It is almost two o'clock on one of my writing days--a day I do not go to Paragraph, but stay home and write. Right. In other news, my physical therapist gave up on me two days ago. Physical therapy was the last box to check for conservative treatments that might help (but did not help) relieve the pain from a large herniated disc that rendered me useless fifteen weeks and three days ago. Next week, I have appointments with a neurologist and a neurosurgeon. I wish I hadn't bothered checking all those boxes and was cut open, stitched up and recovering already, but my mother says I am not allowed to think like that. And I'm not. It's surgery time! And I can already feel my mood lifting at the prospect of getting this thing behind me for real.
Really, it is. I've cut down feeling sorry for myself in the early morning and late evenings. I'm even dreaming about traveling again thanks to a lovely reconnection with a friend I met traveling in Nepal years ago and an article in The New York Times about nifty farewatching sites. South America? Scotland? The Bahamas? There's no end to places you can go when you have aligned hips and a flexible schedule.
Last night, a friend I had last seen four (five?) years ago in a hot spring a day's walk outside of Pokhara, Nepal, flew into New York City for business and invited me to a gala NFTE (pronounced 'nifty') awards dinner at the Marriott in Times Square. NFTE is an organization that teaches entrepreneurship to youth in low-income communities, a way to educate and empower underprivileged youth globally.
It is an inspiring organization and the banquet hall in the Marriott, over a hundred tables and four glass chandeliers the size of Volkswagens, was the biggest I have ever been to. How they managed to serve that many people hot food is a wonder of the world. The friend who invited me was Gonzalo and he had been making the three-week trek on the Annapurna circuit with his brother the month I was doing the same. There are seldom people you meet traveling who you would be able to relate to outside the magical travel bubble in which you first interact. Gonzalo is one of them.
Other than reading the newspaper online and checking airfares, another way I'm blowing off my writing day is to consider MENSA. I took the MENSA workout. I finished with time to spare and twenty out of thirty correct answers, which doesn't sound promising but the results said, "You have a very good chance of passing the test." A ploy to get me to plunk down the money for the test? Evidence of my quick, logical mind? Or just another way to waste my writing day? Definitely the latter. Definitely.
