jeff covey

I’ve been doing the McKenzie exercises for the last couple of months, with some success. I posted a review of his book here:

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/557661025 3 weeks ago

During the first part of this year, I started noticing chronic pain in my right knee. My self-prescribed solution was to try walking more, and during the months of June and July, I gradually worked up to 10,000 steps per day. Objective number one appeared to be reached. I haven’t noticed any problems with my knee on a regular basis since then. However, toward the end of the process, I started noticing my neck tightening and hurting at the end of my walks. Four days after I hit my walking goal, I sealed my fate by taking my nephew to Kennywood to ride roller coasters. We rode “The Phantom’s Revenge” twice in the front seat, then I agreed to join him in the back seat, blissfully ignorant of the consequences for someone of what I now understand to be my advanced years. As we went over the last few bumps, I could feel and hear the bones of my neck crunching together, an excruciating experience dutifully documented by the park’s cameras. Within two weeks, I was in constant pain which has stuck with me for the six weeks up until today. Walking 4-5 miles a day helped my knee, but exchanged it for a problem which won’t let me walk 4-5 yards before the pain starts.

Because I had to be reestablished as a patient in the office here, I wasn’t able to see my doctor until last week. X-rays showed arthritis between two discs in my neck (I don’t know whether this was truly the revenge of the Phantom, or if it already existed before my ride). The consensus is that years at the computer have locked my upper body into a forward position and I need to retrain the muscles to pull backward. I started physical therapy a half hour after leaving the doctor’s office.

In addition to doing the stretches and exercises they’ve given me, I’m constantly prodding myself to remember to follow the doctor’s advice to roll my shoulders back and keep my ears over the shoulders, a position which feels as unnatural as it feels painful. I’d say I’m strutting around like Francis X. Bushman, except that you don’t know who that is, so I’d say I’m strutting around like Victor Mature, except that you (hale and hearty as you are) don’t know who that is, either.

I had my second physical therapy appointment yesterday. It didn’t seem like they were doing anything terribly demanding with me, but I found myself shuffling back to the car like one of the less spry 91-year-olds, and feeling a sudden surge of kinship with the patients shuffling in the opposite direction.

Among the things which hurt now (walking, riding in a car, sitting in a chair, breathing), using a computer is one of the most damaging. 12-15 years ago, I had serious lower back problems, with more than one instance of laying on the floor for an hour, unable to move. I gave up the regular use of a chair, alternating between sitting in front of a coffee table in half lotus and standing in front of a dresser, and my back hasn’t given me a moment’s trouble since. Now it’s looking like I need to minimize my computer time while I work on opening myself from my hunched-over position. My go-to answer to computer fatigue for several years has been to shift my work onto paper, writing text out longhand before sending it off to be transcribed, but looking down at a piece of paper now is even more agonizing than looking at a badly-positioned computer screen. I’m experimenting by composing this current text using voice transcription software, but I’m finding it much less satisfying than pen on paper. I’ve started fantasizing about a system which takes my pad of paper on the table and displays it on a screen at eye level, like the overhead projectors in grade school (which you’re again too young to remember).

What other career could I pursue which requires keeping the chin up and the head back? Buckingham Palace guard? Canadian Mountie? Ship’s figurehead?

I’m starting to think the answer may be to fight fire with fire, using the computer to fix the problems I’ve created with it by positioning the keyboard and screen in such a way that I’m forced to roll my shoulders back and place my head squarely on top of my neck. I’m greatly reducing the amount of time I spend at the machine, but am at a loss to think of what other work I could do which would retrain me to keep my ears back over my shoulders and my gaze parallel to the floor. It’s the start of a long road, but maybe the source of my downfall can be my salvation as well. 8 months ago

Thursday was the first anniversary of Glenn’s death. I looked into renting a cabin for a night or two like I’d done on the first month anniversary, but the West Virginia and Pennsylvania park services only rent cabins by the week bring the peak season. I decided to take a break at home. I spent the first half of the week cutting down my todo list so I wouldn’t have unfinished chores on my mind, then finished my work by 5:00PM Wednesday and planned to do Friday’s work starting at 5:00PM that day. That way, I could effectively have two days free while only having to take off one day of work.

At 5:00 on Wednesday, I shut down the laptop, iPad, and iPod, and hid them away in a closet. I threw a sheet over the TV, turned all the clocks face-down, and reclaimed the freedom of not knowing what time it is. As before, I made no plans, and just did what I felt like doing as I felt like doing it. I ended up spending a good part of Thursday at the nearby State Forest, finishing a lot of writing on Glenn’s memorial.

By the end, I felt I’d only scratched the surface of the amount of time it would take to really decompress, but I hope I can return to my routine with some perspective on what I’m doing and whether it’s what I should be doing. I do think I should take the tech-limiting methods I used here to carve out a few analog mornings each week. 11 months ago

i expanded my ideas from my march 5th post into a full article:

http://jeffcovey.net/2008/05/15/without-a-net/ 5 years ago

My knees have been hurting for the last six months or so, and I’ve decided to see whether walking more helps strengthen them and make the pain go away. I’ve read about the apparently-arbitrary recommendation that we should all walk 10,000 steps per day, and have set that as my goal. To reach it, I’ve:

• Bought an Omron pedometer.
• Worn it for three days and averaged the results to get my current step count.
• Rounded the results down a bit to start conservatively at 6,500 steps/day.
• Begun taking a walk each morning.
• Created a Google Docs spreadsheet with a column which steadily increases from 6,500 to 10,000 over the next six weeks.
• Started plotting my daily step counts against the target values.

So far, I’ve overshot my goal on all days but one, and need to be careful about not overdoing it and hurting myself. The difficulty lies in taking a morning walk which is long enough to help reach the day’s goal without being so long that just walking around the apartment pushes me a thousand steps beyond it. It’s pedestrian blackjack.

Results after the first week: Legs are definitely feeling it, not yet sure whether they like it. I’m hoping the knees will have good news for me in August, and a doctor won’t have to become involved. 11 months ago

I bought a piano over a year ago, but never closed this goal. I ended up buying a Casio PX-130 on the recommendation of a friend. I enjoyed it for a brief time before assorted crises hit and my piano lessons were over before they’d really begun. The piano stills sits in my living room, though, and waits for me to find a teacher again. 11 months ago

My sisters have agreed to stay close to Dad while I head to the Oklahoma City PrimeTimers gathering over Labor Day weekend. It will be the first time I’ve been there since 2002, and the first trip I’ve taken since Glenn became sick in 2008. I’m watching a kayak.com plane ticket price alert and looking forward to a little break from the routine. 11 months ago

Need to research doctors in the Morgantown area (I have one lead from my nephew) and see how well my prescription is holding up. 11 months ago

I’ve planned since Glenn’s death to post a memorial for him like I did for Dan. Now and then, I’ve taken half a day to sit and write a few pages, but still haven’t finished a draft. I’ve put my other long-term projects on the back burner, as things to do when this was finished. The first anniversary of Glenn’s death is coming up in a few weeks. I should finish this for him and let myself start toward some other goals. 11 months ago

I’ve been in an apartment for nine months, it’s time I get around to insuring its contents. 11 months ago

I had to move out of state quickly when my father had two heart attacks last Fall. I let a realtor and his handyman have their way with the house and put it on the market. As part of the process, I rescued everything I wanted from the basement, and the handyman hauled the rest to charities or the dump. I’m now happily in a basement-free apartment, and the new owners can start filling it again. 12 months ago

I’m satisfied well enough with iTunes Match for my own listening and DropBox for sharing audio with others. 18 months ago

It’s been two months to the day since Glenn entered the hospital, and one month to the day since his death. I’ve started to be overwhelmed by the number of things to be done, the number of decisions to be made, and that aspect of grief which precludes doing any of it because your brain feels like it’s swimming through molasses, and all you can do is sit and stare. Burning out, I opted for a change of scenery and routine.

I decided to rent a camper cabin for two nights in Cunningham Falls State Park. These are small cabins with just enough room for a double bed and a pair of bunk beds. They have electrical outlets and an overhead light, a door which locks with a key, a picnic table and barbeque grill, and a water supply and spotless bathhouse a few steps away. Our parks have erected them in recent years on sites which were previously just for tents and RVs. (The campgrounds are now a mixture of the two types of sites.) They offer a chance to sleep in the woods to anyone who would be put off the idea by having to buy a tent, pitch it, and blow up an air mattress.

It was a good fit for me. I wanted a couple of days away from todo lists, the Internet, phones, and unnatural light, and to test my capacity for consuming banana sandwiches. Most of all, I wanted to get away from clocks, to spend just one day with no idea what time it was. This was spoiled when I realized I’d made an appointment for Thursday afternoon, was going home Thursday night, and had to turn on the cellphone. It was a good run until then. I’d still like a few days when the sun runs the show, waking and sleeping on a natural cycle.

I did, at least, spend the day with no plan, doing whatever I felt like doing next. (That turned out to be a little hiking, a lot of sleeping and porch sitting.) It wasn’t a vacation, but made a fine breather. I smiled many times at little sights and sounds and smells which brought back instant, vivid, and forgotten memories of summer camp, and delighted at how much cooler it was away from the city, under the forest canopy, with the breeze blowing up the mountain. It gave time to just sit with Glenn being gone, and let it sink in a little deeper.

With everything that’s going on now, it’s the best I can do, but it did whet my appetite for something longer and more remote. These camper cabins are part of a ring of other sites, the nearest just yards from you, so don’t go into it expecting Walden Pond. No one was rowdy, but aside from the morning, there are always voices in the distance, and cars driving around. Some of the parks have larger cabins with kitchens, sitting off by themselves. I’ll plant packing off to one with a stack of books and a week of groceries as a dream in the back of my mind.

It did strike me that, at $50 a night, these cabins would make a great alternative to hotels for travelers who don’t mind bringing their own linen. There were several good restaurants near the park, and a camp store for anything you forgot to bring. The only other commodities lacking would be the hotel room phone (who uses that anymore?) and cable TV. Maybe an evening of walking the woods or sitting at a fire with other campers would make a welcome change from dozing off to The Late Show.

I’ve put up photos and a video at http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeffcovey/sets/72157627344932167/ 22 months ago

My new piano teacher wants me to get something to play at home that’s more piano-like than the electronic keyboard I have, which has an organ-like action and practically no dynamic contrast. I usually practice in the morning or at night, while Glenn’s asleep, so I’m thinking of two options:

1. An acoustic upright piano at the opposite end of the house with a practice pedal to dampen the sound.
2. An electronic piano which plays as much like the genuine article as possible.

Both have their up- and downsides. A real piano with the damper pedal on may still make too much racket, and it defeats the purpose somewhat to be trying to develop touch and dynamics while intentionally muting the instrument. An electric piano will never completely match the real playing experience, but can be played through headphones when Glenn’s in bed (or watching TV).

I’m checking Craigslist (wow, are there a lot of pianos there) and getting some ideas of what I want to do. My teacher mentioned a Korg electric which is quite good, I’ve asked her for the model number so I can check it out.

Advice and suggestions welcome! 2 years ago

I had hoped to subcontract work on a big project this Spring, but after shopping a proposal around to several development firms, never found anyone capable who wanted to take on the work, and decided to do it myself. Since Rails seems to be what all the cool kids are using these days, it seems a good time to learn it and update my skills and knowledge along the way.

I bought the Ruby and RoR books recommended at http://programmingzen.com/rails-books/ (don’t tell my ex-boss I didn’t buy one of his! :), and am well into the Ruby book now. Will try rewriting a few of my Perl scripts in Ruby, then when I have a feel for it, move into Rails. Hopefully, will end the year with Big Project done and a marketable skill on the resume. 2 years ago

I took a piano lesson this morning. According to the dates on the journal I kept, my last lesson was on 5/3/2007, almost exactly four years ago. It’s been a busy time since then, but I’m home and on a more regular routine now, and plan to stick with it.

Some of Glenn’s friends were concerned recently that I wasn’t finding any time and activities for myself, and encouraged me to pursue what help the county could provide. A social worker’s coming in a couple of weeks for an evaluation, and one of the results should be enrolling Glenn in a program he can attend Tuesday and/or Thursday mornings, which should allow me to get away for lessons regularly.

I looked up a pianist I remembered from chamber music concerts in the area, and with the school year winding down, she was ready to take on new students. I’ve enjoyed both her playing and her energetic, upbeat personality, and hope we’ll be a good fit.

I worked up a bit of the material I’d learned back in ‘07 to play for her, and she thought I could go ahead and start the first Invention by Bach, the music I brought along in the “hope to play sometime” category. I think it should be a great tool to get the left hand working, to get more comfortable with reading the bass clef (a skill lacking from my guitar background), and, most interestingly, to start to know what the brain feels like when it’s running a melody in each hand simultaneously.

So, as I approach 40 at Summer’s end, I’m excited and looking forward to learning some of what Bach wrote for his kids to play when they were 4. :)

It feels good to be playing something again. Once I get the fingers moving and hit a first plateau of proficiency, I need to find someone on my own level to play some four-hand music with me. A combination of lessons to prepare for and friends to enjoy making music with should keep me on the wagon. Wish me luck! 2 years ago