Sick as a Dog

That is to be expected.

Since it is a sick dog. Well, he isn't too sick now, but in the morning he was ill, likely because of something he ate - which could be just about anything. So most of the morning he was tail between the legs, crawling into my wife's lap to sleep.

A dog's life.

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I don't get any special treatment when I am ill.

My wife doesn't go back to work until after the Epiphany day (Jan 6th), so she has plenty of time to ensure that Puusti's legs don't touch the ground, as she carries him nearly everywhere. Obviously, I am exaggerating - slightly.

The start's to the year in Finland can be pretty quiet, so it is a good time to take a few extra days if possible, since business doesn't pick up again until mid January in the offices. It is a bit like there is a Christmas and new year hangover, that people have to recover from first.

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A lot of people also do "Tipaton Tammikuu" (Dropless January), where they don't have any alcohol for the first month. I have never attempted it, but I don't see the challenge of it, since I can happily go months without drinking anyway. I like to have a glass of wine or a gin and tonic, but it is never necessary to have a glass.

I should try to cut out sugar - that would be a challenge.

And to go along with the alcohol-free January, the gym is filled with unfamiliar faces of people who have made their new year resolutions to "get into shape" or something similar. I went there tonight and there were several people who I have never seen before, and a couple that are working out when they normally don't. One of my customers was there doing "extra" exercise, as while he normally goes twice a week to some classes, he has decided he should ramp up his activity.

Shouldn't we all?

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It is always interesting when people talk about how much life has changed technologically, but they don't spend any time thinking about the effects it actually has on them, let alone what they need to do to mitigate the negative effects. We are moving far less than we used to move on a daily basis, and our range of motion is also far less, as we are more often sitting at a desk or on a couch, even when we are working.

Do we even lift our hands above our head most days?

It might be silly for many to pay to go to the gym, since it could be done anywhere, but for me at least, it means that once there I will do it. We could do so much, but we mostly don't do that much. And since much of the movements our body needs to function well do not appear in our daily lives, unless we engineer our environment to introduce them, we will miss out, we will atrophy, and we will be less capable. We will also be less resistant to illness and incur more physical restriction, and these things add up over time.

Just like drinking, there is a difference between having a glass or two occasionally, and getting blotto every night. With the way so many of us misuse our bodies these days, it is similar to constantly drinking heavily, where our body performs increasingly worse over time.

We are inactivitiholics.

At least, many of us are. We are succumbing to the changes in the culture and environment that make us worse, but not making the changes to substitute in healthy alternatives for the good things that were lost. It is a life of convenience with junk food, junk content, and junk movement.

And we still wonder why we have so many health issues.

I haven't made any new year resolutions, because I see them a bit like a diet, or not drinking for a month. They are fads. Wellbeing comes from a healthy lifestyle. And a healthy lifestyle doesn't change with the latest fads, as it is pretty consistent. It doesn't mean that it can't change, it is just that on a daily, weekly, monthly and even yearly basis, it is pretty steady and consistent.

If we were each to "zoom out" on our activities and get an average health score for the way we live our daily lives over the last 1, 5 and 10 years - it should actually be pretty consistent and trending upward to better habits for increased wellbeing. But, I suspect for many, it trends in the opposite direction instead, where more and more excuses come in as to why we can't do this or that to be a little healthier, a little better off, a little improved.

And the more excuse that creep in, the more justified we feel in why we "can't" do what we know we should do. Excuses are a bit like muscles, the more we use them, the stronger they get. And if rather than excuses as to why not we just added small activities that we should do, we build the habit muscles required for growth and wellness, and ultimately, a greater level of wellbeing across the board.

But that is not the culture we have.

And I think that the habit of making excuses is amplified in today's cultural environment, where we are encouraged to be victims of circumstance, rather than agents of change. Like a body that spend all the time sitting on the couch, watching trash and eating trash - the body changes massively.

Inactivity isn't saving us, it is costing us.

A dog instinctively knows when it is sick and can't do something. It also knows when it is time to play around again. Us humans aren't that smart. We find excuses to not do something, even when we know we should. We act sick, and turn our mental state, into physical illness.

Psychosomatic addict insane.

Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]

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