Zach and my back...

Last week I didn't post anything for this blog. Not only that, I didn't even post a note to explain why I wasn't posting. That's unusual for me, but it was kind of an unusual week. You see, I hurt my back picking up a bath mat.

Yep, you read that correctly. I picked up a bath mat and knocked myself flat on my back for most of last week. Not immediately, of course. First I did exactly what you shouldn't do - I went shopping. Not only did I go shopping, I also brought home a couple of heavy bags to make my back issues even more interesting. So much so that Tuesday morning when I woke up, I wasn't sure I could even get out of bed without assistance.

Fortunately, with very careful attention to every micromovement, I did get out of bed, only to discover there was no way to position myself that was not painful. The only brief respite from pain was when I exhaled. Unfortunately, it isn't possible to spend every moment exhaling, so there was a fair amount of pain going on.

I spent a fair bit of time on the rocker, ice pack on my lower back, reading

The view I faced while sitting on the rocker

Before calling 911 I naturally read up on back pain on the internet, and discovered my particular kind of pain was good (relatively speaking), because it meant I had strained a muscle. Nothing serious, just painful.

The upshot of this was that I was fairly immobile for a few days, didn't write my blog or do any work, but I did get a lot of reading done. One of the things I read was Zachary R. Wood's book Uncensored.

The subtitle of the book tells you something about what to expect. What I didn't expect was the power of his personal story, and the disarming honesty with which he shared it.

Just before I started to write this I listened to his TED Talk and was moved by his ability to weave his personal history into his way of being in the world, his work in the world.

It's hard to say too much, because I want you to discover him for yourself, and take in what he has to share without me skewing it in any way .  It was hard to put it down because I wanted to know what happened next. And although it didn't make me forget about my back, I may have been more emotionally open to what he had to say because my focus was limited to my back and his book,

I guess on some level I felt as if I connected with what he had to say. I'm one of those people who watched the entire Republican convention as well as the Democratic convention for the last few presidential elections, because I wanted to know what everyone had to say. I wanted to understand, even if I didn't agree, and I wanted to be open to what was being said.

I hope you'll read his book and listen to his TED Talk. You don't have to have a bad back to do it!

Take care,
Doc