Putting My Back Out Of It!

For those that don't already know I have a back problem, well technically it’s an acute muscle injury on the right side of my lower back I got a couple of years ago from a job hauling bags of mail out of a container that was approximately one foot shorter than me. I’ve had this problem for years and I pretty much have the pain on a regular basis, especially when I sit on really poor chairs and even more especially for really long times. I was having it seen too a couple of years ago quite regularly but when I lost my job I couldn’t afford the $100 fortnightly charge to keep my back in check. The long up shot of this is I sometimes have major issues with my back, especially when I’m extremely overworked and haven’t had time to rest... however this has never truly stopped me, but if you see me working the muscle in my side, you now know what that’s all about.

So anyway, I’ve been working pretty hard for the last few weeks trying to get a lot of stuff done for the upcoming Supanova Perth, which includes getting three costumes done, working on the PAC logo, Facebook page, Business Cards, etc as well as the usual amount of running around I normally do PLUS having to deal with things whilst my parents and their friends were on holiday for two weeks. Coupled with the fact that I’ve not been sleeping well for the last few weeks, I’ve been feeling pretty burnt out... the lack of updates on this blog has been a reflection on that, however I’ve been honestly trying to write more substantial posts rather than the whiny tired blog just to keep up that ridiculous promise all those years ago. To be painfully honest (which is a thing with blog I suppose) I haven’t even thought about this blog recently, I’ve been too damn busy to even think about a daily update. That being said I have at least two draft blog posts I just haven’t gotten around to finishing, which I intend to do so at some point.

Back to my back. With everything I’ve been doing I haven’t been really resting my back up properly, and I find myself more and more sitting in chairs which either don’t support my back or I’m hunched over for hours at a time doing things like sewing or prop building (in fact I just felt my back ache as I type this). Lately it’s been getting worse to be honest, thankfully my car is still very comfortable to drive with my back even for the insane amount of driving I sometimes do, but I’ve found myself trying to massage my back after nearly everything I do, and it was feeling pretty crappy last night as I was finishing up a big part of one of my costumes and I was still feeling incredibly sore when trying to get to sleep (which hasn’t helped that whole sleeping thing). Problem was I had to get up incredibly early this morning to take my friend Jon to the airport for his flight to Sydney... through morning peak hour traffic (I don’t care, it’s worse than at night... at least night time doesn’t make you late to work). So I woke up at 6am so I could put the solar booster on to have a hot shower before heading out, and my back was in agony. The heat just barely made a dent to it, but I put on a brave face and went out and got it done.

The TL:DR version of today was, picked up Jon, loaded car, drove to airport, unloaded car, hung around, met up with Brent, saw Jon off, went to Spotlight, drove home, went to bed in near agony. I feel much better after the 3 hours of semi-sleep then I did after the less than 5 hours of actual sleep, but yeah I need to rest up for maybe a day or two so I’m not completely ruined by Supanova... which is hard to do as I still have a lot of work to do between now and then and I might only be able to get two of the three planned costumes done in time. I’m feeling completely burnt out as I type this and I know I’ve still got a lot of work ahead of me, especially as I’ve not received any real help with these builds... but that’s more due to my stubbornness then anything.