Focus, focus, refocus

Pain....I have definitely covered this topic before. Probably the last time I was hurt. Pain has a way of focusing you. First it focuses you on it, then it focuses you on the things you want to do but can't because they hurt.

Lots of focus, but definitely not on the things that I need to focus on right now. There is this giant excel workbook that is staring back at me and I am trying to will it to finish itself. It is not going so well.

Why is it that now that my back hurts a lot all I can think about is wanting to go running. Actually that is morphing into really wanting to go swimming, just cause it seems like it would feel really good. But of course I can't get to a pool because I am stuck in the Buf. :(

So it seems to me that I have been hurt and sick a lot this year. That could partly be due to the fact that I have been working out more this year, but not consistently because of travel. However, the first year I was married I was sick and hurt a lot too....coincidence? I think not.

I know stress tends to manifest itself in physical ways for me. And I think part of my problem this year is probably stress. I think I am also getting old. Oh God! Yeah well not old, but older. And I have to realize that I can't just start and stop physical activity anymore. I have to stretch and I have to eat right and I have to take care of myself.

Interestingly enough the employees of the acquisition of my current client are under a tremendous amount of stress. The whole senior leadership team has had to have chest X-rays this past month. It is bad! So this made me think, at what point do our jobs start to kill us? Actually, physically kill us.

In one way I feel bad for complaining because I look at the generations before us and the conditions and jobs that they endured. But then I realize that in some ways our jobs today are probably equally unhealthy just in less obvious ways. My job consists of sitting, a lot. I sit on airplanes, I sit at desk chairs, conference chairs, in cars, in hotel rooms. I probably sit for at least 12 hours a day. If I didn't get up to go to the bathroom and get water, this sitting would be mostly uninterrupted. I stare at little text on a dimly lit screen, also for about 12 hours a day, sometimes a lot more. I carry my heavy luggage around, I breath in airplane exhaust, I eat fairly well, but still not lots of fruit and veggies, I get to work out only sporadically, or at least not with a consistent, base building repetition, in the same gym with good equipment, I spend 12 hours a day staring at a gray fabric wall under florescent lights, in a mold infested building. Now that the winter is approaching I will never see the sun. Etc, Etc...Oh and then there is the stress. So I guess it really shouldn't be a surprise that I am sick and hurt a lot. (Is it any wonder why I am a proponent of green building standards?!)

We know why we do it. $$$, or the security that $$$ provides. One of the senior leaders of the acquisition told me that he thinks about quitting and then he goes home and his kids come running up to him and he knows he can not. When he said this, I couldn't help but also think about the fact that he just had a chest X-ray done. When framed that way, it hardly seems worth it.