hours each night, a coffee walk to The Elgin, napping during the day, reading (Calypso and Harry Potter!), watching Netflix (Fauda has been great!) and enjoying the companionship of visitors (thank you for taking the time out to visit!). That is a full day for me, now. One I get to enjoy for the time being.
But even then it is too easy to spend 1-2 hours mindlessly scrolling Facebook, Instragram and the news for some little dopamine hit. Sometimes I crave a little more of a hit and sneak a look at my work emails, heaven forbid. We have tuned our brains for constant stimulation. I think that divides us into two groups - one that creates and one that consumes. I am sad that I feel I‘ve largely fallen on the ‚wrong‘ side of that. I say ‚wrong‘ because I aspire to be more of a creator using consumption as inspiration. Today I feel I consume far to much.
One activity I‘ve not mentioned so far is taking (long overdue) French lessons. As I write it occurs to me that language is of course the medium that facilitates the creation and consumption. Spoken language is one medium vs art or otherwise. I‘m very much enjoying studying the French language at the moment. Être ou ne pas être.
I think you have a choice whether to keep your self suitably busy when in recovery or not. That may need outside stimulus or training ahead of time. I see it important - just as important as the physical/physiological recovery is the mental/psychological recovery. I‘m testing whether creation is a better way to recover than consumption! So, I choose to be / être, at least for the moment.
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