JUST KEEP MOVING

I turned older than I want to admit last month. I remember those days when I anxiously awaited my next birthday, anticipating that special day when I would be one day older and closer to being "grown." Those days are so far behind me now that I am embarrassed to have wished my life away. 

I have been attempting to exercise more now. At some point, I pushed my health to the background as my schedule became too hectic to take that time for myself. Honestly, adding an afternoon nap rather than one more physically or mentally challenging activity was easier. Those naps are something special, though.

Unfortunately, forty-one fifty-something years old happened. 

My body aches from the constant wear and tear of walking up and down the stairs, waking up too early after staying up too late, and enjoying one plateful of comfort food more than I should have. 

My mind struggles with an inability to process the way it used to. I pause mid-sentence to recall a word I want to use or a name I have forgotten. I feel I am still using my dial-up internet when everyone else is using high-speed networks. I am losing confidence in my own decisions.

Then it begins. The self-talk, the negative kind.

I can't do this anymore.

I will never get back into shape.

This is all too much.

I run myself into the proverbial ditch when life becomes too complicated, when obstacles grow overwhelming, or when mistakes happen too frequently. Life does not wait for anyone, and I have been there when the ditch grows deeper and deeper as I spin my wheels to regain any type of traction.

I remember talking to my sister-in-law Lisa months ago about the aches and pains I was feeling. She just laughed and agreed with me. I do not think I would ever be having this conversation with anyone. Lisa offered some advice, though. "Keep moving." 

Wisdom can be found in the simplest of words.

Lisa's advice was about the physical difficulties we both are experiencing, but I found how easy it works in most situations when I engaged in negative self-talk. 

I struggled for weeks writing this blog. I started. I stopped. I wrote. I polished. I deleted. For the past few days, I began telling myself: I can't do this anymore. This morning was different. I sat down with my coffee, turned on some John Denver, and continued writing until I finished while quieting the doubts I had as each word hit the page. Just Keep Moving.

I was tired of being tired. One day I jumped on the elliptical at Howard Long Wellness Center. I set the program on what I "instinctually" used years ago. Five minutes into the workout as I sweated profusely, obsessively checked my heart rate, and watched others exercising effortlessly, I kept saying: I will never get back into shape. I lowered the settings, realizing that this would take longer than I expected. Just Keep Moving.

I have a small pocket calendar containing all my meetings, appointments, and shopping lists. I always feel as if there is more to do than can fit into this small calendar. This is all too much. I bought a luxurious desktop blue calendar at Marshall's last week. I transferred all of the contents to its roomy pages, realizing I have plenty of space in my life for everything. Just Keep Moving.

Sometimes I wish I could send advice to that kid blowing out his birthday candles. "Don't rush to be an adult." "Take your time making decisions." "Realize that you will never be perfect." "Don't be so hard on yourself." But he doesn't need these, right? 

He needs a short mantra to push him through difficult times, a phrase to ease the doubts that cloud his mind, and a few words to sort out the countless pressures life brings. I envision Just Keep Moving in blue icing looping across his birthday cake surrounded by the candles he is about to blow out.

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SNAPSHOTS

 

Long before the advent of cell phones, with their come-as-standard HD cameras, previous generations ran around with small cameras. Back then, we inserted cylinders of film into the rear of a Kodak camera, clicked the door shut, then slid the film forward to be ready to take that first picture. If my memory serves me, the camera film came in 12, 24, and 36 exposures which had to be mailed to a picture developer or taken to a one-hour photo shop. Then we waited. Perhaps an hour or even a week. We waited to see if our snapshots of moments in our lives would live forever in a permanent photograph.

Now we possess the means to capture those moments instantaneously. We can see them immediately, edit them, add effects, or even delete the unwanted. Perhaps someone wasn't smiling, another person had his eyes closed, or maybe the picture wasn't capturing the moment as we wanted to remember it. We stick a thin half-inch memory disk into the cell phone, so we can possess an insurmountable number of pictures. We have so many pictures that our moments seem to blur into a never-ending collage in which many of the moments lose their meaning in an impersonal collection of snapshots.

As I have grown older, I have discovered that I possess more pictures than I can view in a day. They are scattered everywhere: on my phone, in Google Photos, in my albums at CVS photo, and even on photo paper mounted in scrapbooks, placed in frames, and stuck with Mavalus tape to the dry-erase board in the back of my classroom.

Mavalus tape. I am fighting autocorrect's desire to change "Mavalus" to "marvelous." I added the word to my dictionary because something about Mavalus tape makes it worth my extra effort. Betsy, my down-the-hall teacher pal, told me about this incredible tape that must have been created with teachers in mind. Principals and custodians nag teachers about using tape on walls as it pulls off paint when you attempt to remove a poster or picture. Mavalus tape has a unique bonding material that leaves little if no residue. Glorious and literally marvelous!

At the beginning of the school year, I shared a year-long theme with the seniors sitting in my classes. Last summer, I came across this marketing campaign called Live a Great Story. I wrote about it in my blog back in August. I brought the massive Live a Great Story flag to school, where I mounted it across the back dry-erase board. Throughout the year, we listened to other people's stories, reflected on our own, and considered how every day is simply another part of a bigger story we are writing ourselves. 

Many diverse stories filled the spaces of the board. Some people were at the beginning of a chapter while others presented a closing chapter. As August moved into the fall, November became winter, and April gave way to spring, I would place snapshots of the entire class, groups of people involved in sports or service projects, couples smiling at dances, and individuals in their own unique moments. Everyone discovered themselves there, individuals as part of a larger familial community.

Last Friday, I was valiantly attempting to clean out my room. I saved taking down the Live a Great Story board and its snapshots for as long as possible. I listened to the Goo Goo Dolls as I pulled each snapshot off the board, looked at it, and placed it either in the discard pile or the save-for-later pile. Removing each one was difficult as I possess fond memories of each picture I had attached to the board with the Mavalus tape throughout the past nine months. 

I swiped my hand across the board to feel for residue from the tape. There was none. The board was smooth and clean. I chuckled because many of my students would make fun of me for looking for deeper meaning as I stared at an empty board with no sticky remains from the pictures that once adorned it. 

In one sense, I am glad that the Mavalus tape worked so well and did not ruin the board. Conversely, I find comfort that memories are not like this. We can literally take the snapshots off our walls, inadvertently delete them from our phones, and declutter by putting them in our discard piles. However, people in our lives always leave bits and pieces of themselves behind which will continue to remain even as we find more snapshots to place atop them. 

I never finished cleaning my room Friday, but I did manage to fold the black Live a Great Story flag to use again next year. 

Congratulations to the CCHS Class of 2022!

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