Not every day is a good day (and that’s okay)

There are better and worse days. Since I bought I a FitBit a few weeks ago, I’ve been counting, as one does, steps. That’s not why I got it. Mostly I was interested in sleep and in my resting heart rate. I noticed though that without much effort, I get 8000 steps a day. I have a dog who gets walked twice a day, I live in a three story house,  and even when I drive to campus, I park in remote parking. 

But we all have our bad days. Last Thursday was one of mine. It was a cold, dark, and grey day. I also have an impossible amount of grading to do so times when normally I’d be moving, have been devoted to reading and marking.

The day didn’t get off to a great start when I got completely dressed up for work (I had a thing on that required it) but then remembered I needed to swap the pedals over on my bike for bike trainer class. No problem. I can swap pedals. But in the end my hands were covered in bike grease and I was running late.Argh.

I was excited to be going back to indoor bike training though. I put my road bike and my trainer in the back of my car. So while I worked at my desk all afternoon, I was looking forward to riding my bike on the trainer in Coach Chris’s basement. 

Come 4 o’clock I went out to my car only to discover a long line to exit the parking lot. The exit gate was broken and I waited forty minutes in my car in line trying to leave campus. It occurred to me that it would be faster to ride my bike to Chris’s house but I didn’t have clothes for that and the bike had a special trainer tire on it. 

Back to my office, back to grading. A peanut butter and jam sandwich at my desk for dinner.  I sort of got caught up on my grading but at the end of the day, even with a dog jog thrown in, I’d barely made it to 6000 steps. 

That’s okay. One of the things that the fitness project I began with Tracy four years ago has taught me is that everything has a rhythm, a flow. Ups and downs are part of the story.  I’m much less likely to feel bad about a day gone wrong. It was just a day. I got some work done. I walked the dog. And some days a peanut butter sandwich at your desk is a fine dinner. 

And the parking gate is fixed. Yay!