As I sit back to write a little something about my week I examine what I’ve done and try to discern if there is something new that I’ve thought or accomplish. This week there doesn’t seem to be. That could be because nothing much of note happened or it could be because back pain dominated my week. I’m lucky enough not to have a bad back or any kind of chronic pain but this week a recurring problem with my shoes happened again. Well, it’s not really a problem. It’s that my shoes got old and worn out.
I stand all day while I work. I stand at my computer. I stand at my easel. I stand at my drawing table. I like standing. I find it less tiring than sitting all day. If I’m sitting then I’m resting. If I’m standing then I’m working. It’s a system that works well for me. They key to standing all day is good shoes. I wear Rockport Northfield Oxfords. I have feet that are hard to fit and the extra wide size of Rockports fit me best. Plus they offer a good deal of support for standing. Until they get old that is.
I go through two pairs of shoes a year. One brown and one black pair. I usually alternate days with each one but sometimes I favor the black ones for an extra day here and there. That could be why those were the first ones to give out. I can tell my shoes are failing me because I’ll suddenly have sharp stabbing pains in my lower back. It doesn’t even seem to creep up on me over a week or so. One morning I’m standing there working and then: Ow! Ow! Ow! The pain is going to be there for a week or so even if I get out of those shoes right away. I guess I reached some sort of tipping point. Of course the pain is lessened if I get out of those shoes.
I prefer to head this whole situation off at the pass by getting new shoes before the old ones wear out. I managed to do that last year but this year’s budget has been a little tighter plus they wore out a month earlier than I expected them to. I did a lot more walking this year as I made it a habit to get out of the house and go on half hour walks most days so that explains the shoes wearing out faster. If only I had recognized that fact in time. I was hoping I had some time before I had to buy new shoes..
I also failed to replace the insoles in the shoes but I have no idea how much effect that really has on the situation. I’ve been putting those over the counter support insoles into my shoes for over a decade now and wouldn’t want to go without them but in the past whenever my shoes have given me back pain changing the insoles made no difference. The shoes were too far gone by then. The insole instructions say you should change them every three months but I had one pair in all year this year. Normally I change them out after six months but I never did. Who likes to buy insoles? Especially if nothing is hurting.
Since I was resting my back more this week than was normal I got caught up on my current comic book reading. I normally read my comics within a week or two of buying them but sometimes I can’t seem to be able to sit down and concentrate on them. It has been one of those times and I don’t think I read anything for over a month. I’ve been buying more monthly comics rather than collected editions these days so I had about thirty comics waiting in my “to Read” pile. It’s not like I didn’t want to read them but every time I sat down to check one out I couldn’t concentrate on it. That’s nothing new and I go through it at least twice a year but it’s always good to be able to start reading them again. I was able to this week.
Other than that I was working on some of the things I’ve written about lately. I finished the two painting I wrote about last week. One came out fine while the other merely mediocre. I drew some pages in my ink-book. I hadn’t been doing anything in there over the last couple of weeks so I thought it was about time. Plus it’s something to do when I don’t have anything much else going on.
I also finished another large 22×28 inch ink drawing. It happened slowly then suddenly. I worked on a sketch I had in mind for it and then transferred that sketch onto the big paper. After that it sat there on my easel for days. I wasn’t into working on it. It was probably that my back was hurting, less since I got new shoes, and I didn’t want to stand there twisting into various positions to draw. A lot of twisting goes on when drawing on a large piece of paper on an easel. This morning, after I finished an ink-book page, I decided to draw a line or two on the large drawing. I wasn’t planning on working on it today but wanted to start it a little. Then I couldn’t stop. I kept working on it with all the free time I had in the day. I finished it. I don’t even know how I got it done. At times it seemed like someone else was doing it since I never made a real conscious decision to get it done. One of those you start it without thinking about it and before you know it you’re done things. They’re pretty rare.
So that’s my quiet and uneventful week. Back pain, new shoes, resting, and working on some things. I really could have done without the back pain.
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