Not a moral failing

Last weekend I walked a combined total of 4.3 miles. The Friday before I managed to accumulate 4.4 in a single day. The latter despite feeling like my brain was slowly leaking out of my nose, and contending with muscles that were tighter than a ball of rubber bands. Before last week, I’d walked seven miles or more almost every day since Jan. 1. I’m currently coasting financially from a light amount of pet sitting and modest yet consequential reserves of Secret White Money™️ (citation needed for the exact episode of Call Your Girlfriend where I was introduced to this brilliant concept that I wish many more people were willing to admit to). I plan to apply for Unemployment beginning on March 16th, right after I return from an all-expenses paid trip to Charleston, South Carolina for a visit with family. I understand that collecting Unemployment means aggressively applying for the all of the digital media and tech jobs that I qualify for, but that I’m not likely to get because so many people who qualify for the same digital media and tech jobs were also recently laid off. The mileage fixation is a handy delay tactic to distract from an inevitably soul crushing job hunt, I know this. It doesn’t make me any less fixated. I keep staring at the numbers from my lowest mileage days: 3, 4.4, 2.3, and 2. Four days. Four days when I was working, four days when I was sick, and one day when it was my birthday. Not getting enough miles and steps in during this stretch of time is fine. I know that it’s fine… intellectually, logically, rationally… I know that it’s fine. But I can’t let it go. I keep telling myself that it’s not a moral failing to catch a cold, but I don’t know how to make myself believe it. 

My mileage is back in a respectable range now (4.1 to 9.3 over the past five days), pet sitting is steady, and my to-do list of pre-trip errands is getting done. It’s not a moral failing to catch a cold, but why can’t I find the right combination of behaviors to perfectly and ritualistically course correct for my lost time last week? Too many of the days that I allotted for racking up miles and organizing personal spaces are just gone. My average number of miles walked during the year 2026 currently sits at exactly seven. That sucks. If the number drops into the sixes it’ll take forever to bring it back up. I’m already dealing with an entire year that contains the number six and I am afraid of the number six. I’m also afraid of the lack of wiggle room for my mileage/step count and the slight possibility that I’ll get a new laptop job that will mean even less time for long walks. I’m afraid of a reality where I’m fully self-employed and I really, really don’t have time for long walks because I’ll be so busy working nonstop to ensure that I have enough money to live on after taxes. I’m afraid of going back to college, a thing that could potentially lead to an endless supply of deep and fulfilling conversations with colleagues and other professional peers, but that would also involve an endless supply of academic texts that I’ll struggle to understand. Struggling with big academic texts and excessive homework also means less time to walk. Plus, if I definitively learn that my Santa Monica College transcript has expired, I will need to embark on an epic journey through the state to track down a copy of my high school diploma because I don’t know where the original is and my high school has since shut down. I’m afraid that, regardless of what I end up doing for work, sustaining a life alone as my unapologetically asexual and aromantic self — a life where I wake up according to my own natural rhythms, write daily as my vocation, take walks every afternoon, and watch TV and/or gather with friends every night — is too lofty a goal. Heaviest sigh. Aside from writing equaling vocation in the monetary sense, the life that I just described is the life I’m clinging to now. No wonder it’s a full week later and I’m still zooming in on those days where it was possible to live exactly as I wanted, but couldn’t because I was sick.

It does help a tiny bit to remember that even this crash out in essay form is productive in it's own twisted way. Better to form the words and put them on the page than allow them to fester into something way meaner in my mind. I am facing reality and accomplishing small things every single day. Even on the days last week where it feels like I did nothing but blow my nose and watch TV, I still walked a little bit and I managed to keep multiple cats and dogs alive. This matters. Ten years ago, five years ago even, I was under medicated, still searching for the right therapist, and navigating the world while contending with my very apparent but not yet diagnosed OCD. I made it through all of that so I’m able to sit here this morning and write with clarity about my better (but still utterly exhausting) brain. This also matters. It is not a moral failing to catch a cold, it is not a moral failing to catch a cold, it is not a moral failing to catch a cold, it is not a moral failing to catch a cold, it is not a moral failing to catch a cold…