Toward the end of 2015, I walked over 30 miles in two days. Normally, a rest day comes between each major episode of exertion. The occasion did not permit any interlude, or any opportunity for recovery. I was putting pedal to the metal, and I felt it.

After the first day’s walk, my leg muscles were extremely stiff and my feet blistered. The blisters were primarily due to speed walking to my destination. I was able to force myself into motion and, once I was going, things seemed to improve. After the second day of effort, it was impossible to move. The blisters on both feet had their own blisters. I had also sustained an open chafe wound on my left foot, above the heel toward the outside.

I also experienced an unexpected and unwelcome increase in tinnitus. Tinnitus is the unexplained buzzing, or whistling, in my ears. There have been times in the past when I found tinnitus to be welcome and pleasant. I remember drifting toward sleep to the sounds of a summer night – an tinnitus orchestra of crickets and soft wind rustling through the forest leaves. This recent experience of tinnitus was not at all pleasant. It was loud and uncompromising, more like the whine of a high powered mechanical orchestra, or heavy street traffic. No singing crickets. No rustling leaves. No magic summer’s night.

One consequence of this incessant sound was an inability to sleep. My attempt to return to a normal sleep cycle went out the window. I also came down with a cold, likely from over-exertion. Taken together, all these events resulted in an extremely disrupted schedule, and an inability to complete the scheduled TAQ submissions.

Once I recovered from my exertions, I found it extremely difficult to get “back in harness.” I reviewed my TAQ notes and came away blank, and uncomprehending. I tried forcing myself back into the task activity and was unable to marshal the elements required to make the effort “click.”

The ultimate resolution involved switching gears. I identified a completely new topic which shed light on the severity of my injury. It was easier to attack this entirely new topic than it was to pick up the threads of the prior complex topic. I was able to re-engage by writing a few very simple, one page documents, and then turning to work of increased complexity.

What I have learned from this episode is that it is relatively easy for me to be knocked off my stride. This appears to be especially true when attempting a complex undertaking. I experience difficulty with directly re-engaging in complex work. The attempt simply frustrates and disillusions me. The best means of re-engagement is to divert to a simple task, complete this simpler activity, then move forward to a task of greater complexity, complete it, and continue to follow this process ladder and “climb back” until I have fully regained my ability to perform complex and difficult work.

This is the same process I have utilized in starting walk therapy. I undertook a short walk and was able to complete it. The satisfaction of task completion appears to be very important. I then duplicated the short walk. After multiple repetitions created confidence in my abilities, I extended the walk duration and increased the distance. I am now concerned with the maintenance of my present level of fitness through the difficult winter period.

With this post, I wanted to document the fact that a similar process appears to apply with respect to document preparation. I felt completely shut out of my own project due to the forced interlude brought on by walking 30 miles in two days, the subsequent physical impairment, loss of control of my sleep schedule, and an unwelcome cold. The only way to recover my prior competency was to identify small tasks that I might string together in a process ladder until I regained my prior level of function.

This is probably a pointless post. I wrote it as I believe there is a similarity between the process structure associated with walk therapy, and the process structure required for document preparation. I wanted to have this post available to me as a reminder should I encounter similar difficulties in the future.