Tuesday 12 May 2026: Getting fit

Monday’s schedule went right out of the window.

I was already late with the blog post, so that didn’t set me up for a good start to the day. But I’d also had a rough night on Sunday night that gave me food for thought. A very rough night.

I have a hiatus hernia that every so often gives me gip. Recently, it’s been giving me more gip than usual and on Sunday night/Monday morning at around 2:30am, it woke me up with a massive reflux. The painful kind that makes you think you’re actually having a heart attack. I wasn’t, it was reflux. But it meant I had to sit up for at least the next hour until it drifted off again.

This is about the third time in the past week that it’s bothered me. Usually it’s once every couple of weeks or so. But when it gets 3 strikes in one week, it means it wants to be listened to. So that meant for the next 3 hours, my brain was working overtime, trying to work out what I could do to make this thing go away. And when my brain wasn’t working overtime, the dog was fidgeting, or he wanted out.

I did go back to sleep eventually, but I managed about 3 hours sleep maximum. And that’s not great.

What I need to do is lose some weight and strengthen my core. I told myself that if I’d lost any weight when I got up on Monday morning, then I’d subscribe to the LazyFit app for a year, I’d start doing the core-strength exercises the physiotherapist gave me for my spinal stenosis, and I’d make sure I did something every day.

Of course, I’m already walking the dog every day. But if I’m busy and the poet’s home, he takes the dog out, which is a great help time-wise, but it doesn’t nothing for my fitness. Generally, though, I’m now walking up to a mile every weekday with him and we’re nudging closer to the 2-mile mark at the weekends. But that doesn’t strengthen my core.

Now, I don’t want to be one of those little old ladies with a dowager hump, if I can help it (spinal stenosis). And I don’t want to be one of those little old ladies who sinks into herself whenever she sits in a comfy seat. If I can’t do anything about that, then fair enough. I just need to get on with it. But if I can prevent it from happening for as long as possible, then I want to at least try.

I had indeed lost weight when I weighed myself on Monday morning. A pound and a half. I had to keep my side of the bargain too, so I joined LazyFit on a 7-day trial with a view to upgrading to a year’s subscription at the end of it. And when I finally got to my desk on Monday, the bulk of the day was planning what I could do and when I could fit it in.

At the moment, I’m trying to get rid of all the client jobs before the end of May. So in order to fit in an hour of exercise or other activity every weekday, something had to give. And that something, I decided, would be the Patreon/Medium premium slot. It’s not gathered very much traction at all and I’m not delivering what I wanted to do on time.

Therefore, the Patreon/Medium hour will be deferred until 1 July when it will be revived again. Including blog posts over there. And that means that if you’re reading this blog post on Patreon or Medium, it will be taking a break from today until 1 July, when it will return.

I’m republishing all of my short stories with new interiors and new covers. All being well, I should be up to Wordsworth Short #15 by the end of May, and the first collection of 10 will also have been republished by then.

The republishing will then be put on hold for June and start again on 1 July.

The only thing I plan on doing during June is the workshop I’ve started. Everything else, apart from maybe blog posts, will be deferred until 1 July.

That gives me a reading hour, a house & garden hour, a dog walk hour and a fitness hour. For the rest of the time to the end of May, I want to get rid of that client work and the republishing.

For the rest of the time in June, I want to spend time in the garden every day weeding, we’ll be getting rid of clutter, we’ll be cleaning, we’ll be packing, we’ll be running to the tip and back, and we’ll hopefully be getting the new house ready as well.

By 1 July, we should be settled in the new place. But in order to be of use in any of this, I need to be stronger, I need to be fitter, and I need to have more stamina.

The poet says that already I’m walking further than, say, a month ago. He reminds me that there’s no way I’d even attempt walking all the way around a lake for more than a mile, let alone doing two in one weekend. So maybe the walking is helping.

Once I’d finished working out the fitness schedule, I built the first 4 minutes into my first fitness hour. I did my physiotherapy. And I did some extra leg-strengthening exercises. Yes, I did it, but boy, did it hurt!

By the time I’d caught up with the blog post for yesterday, the day was almost over. I hadn’t done a stroke of work, but I was tired after the disturbed night, and I’d moved my body.

Today I’ll be rearranging the weeks to come in my TickTick schedule, making sure I have plenty of free time throughout the month of June.

This post appears on Words Worth Writing, Medium and Patreon.