Feeling paralyzed is debilitating, which fuels the procrastination cycle.  The psychological feeling of paralysis may be a bummer, but it takes pain that keeps you physically limited to really hammer it home. I used to walk for an hour or more every day, usually in the evening; always felt better after a long walk.  I rode my bicycle regularly for many years, always feeling better after a good ride.   Now that it’s painful to walk for more than a minute or two, as I wait to see if the arthritis treatment worked, the doctor is encouraging me to refrain from walking as much as possible (until I feel relief from the third injection of hyaluronic acid, mimicking the knee joint’s natural WD-40).  “Don’t walk for exercise,” she told me two months ago.  I haven’t been, and currently can’t walk much more than a block without sitting down to rest, though I’m apparently still limping two or three miles a day in the course of my daily puttering, according to my fitbit.

If you are by nature a procrastinator, cannot get yourself to make that call, or go to the website to fill out the paperwork, file your taxes, find a new doctor, make an appointment, call a company, prepared to spend an hour on hold and then negotiating, or whatever the goddamned thing is — take solace in the things you can do everyday that will make you feel better.  Physical activity is very important to mental well-being, to maintaining a mild composure.   Go take a walk, if you’re stuck in something you’re thinking about, go outside and walk, it will do you good.  And as Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. said “be kind to your knees, you’ll miss them when they’re gone.”  No truer words e’er were spoken.