Introduction & Early Stages

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April 2008

Sunday, April 06, 2008

There’s something about taking life one day at a time. It isn’t just an old man’s saying. It’s a philosophy I have adopted recently (as in the last 10 years or so) that is more and more applicable to my life and its outlook. “One day at a time” gives me a great chance to celebrate the here and now without fretting about the future.

I look around and see a lot of devastating stuff. Illness; tragedy; freak accidents. All of it enough to depress anyone if they thought hard enough. But for me, the blinders have slowly gone up and the future is a fantasy-on-hold. The real excitement is in the now.

Living life with a chronic disease like arthritis kind of forces you to do to this. It makes you realize that if you don’t work to make the present as ideal as possible (and overlook any issues the past may have caused) then you are doing yourself a major disservice. One day you can feel crummy; 24-hours later you can feel great. A blessing in disguise? For me, life’s lens. Arthritis makes it a pretty cool prism.

Monday, April 21, 2008

I officially have arthritis: I tried gardening.

This past weekend I underwent an age-old tradition for people with arthritis: I tried gardening. To my own astonishment, 26 years of life, and never once gardened. Hard to believe, I have spent over a decade railing against people who lump us arthritics in the category of “people who garden; or can’t garden because of their arthritis”. And here I was, potting and planting and watering and pruning. On my roof. Hey, it may not exactly be the most natural place to garden, but it’s a good start, especially in New York City.

Here’s how it ended: after two hours of shlepping, plotting, potting and planting, we ended up with 10 beautiful plants for the windowsill in the apartment. Honestly, it was about the hardest work I’ve done in a long time, and I still feel it. I felt kind of stupid at the thought of being such a beginner, but also at how anti-gardening I’ve always been. It’s as though I never wanted to be categorized in the same group as my grandmother (and her vast collection of ferns) just because I had arthritis. And there I was, though achy then and sore now, with two green thumbs firmly planted up my. Well, you know the rest.