Life Is Like a Boat

Full of waves that bob us up and down, the water we sail on through life is rarely calm for any lengthy amount of time. The past eight days have not been still, but have not been tempest tossed either. Illness has been part of the downs of my life during this period. Most of them in fact.

Mostly bedridden to start out the week, it felt like I lost a month of things needing doing rather than days. On the other hand, a few good things happened that ranged from the mundane scoring of cheap DVDs at Alco to meeting with a congressional candidate that my father has been pitching tax reforms to.

On the negative side, somebody knocked our new mailbox off its post in the middle of the night. Tire tracks showed it wasn’t either of the snow plows, but a smaller vehicle that hit the post. The hill it fell down is very steep and treacherous, so I had to wait until I was feeling better to retrieve it from the snow. Thankfully, total body weight routines help with balance far more than I realized.

So things weren’t oppressively dull.

I did lose five days straight on weight training, but bobbed back to higher levels of pounds pressed. Things went swimmingly until yesterday, when pain induced sleep deprivation combined with upper respiratory issues made for a difficult day at church. Teaching adult Sunday school to a room filled with professionals from all walks of life and two thirds of the stake presidency while brain dead is not recommended.

My beloved Hoist V2 home gym did not get used as it was beyond my physical stamina after church. Today started out equally poorly, but somewhere after Noon rolled around, I became functional again. Before and after sessions of Pinball FX 2 verified I wasn’t imagining this and so I got to workout again.

One must adjust to the ups and downs of life or risk the chance of developing lifesickness, the equivalent of being seasick but more disorienting and disheartening. With less throwing up, I hope. Knowing that waves always go up and down is a big part of developing the emotional sea legs needed to cope with life. Not that I’m always on an even keel.

If my friends could have seen me ranting at the cats, the computer, and the world in general while being very ill Monday, they would have been shocked. An unusual combination of sickness, exhaustion from CFS, and high pain had me worse than the normally surly attitude I exhibit when ill. Of course, this passed and life went on.

Feeling better allows me to appreciate things properly, such as the beautiful song the post title was taken from. Here’s a live performance of Life Is Like a Boat by Rie Fu:

Simply lovely tune.

This song was the end theme for the first season of the anime Bleach and I’ll always fondly associate it with the character Rukia. I think you’ll find it stands on its own perfectly well.