Just Words

I had a plan for my blog.

This plan included detailed design work, to ensure the look and feel properly communicated the aesthetic I was shooting for.  It would have a witty title, lots of cool pictures, and a clear focus as to who I am and what I'd be writing about.  The space would be fully developed and arranged before I published my first post.

But when it came right down to it, I mainly thought about this blog when I had something I wanted to write.  Something longer than a Facebook post.  And I never wrote those thoughts out, because my blog wasn't perfectly formatted and ready to go.  And now most of those reflections and musings - important to me at the time - are gone.

Words and thoughts.  Both so universal and at the same time, completely unique.  Each of us has the same words available to us as did Shakespeare and Hemingway.  Each of us can understand and empathize with the ideas and emotions that speak through their words, but no other person in the world would or could have put words together in exactly the same way as they did.  This is true for them, and it is true for each of us.  Our songs are unique; their number is exactly the same as the count of humans who have lived since time began.

Yesterday I found out that my left shoulder has significant degeneration in the bone and cartilage.  This is a permanent, progressive condition - there isn't a fix, and there isn't much that can be done to slow the progression.  As far as long-term health issues go, this is about as good as it gets.  It's a joint, not my heart.  And if I have to have a degenerated joint, my left shoulder has the least impact overall - I don't need it for walking, and I'm right-handed.  There are far, far worse things to deal with in life.

Still, I was bummed.  At 47, this is my first long-term physical health issue.  It's a strong reminder of aging and mortality.  The aches and pain that I thought were temporary are here to stay.  But the thing I was most morose about - I'm not proud of this - was that this will almost certainly impact my weightlifting.  I've been on a roll for the last 5 months; I've lost a lot of weight and built a lot of muscle, and I'm at the point where I am starting to see real definition.  I should be able to continue but am definitely going to have to modify things to accommodate my traitorous shoulder.  There are a lot of unknowns at this point, and I don't deal well with unknowns.  Self-pity, party of 1: your table is ready. 

Then, as it so often does, the universe gave me a good smack upside the head.

After about two hours of unsuccessfully attempting to remind myself that life is rarely all or nothing, and I really don't even know yet how this is going to affect me, the doorbell rang.  The postal carrier had a package for me with some shirts I had ordered some time ago.  I had been a little impatient last week, because it took the organization almost a week to ship them once I had placed the order.  It seems I needed to receive them at that exact time.

I had ordered the shirts from the Gary Sinise Foundation, a nonprofit organization started by the actor Gary Sinise to support our service members and veterans.  They do many things, but their biggest project is building smart homes for our most severely wounded service members - mostly triple or quadruple amputees - so they can live as independently as possible.  I suspect most of the recipients of these homes would be thrilled to have a degenerated shoulder joint as their biggest physical challenge.

I spent a lot of time yesterday thinking about perspective - both our unique perspectives when writing and the importance of perspective in our lives.  I really wanted to write about it, but my blog wasn't ready to go.  And I finally realized that the design doesn't actually matter that much.  I can develop it as I go, and in time it will look and feel the way I want it to look and feel.  What really matters are words and thoughts and ideas and hearts. 

And so I started.  No grand design, no pictures, no witty title.  Just a standard canned blogger template, and words.