Shutting Down
By: Connor Lenahan
Every day I have to try and find something new to write about for the daily article. This is actually easier than it seems – things keep happening in the world. Stories break, things are announced, things happen, I have material. This is because even though it’s the summer people are working. That is, Monday to Friday.
See, it becomes almost impossible for me to find things during the summer in which to write about on the weekends. Why? Because I don’t do anything. This morning I woke up and watched Curb Your Enthusiasm on HBO Go until I got hungry enough that the bag of Chex Mix on my side would not suffice. Nothing eventful happens on the weekends. It’s a time for relaxation.
I run around a lot during the week doing things that range from necessity (eating, my job, showering) to trivial (pretty much everything I do in my free time). I am quite literally running all around Boston in my wheelchair. Because it’s exhausting to quite literally push the wheelchair an absurd amount of miles daily in the summer heat, I take days to just shut down.
The best medical advice I can give anyone would be don’t eat poison. A close second would be to take days to just let your body recover. I can push hard during the week because I’ve had days where the extent of my pushing is getting up to use the restroom. This keeps recharges energy and allows for fatigue to reset. That is just about the only reason I can push my chair nine miles a day during the work week without batting an eyelash.
On vacation we would be active all day every day. Because I was no longer the only person in charge of my schedule as I am in Boston, my routine for rest days/times was thrown askew. What happened? On more than one occasion I had my body quit on me from exhaustion. It’s like a pitcher in baseball; I can come out throwing heat regularly, but I need the recovery in there too. On our last day in Dublin I absolutely shut down from two weeks of running around and heavy plane travel. I needed to lie down, eat a Cadbury bar, and do nothing.
That’s how I spent my day today. It was glorious. And that is why I’m essentially writing an apology for why I don’t have anything interesting to say today. It’s because I consciously chose to make my day uninteresting.
It’s a more liberating choice than you’d ever realize. Give it a try tomorrow if you can. You might just find a new part of your life’s routine.
Connor Lenahan (@ConnorLenahan) is a sophomore at Boston University, majoring in journalism.