Cafe Hitch-hike

2023-01-30

Long covid is fun (and what else it tells me)

It looks like the neighborhood limpkin bird returned. His howling chirp can be heard for blocks! The large brown bird will perch on the tallest buildings and made his call. I remember this guy in March 2020 (yes, that time), he was our covid bird during the lockdowns. He usually woke me up, and I’d see him almost blatantly perched and moving from building to tree to pond, and repeat.

Long covid is fun. I’m not testing positive, but my throat feels like a thresher has been through it more than once, just as it did when I was in the infection. My energy is good one day and says ‘hah’ the next. Sometime I need a long break after doing something that takes up mental energy.

I thought I’d be getting better with the rest and space I’ve given myself, and that’s what frustrates me.

I was wiped out after a long day and then attending Prof. Insano’s in-person class (thank goodness the rest are online for most of the month). I retreat to my car and take a short nap on my lunch break. There’s a bunch of new federal rules that I am obliged to tell the workplace what the hell it all means (for those in the know, it’s the Nelson memo and NIH sharing mandates, bahahah), and I’m still translating everything. I guess it was a good thing I took world languages so that task is not completely foreign to me (pun intended).

I’m also working on some training for the staff in the spring that New Big Boss would like to see, and of course, I want to do good work with that.

It’s like at age 49, my body is going on periodic strikes like the workers in the UK. It is reminded me oh-so not gently that I cannot carry on the way I had for such a good part of my life. Let someone else do it, it’s telling me. You don’t have to keep doing dyno-supreme work for everything and everyone. I don’t have to keep going above and beyond.

Or better yet, and as the presence of Avery reminds me, let yourself love and be loved a little more than you work. Why? It’s something I really haven’t completely allowed that in my world or life. I’m still holding on to the worlds from a man who was concerned how my professional life (and what I drag from it) strains my personal relationships.

I always prided myself on my strength, stamina, and ability to recover and bounce back. It’s extremely humbling when I have to treat all that much better rather than taking them as a given. There’s something liberating about not having all the responsibility or at least acknowledging where mine starts and ends; it really is leaving something to the world to solve when I really don’t have the power or the final answer.

However, at the same time, there’s something unsettling about it. I’m not used to doing this differently, but I see the writing on the wall. People my age are dying, and I need to take care of myself. There’s been some serious talks about the long-term health effects of my professions on Black and brown people since they often have chronic conditions, die younger, or both from demands and stresses. There were some interesting conversations about all of this after bell hooks died at age 69 from kidney failure. My mentor died of the same thing at age 62 and his wife died from a stroke at 60; they both were Mexican-American educators and activists.

I then think of my Grandpa Rey who got sick at my age. He gave up smoking, stopped drinking, and didn’t socialize as intensely as he had. My mother told me he had a nasty flu that turned in to pneumonia. He made some changes, and he lived a long life.

Some of my friends tell me I’m acting like an old lady and bla bla bla, but I find it to be quite self-defeating when I push back again all of this. I really pay for it when I push myself, and it doesn’t seem like I really push the boundaries outward when I do so I could keep going. However, I’m so glad my hikes are standing the test of time along with my home workout. I do things, and then take breaks. I actually enjoy them more for how I feel than anything else.

downwind | upstream