Starting again at the bottom

Last night was a particularly depressing and demoralizing shift at work. I was made aware of a mistake I made in handling a flight, which I own completely. But it was insinuated that I made the mistake because I was distracted or too lazy to pay attention to what I was doing. This was not the case. It was an honest mistake - as in, when I did what I did, I had complete faith that I was doing the right thing. I was actually wrong, but now that I know what I did wrong, I can just do it right next time. It was not a situation where I said, "Hey, I don't really feel like doing this the right way, I'll just slack off and do it the wrong way".

This little tete-a-tete happened with the training supervisor during the first five minutes of my shift, leaving me the rest of the whole, long, interminable night praying for midnight to come so I could get the hell out of dodge. The shift supervisor that reported me to management is one of the biggest gossips in the place, so I'm pretty sure everyone on the floor was getting the dirt on me while I was in "the fishtank" getting the bad news. The whole shift, I felt like a flea under a microscope.

Happily, I am off today. When I woke up, I thought it might be good for my body and soul to start doing yoga again. Since our old television died and we had to revamp our whole entertainment system, we no longer have a vhs player hooked up. Of course, the yoga workout I used to do all the time is on vhs. I only have two yoga dvds - one has three short sessions that focus on specific areas of the body (lower body, abs, upper body). The other is a 75 minute session that I'd never tried before. Feeling ambitious, I unrolled my yoga mat and popped in the long session dvd.

Within three minutes, I found out that I am starting at the very bottom of the fitness mountain again. My flexibility has gone completely out the window, and the strength in my arms and wrists, combined with my over-weight, made me unable to hold myself up in the plank position and upward and downward facing dog positions for more than a few seconds.

This was not the moral uplift that I had hoped for, but it has shown me where I am and where I need to be. Flexibility comes back fairly quickly as long as you stretch every day, and since I was so flexible in my youth that I was nicknamed "Gumby" in phys-ed, my muscles have the memory of what it's like to stretch. They will respond, as long as I am diligent.

The arm strength and weight issues are going to be harder to achieve. But if Babar can do it, then I suppose so can I.