This blog has  been dormant for well over a year. Multiple times I write posts only to be distracted by something and it stays in draft form.  For well over a year my attention has been on painful muscles in my leg.  While I'm sure it had been in the making for a while,  a year ago November massive muscle spasms erupted.  After months of pretty intense physical therapy that follows MD visits and chiropractics,  the intense pain was calmed and since it's been a nagging dull pain The past year has been a journey of trying to understand what is going. I've had X-rays, MRIs, scans, been injected and nothing shows up as wrong. I've been pulled, poked, stretched and been tried most every route including massage, acupuncture, osteopath, psysiatry and even been told by a doc that if it didn't get better perhaps a hip replacement is in my future, even though X-rays and scans were negative. WTF!

 I've learned a hellava lot about muscles, joints and I guess even more about patience and tenacity.  I've had to ask for help doing things I would have taken for granted a year ago, like moving a few tons of pellet bags.  I haven't been able to run for over a year and have lost a good portion of the physical gain and weight loss that took me years to achieve. Though even worse, I lost a source of stress and anxiety relief that I learned to love and had come to depend on to keep the craziness of my work environment somewhat contained. That has forced me to dig deeper and look to contain the stress and  anxiety at the source and the historical triggers.

So it has been a year of  discovery.  I learned to again love kayaking and get some physical benefits from that. (Unfortunately it's now too cold ) I've learned that I have become a more impatient person over the years, perhaps mirroring anxiety and how I dealt with stress. Identification and awareness being the first stage of digging deep enough to work it through. I have also had that duh moment of realizing that being stressed out every day and comuting 100 miles a day, could be contributing to my leg not getting better.

I've been reminded of my curiosity and smarts in seeking out resolution for my leg and working toward a solution and not waiting for one.  I've learned that even though my work situation has sucked, that there are a surprising number of people that I've had an impact on, who think I'm highly competent and a really nice guy and who have been quietly watching out and rooting for me and willing to help out.  I've learned that even though I have felt at times physically and emotionally wasted, that I am still very fixable.  I've also learn that there are people who really want me to work for them and see I have tremendous value. I also am becoming more tuned into not reacting in a black and white wait and being more patient in responding,

So in this New Year's Day I feel ironically that I really am at an actual juncture and not just a made up one of making resolutions for a new year.

I see that new exercises that I recently found  are helping my gain flexiblity and be less painful for longer, though I have to do more.  I have a very real offer on a job to consider ( with almost no commute) that began as a copy of one I'd done before and has suddenly changed and added responsibilities that I really could find interesting .  This came about totally because I didn't react and didn't settle.  I've found that being the usually helpful, nice guy at work has given me new resources that may help me in a new job. And I am starting to understand how I've responded to situations in the past and am moving past the point of regret and on to discovery.

That's a pretty full list of items that I am optimistically looking at building on over the next year or several years.