The Quiet Work of Carrying On

 This season is teaching me a quieter kind of strength: absorbing more than I complain about, moving through uncertainty without letting it own me, and choosing presence over prediction.

A Walk, a Weight, and a Winter That Wouldn’t Let Go

This morning the dog and I finally broke the spell.

We met my dad at 10:15 for a walk — nothing dramatic, nothing heroic, just the three of us moving through the cool air while I hauled a 45‑lb pack on my back. We covered 3.65 km in 45 minutes, settling into a steady 12:16/km pace. Not fast, not slow, just honest. The kind of pace that reminds you your body still knows how to work, even when your mind has been stuck in neutral.

Dixie had a blast. She’s been staring out the window all week, waiting for something to happen, waiting for me to get out of my own way. She deserved this one. Maybe I did too.

The Weight Behind the Weight

I’ve been calling it executive dysfunction — that strange paralysis where you know a walk would help, you know you’d feel better afterward, and yet you still can’t get yourself out the door. It’s the ultimate procrastination: delaying the very thing that would make life easier.

This winter has been a strange one. A super El Niño, warm Pacific waters, the kind of Scandinavian‑style darkness that sinks into your bones. I’ve felt more resistance in my body than usual, like every system is running through molasses. When I look back at my stats from July to March, the drop is obvious. Last year I spent almost the entire year in peak performance. This year has been a different story — a bigger hurdle, a longer climb.

Two decades of tracking my own data means I see patterns I sometimes wish I didn’t. The inconsistency. The dips. The long recovery from that back pain — four weeks of real pain, twelve weeks of detraining. It’s hard not to wonder what’s normal and what isn’t. Hard not to think about neurological stuff, even though I know that’s not a road anyone wants to go down unless they absolutely have to.

But today wasn’t about fear. Today was about movement.

The Body, the Mind, and the Seasons Between Them

I’ve had years where my vision blurred or my hearing turned into an echo chamber — sensory quirks that come and go, part of the autistic comorbidity cocktail I’ve learned to live with. This year, thankfully, none of that. Just the heaviness. The inconsistency. The feeling that my body is fighting the season more than usual.

And maybe that’s all it is: a season. A tough one, but still temporary.

I know that if the back pain sticks around or if something truly changes, I’ll go see a doctor and get a plan. But for now, I’m watching, listening, paying attention without spiraling. There’s a difference between awareness and catastrophizing, and I’m trying to stay on the right side of that line.

What Today Meant

Today wasn’t just a walk. It was a reset.

It was proof that even after a rough winter, even after weeks of feeling stuck, I can still throw 45 pounds on my back and move with purpose. It was a reminder that Dixie still lights up the moment her paws hit the trail. It was a small victory in a year that hasn’t offered many easy ones.

And maybe that’s enough for now.

One walk.
One morning.
One step back toward myself.

sort of not be miserable in advance

something bad might happen soon

I can't think of every possible out come in advance

best case scenario is I live for today and i work for today and get through the day

To absorb more complaints than give them.  As in planting more trees which of the shade I'll never sit under.

That makes a lot more sense — what you wrote earlier did have the shape of stoicism, not despair. It had that flavour of someone trying to live with uncertainty without letting it swallow the present. And honestly, Nigel, that’s one of the hardest skills a person can learn.

Not Being Miserable in Advance

Lately I’ve been thinking about how much energy we waste trying to predict the future. Not in a grand, philosophical way — more in the everyday sense of bracing for things that haven’t even happened yet. Something bad might happen soon. Something unexpected could show up. But living in that anticipation just means suffering twice.

I can’t think of every possible outcome in advance. I’ve tried. It doesn’t work. All it does is drain the present moment of whatever strength or clarity it still has.

So the best case scenario — the one I’m trying to practice — is simple:

Live for today.

Work for today.

Get through the day that’s actually in front of me.

Not the imaginary one.

Not the catastrophic one.

Not the one built out of fear or memory or patterns I’ve tracked for twenty years.

Just this one.

There’s a kind of stoicism in that. Not the dramatic, heroic kind — the quiet version. The version where you choose not to be miserable in advance. The version where you accept that uncertainty is part of the deal, and you stop trying to outsmart it.

And part of that practice is choosing to absorb more complaints than I give. Not because I’m a martyr, but because it feels like planting trees whose shade I’ll never sit under. Small acts of steadiness. Small acts of patience. Small acts of not adding more noise to a world already full of it.

Maybe that’s the work of this season:

to show up,

to carry what I can,

to let go of what I can’t predict,

and to plant a few trees anyway.

Even if I never sit in their shade.

It’s the same principle Marcus Aurelius wrote about:

“Don’t let your imagination be worse than your reality.”

Most people live twice through their suffering:

once when something happens,

and once in the anticipation of it.

You’re trying to break that cycle.

You’re saying:

• Something bad might happen, but I don’t need to live it before it arrives.

• I can’t predict every outcome, so I won’t torture myself trying.

• The best I can do is work with the day in front of me.

That’s not avoidance.

That’s wisdom.