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Stamina

As long as I can remember I've had a lot of nervous energy. At some point I started applying it to tasks and it became a virtue. I started running long distance a bit in high school on my own and ended up running in the New Haven Labor Day Road Race four years. The time spent running was meditative, and I worked through a number of things that way.

When I first started teaching full-time I set some goals for myself that were a bit unrealistic in terms of grading work quickly, and because of my willingness to lose sleep they were actually realized. At some point I found a better work balance and graded most of my students' work while on campus.

Our children did not sleep through the night for the first couple of years, and my wife and I traded off attending to their needs. I was sleep-deprived but managed to keep going.

At some point our children did sleep through the night and I was still sleep-deprived, which is when my apnea was diagnosed. Even with treatment I am sleep-deprived in my waking hours and yet I still keep plodding along. As I've put on weight running has become a distant memory but I walk a good deal, do a lot of stairs, etc.

That was interrupted by arthritis during the pandemic, and I waited to have a knee replacement until after I was vaccinated. I think that is when I stopped walking and taking stairs freely; my new knee works and yet I find myself hesitating more and more about walking and stairs.

I am planning on retiring in 2031-2, the year I turn 70. With each passing year I feel as if I am doing my job (whose description changes from year to year) as well as I ever have, but it is taking more and more out of me. I am grateful for what my stamina has allowed me to do until now but along with my hair it is thinning. Acknowledging that diminishment has been one of the hardest parts of aging for me.

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