If athletically isn’t too strong a word for what I do these days, then both athletically – running, swimming etc. – and doing new things and exploring new places, the last eleven months or so have been amongst the poorest periods I’ve had for a long time. Of course there have been reasons for it, though at times excuses have probably served as reasons; those occasions when the calls on my time such as helping my partner through the injuries and illness she has had this year have played into my own feelings of age and laziness. The less you do, the less you want to do.
Not that there haven’t been highlights with holidays, badger vaccination and events that happen to have fitted in and around Di’s needs, as well as seeing Di recover and get back on her feet. Somehow, though, being used to being able to be pretty selfish and do so much of what I’ve wanted to do, it’s felt – unsatisfactory, tame.
And so another New Year. I guess it could go either way. Di seems on the face of it to have made a full recovery from the leg break and heart attack that incapacitated her this year, but a full recovery when you are in your seventies doesn’t mean the same as a full recovery when you are in your thirties – you may not be critically worse than you were but you are suddenly a year older at a time when a year’s passing matters to health and fitness. I’m a few years younger than Di but even for me three dog walks a day can feel enough to dissuade me from adding a run onto that on any given day. I love doing the badger vaccination – even while hating the reasons for having to do it – but it can leave me wanting a weekend at home or a trip somewhere easy rather than venturing out.
Getting old can be funny since I never expected to last this long, what with youthful drug taking and later travelling and mountaineering on a shoestring as I moved into that, but it sure ain’t fun. Life is still there to be lived, though, and given I believe we only get one go at it there’s no use waiting for a perfect time to do some of what is yet on offer