One Step at a Time

Having a knee injury has caused me to take everything slowly. I walk slowly. I leave my desk to fill water bottles at work slowly. I get dressed slowly. I cook slowly. I walk up the stairs slowly.

I find this to be infuriating because I like to go fast. I walk very quickly and when I get caught behind a ‘slow-walker’ I can feel the anger boiling inside me at the nerve this person has to walk in front of me at a slower pace than I want. Patience is not one of my virtues. I can say that without a doubt.

This knee injury however, it makes me do everything slowly. I even have to take the stairs one at a time. Going up the stairs for me right now is: step up with my left foot; bring my right foot to the same step; then rest. Repeat for as many steps as there are. It takes so much longer than it should. But I have a knee injury and it is what it is.

The point is that physically I have been forced to slow down. The more I think about it, the more I think I should be slowing down the rest of my life. I make myself so busy sometimes that I can’t even focus. I will make a to-do list that is four pages long and I get so overwhelmed by it that I have to ignore the whole list and go read a book or watch a movie. This is because the idea of starting at the beginning and working things one at a time is beyond my grasp. It’s too stressful looking at the big picture that I can’t get myself to slow down and just look at the first task.

This is something that I need to work on. I am frequently told that I need to relax more by Future Husband, and he’s right. I’m only twenty-seven years old. I have no children and minimal responsibilities in reality. So why do I let myself get so stressed out? I don’t know, but now that I can recognize this and actually acknowledge that Future Husband has a point, theoretically I should be able to make some changes.

Right now I have to take the stairs one at a time. It’s time to apply that to the rest of my life. Let’s try this whole ‘one step at a time’ philosophy and see if it helps. Who knows, I might actually learn to relax.