As I approach the first month of doing this, I have to reassess my process. My first motivation came from being excited by the fact that my new bionic knee was allowing me to actually go on a real-live walk around the golf course near my home. Walks that had been absent for a decade at least. Combining that with a commitment to write something every day, ostensibly about or inspired by the walk, seemed like a worthwhile way to commemorate my seventieth year.
The truth is, my other knee is not going to hold up to a daily walk. I was so motivated, I actually got the cortisone shots to make it easier. It did, for about a week. So I’m pacing myself on the walks, resting the knee some evenings – I can still do the stretches and the qigong in the back yard, the stars are the same, the view a little different.
However, I don’t have any failing appendages to keep me from writing every day, although any kind of a rigid schedule is quite foreign to me. I’m looking at is as an entree of training, with a side dish of memoir, drenched with the oil and vinegar of my self medication.
If I miss getting one in before midnight, I’ll have a second meal the next day.
It feels so incredibly right. The walking. The following the moon. The qigong. Learning the names of stars. The devouring of these word meals that I whip up out of a bunch of ones and zeros.