Now.

How do you enjoy the present when it’s not what you want and you can’t will it to be what you want?

In flipping through an old notebook the other day, I found a chicken scratch across a page:

I’m not sure when or why I wrote it, but like most serendipitous things in life, I rediscovered it at exactly the right time: now.

It’s been six months since I’ve run, with no end in sight. I pinned some hopes on a PRP injection into my patella tendon a month ago, and am attempting to be patient to see if that helps, but most days it feels worse than before, even with very little activity and complete rest for a few weeks. And shortly after my fall and knee implosion, I faced the largest OCD flare I’ve ever had - it destabilized me in a way it’s never done before, resulting in a complete inability to sleep, think, work or do anything other than spin in a rumination spiral for weeks on end. Through a lot of fucking therapy, I’ve crawled out of that hole, but not without some lasting damage (maybe one day I’ll share the story and laugh).

But this isn’t a post about the “woe is me” hardships of my own creation over these past six months - god knows I’ve spent way too much time on the merry-go-round of self-flagellation willing things had unfolded differently.

This is a post about now, because I can’t change what has happened. And through some deep self-work this past month, it’s become clear to me that I have spent far too much of my life either trapped in the past, self-flagellating for actions or mistakes made, or fretting about the future, through worst-case scenario planning that will never come to be. My intellect has been swirling in the future, my emotional self cowering in the past.

So in my yearly tradition of picking a word of intention, I’m bringing it back to now. To the one place where I can exist without fear of tomorrows or regret of yesterdays.

And not just to exist, passing the time, but to enjoy it as much as I can, even if I’m not able to move through this world how I’d like to be able to and I don’t know if or when that will happen again. I can’t just sit here as a slightly bitter and very melancholy spectator in life, waiting for the time when I can participate again on my preferred terms.

And in that vein, “now” also involves taking responsibility for my actions if I actually want to change. I can self-flagellate all I want about my knee not improving, but the cycle is only going to continue if I don’t listen to my body and actually give the rest it needs, not the rest I think it needs. And that’s more rest than doctors prescribed, than I’ve ever had to give it before. Docs say I should be able to do all kinds of cross-training, but it’s clear to me that it all makes the knee feel like shit. So it’s not just rest from running, it’s rest from cross-training that could aggravate the knee.¹ It’s using a cane going up stairs because it hurts to go up stairs, and it has every day for the past freaking 6 months but I continue to do it thinking one day it’ll magically get better. It’s a fucking bitter pill to swallow, but the only way to end the cycle of self-flagellation is to…make different choices. To have self-forgiveness, AND to make better choices.

(note to self: just because I could do it, doesn’t mean I should.)

Perhaps conditioned from being forcibly hospitalized or sent into OCD therapy as a very young child², I think I’ve always been reliant on others to tell me what to do, to make it all better, for someone else to fix me. To my credit, I’m really freakin’ good at following rules when someone tells me what to do: you must be on crutches for 6 weeks, you must drink 3 Ensures a day for eating disorder recovery, you have to meditate for 20 minutes each day.

Somewhere along the way, however, I lost (or never developed), the ability to force change on my own, to listen to what my own body and spirit are telling me. Of course the ironic thing is that we all know that’s the only way to any kind of lasting change. Those forced hospitalizations and therapy won’t do it. Recovering for someone else won’t do it. I learned that all in eating disorder recovery when I went back into treatment 6 years ago, finally on my own terms. Not shockingly, that was the time it actually stuck³. So it’s time to apply that to other areas of my life.

So there’s the beauty about the present: it’s the one place where I can find peace and it’s the one place where I can make decisions about what I can do right now to get myself to where I want to be.

It’s sitting in the redwoods forest bathing instead of hiking on an incline treadmill. It’s a 3 minute solo dance party in my kitchen to interrupt an OCD-compulsion. It’s turning off of the phone and taking breaks from social media and losing myself in novels instead. It’s telling a friend no I can’t go for a walk to catch up and need to sit and have coffee instead. It’s asking my body every morning “what do you need from me today?” and listening, really listening.

Armstrong Redwoods Preserve earlier this December

The now is without the fearful what-ifs of “will I ever be able to run again” and free from the “oh my god you are so stupid for wasting so much time Googling your health anxieties these past six months” self-judgments. I’m not great at it yet, but I’m getting there.

So here’s to a year (and hopefully a lifetime), of bringing myself back to it. Again and again and again.

Happy 2026, all.

1. For anyone who has suffered tendon issues, you know this is a maddening process. It can feel completely fine during but then several hours later make it known that you made a poor choice.

2. to be clear, both of these were 100% the right call by my parents and I’m so grateful that they did. But even the best things done with love and care can then affect our patterns and ways of being as we age.

3. For the most part - still a daily choice and practice. But stuck much better than previous times!