If it’s broke, fix it already.

by Liberty on Apr.22, 2009, under physical therapy, taking action

Increased readability thanks to a simple yet fundamentally brilliant tweak.

Paragraph spaces, how I’ve missed you!

*revels in the white space*

Free your ass and your mind will follow

My first series of posts, namely about working with the continuing faulty body mechanics taking over my whole frame after breaking my foot last fall, has been aborted. The daily pulsing pain in my ass (right cheek), the vicious trigger points in my lower abs flaring like tiki torches when Aunt Flo came over for a BBQ, the whole gamut of twinges, aches and restricted motion has driven me into the arms of the profession I’ve been admiring from afar.

I feel like a PT groupie.

I’m also getting it kind of rough, though the hurt is productive despite the fingertip bruises on my butt. To paraphrase Trent Reznor:

My god
shoves my sacrum back
to the midplane.

The next step of course is to snag a volunteer opportunity and become a PT roadie. Then one glorious day – I dare to dream – cabin boy!

A good plan followed now beats a perfect plan followed later

Calling in the professionals is yet another lesson for me in the fine art of “take action already.”

As a person who likes puzzles, plans, systems and tools, moving from phases 1-2 to 3-4 is something I need to practice. For example, in the past few weeks I’ve put together a watercolor kit and painted half a picture; compiled the notes for 2 novels and written about 500 words; set up an RSS reader for my PDA and dug up the portable keyboard; produced monthly color graphs of my priority tasks through 2009 and added them to my hipster PDA; fixed a bent USB drive and added BlogDesk to it; found a WordPress theme I like better (coming soonish); and updated my flagging Hivemind task list.

Yes, I have a USB portable workspace, a PDA and a hipster PDA. Though my hipster is 3×4, made from 4×6 cards cut in half. It’s smaller for my hands, and the lines go the right way to use it in portrait orientation. Tool geek.

Things I need to do, to focus on results instead of tools: finish the watercolor; write a whole chapter of either novel; update this journal 3x per week; finally list something in the Etsy shop I created four months ago.

Yes, it’s pretty–now work it

The last incarnation of my priority list was overstuffed and messy. Everything competed with each other, generated tasks like kudzu, and I floundered. In contrast, this lens is simple and clean. I turn my hand to one of two areas, based on where I am in physical space at that moment.

Workhorses have blinders. I've got a pretty graph.

In my Cube I focus on the job, and any overflow of resources goes into writing. Outside with the kidlet I focus on the garden or my rehab exercises. Inside the house I work on the Etsy store set-up or inventory. In Downtime I read or play.

The lens doesn’t show parenting or house-holding, so in actuality most of my time In and Out is already spoken for in ways both mundane and profound. And Downtime is flexible by design, since habitual effort punctuated by rest is a pattern I’m trying to learn. But so far the lens has helped parcel out an otherwise daunting task list by helping me focus on what’s At Hand, instead of being paralyzed by the enormity of Shit I Need To Do.