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Saturday 30 August 2014

WordPress Daily Prompt: Pains and Gains

Do you agree with Jane Fonda’s favorite exercise motto,“no pain, no gain?” Is it impossible to attain greatness without considerable hardship?



Meadow flowers


It is late summer and you decide to weed the garden. Pull out the unwanted and keep the nice ones. I am sure Jane Fonda recognises the problem. To achieve a good result you have to bend and use energy. Unfortunately I never attended an aerobic exercise to show me how to do this properly. My experience in physical exercise is limited to a weekly Tai Chi course, which I am at the moment not able to attend due to severe hip pain: to continue. I begin to weed the garden knowing that this will be a rewarding job. I will gain a weed free garden. Unfortunately the dreaded stinging nettles had decided to move in and hide themselves between the unwanted weeds.

I continued, ignoring the stinging pain in my fingers knowing that without this I would not gain a weed free garden. I progressed through the garden and then I saw a strange shaped leaf, rather large and not something that I had planted. This was destroying my garden landscape. A few quick pulls and they would disappear. Unfortunately this green leaf had a root attached which seemed to be on the way to the middle of the earth. Eventually I had a hand full of green leaves, leaving behind stalks. I also managed to fall in the process, losing my balance. After a quick glance to see if anyone saw me land on my sensitive part, I stood again and noticed that my back did not want to stand with me. I was reminded of this fall for some time, combining a visit to the doctor, collecting tablets for treatment for lumbago. Eventually I could move again, even arise from a seat with no pain, after a few months. Did I complain, did I utter painful sounds? No of course not, I had a good example. Jane Fonda said “no pain, no gain”. Her words were a shining example of how to cope with such problems.

Of course talking of achieving greatness, this is obvious. Day for day, hours for hours, I battle with daily prompts, churning through ideas of how to do it better. Searching for inspiration in great works of literature and scanning through my German-English online dictionary as I am a multitasker. My brain often thinks German, but my actions say “do it in English”. I reread my words of wisdom, checking for mistakes, for “how-to-say-it-better” inspiration. Eventually, the sweat pouring from my brow, I press the magic keyboard configuration meaning “upload” and it is done. My daily prompt is alive. “Oh no” I grunt, there is a full stop missing and I have misspelt a word words. I press the little edit sign and re-write half of what is written, spurred on by the words “no pain, no gain”. I am sure Jane Fonda knows what I mean. She wrote two books and probably experienced much pain when re-reading everything to check that it was a perfect best seller. Do you think she had a ghost writer? No, definitely not, she plodded on with the motto “no pain, no gain”.

How often to I clean windows and my arm begins to hurt, but I carry on regardless knowing that without this burden to bear the windows would remain dirty. My mum called it elbow grease, I just call it elbow pain. It is a matter of interpretation. When I come to think of it, my mum very rarely cleaned windows, we had a window cleaner. The old houses in East London were not built with windows that you could clean. Armed with a ladder, bucket and cloth the window cleaner would climb to the windows on the first  floor and do the necessary. I do not think he had a lot of pain, it was his daily work, but he had gain when mum paid him for the job.

Now my work is done. Fellow bloggers my efforts might pain you to read, but afterwards you have gained something, although I am not quite sure what. However, I am sure we will all be back tomorrow to continue our sufferings. Who knows, we might even gain a Pulitzer/Nobel prize for our efforts, or even the famous WordPress t-shirt, all is possible. Jane Fonda earned millions with her ideas and I am sure one day we will reap the benefits of our labour. And do not forget, WordPress does not sleep. Not only do we have a new grid system but also a new uploader. Luckily we are given the choice to still use the old uploader, should we not come to grips with the new one. I came to grips with the new one, decided I did not like it, so now switch to the older version. I really tried, but noticed I was experiencing too much pain to gain something from it, so gave up.


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2 comments:

  1. Well, when it comes to photography, I think it's true. I get into all sorts of odd positions trying to get a great photo, particularly macro shots, and it's usually painful on the knees, thighs and back!!

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    1. My problem is that I have to take photos from a standing position. If I kneel or squat I do not get up again without falling first of all. By the way I hope your back is improving.

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