The Fitness Zombie Crawls Back Out

Yeah, it has been a hot minute since I’ve updated y’all.

For a while, that was actually a good sign.

Post-surgery recovery was going well. I was feeling better. I was doing more. I was having too much fun to sit down and write about it. Life was good, the corpse was mobile, and I was starting to think maybe this undead husk was finally getting its act together.

That was nice while it lasted.

Then things started slipping.

Old symptoms began creeping back in. New symptoms started popping up. My body apparently decided the recovery story needed a plot twist, because why let progress be simple?

I tried to push through it. I tried to ignore some of it. I tried to tell myself it was probably nothing.

That worked about as well as you’d expect.

When Everything Gets Blamed on Diabetes

I’m not going to get into every symptom in this post. I’ll save that medical mystery tour for later.

But one thing really got under my skin.

Since being diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes, a lot of doctor conversations have felt the same. I show up with a list of symptoms. Before anyone really looks at the list, the answer comes back:

“Oh, you have diabetes. That’s your problem.”

And yes, diabetes is a problem.

It affects a lot. Blood sugar, energy, healing, weight, inflammation, mood, all kinds of fun zombie science.

But “diabetes can cause problems” is not the same as “every problem is diabetes.”

After a while, it started to feel like I wasn’t being heard. I wasn’t a person trying to figure out what was happening. I was just a diagnosis with shoes.

That got old.

Fast.

So I Quit

I wish I could say I handled this with patience, discipline, and a mature commitment to my health.

Nope.

I gave up.

I just plain quit.

I was tired of the symptoms. Tired of the appointments. Tired of explaining myself. Tired of feeling like every concern was getting tossed into the same diabetes bucket.

So I stopped caring.

Not all at once. It was more like a slow zombie shuffle into the fitness graveyard. A little less effort here. A missed habit there. A few “I’ll deal with it later” moments that stacked up until later became the whole plan.

And, shocking absolutely no one, things got worse.

No photography. No dirt biking. No woodworking. No home maintenance. No home improvement.

All the things that usually make me feel like myself started disappearing.

That was the part that hit hardest.

It wasn’t just that I felt bad. It was that I stopped doing the things that reminded me I was still in here somewhere.

The Nudge Back Toward Life

A friend helped convince me that life was still worth continuing.

That sentence is short, but it carries some weight.

Sometimes you do not need someone to fix everything. Sometimes you need someone to stand there long enough to remind you that quitting does not have to be the final answer.

I needed that.

So I’ve finally started doing something about it.

I’ll get into the details in upcoming posts. There are symptoms to talk about, doctor conversations to unpack, theories to sort through, and probably a few moments where my body continues acting like a haunted rental property.

But for now, the important part is this:

The corpse is moving again.

Not gracefully.

Not quickly.

But moving.

And at this stage, moving counts.

The Weird Creative Side Effect

There’s also been a strange twist.

With everything going on, I started getting overly emotional. That part has been uncomfortable. It is not exactly fun when your brain starts throwing feelings at you like it found a box of grenades in the garage.

But something else happened too.

It feels like a part of my brain unlocked.

I have a theory about that, but apparently this post is mostly a teaser trailer.

The short version is that my creative side has been running hotter lately. My guitar playing has improved more in the last six months than it has in the last fifteen years. I’m not saying I’m suddenly good enough to melt faces, but things are clicking that never clicked before.

Even stranger, I started writing poetry.

I have never been able to write poetry.

Stories? Sure.

Sarcasm? Absolutely.

Overthinking a simple text message until it becomes a full psychological case study? Elite level.

But poetry was never my thing.

Now the words are showing up, and I do not fully understand why.

I’m not treating that like an answer. But I am treating it like a clue.

Back to the Survival Log

So here I am.

Back at the blog. Back to tracking the journey. Back to sharing the messy parts, the small wins, the bad choices, the weird symptoms, the zombie science, and whatever lessons crawl out of the rubble.

This is not a polished comeback story.

It is not a grand transformation.

It is not a heroic march into a brighter future while inspirational music plays in the background.

It is just me, admitting I got tired, quit caring for a while, got worse, and finally started crawling back.

There will be health updates. There will be creative updates. There will be some honest frustration. Hopefully, there will be a few laughs.

And with any luck, not too much TMI.

No promises. This is still me.

For now, the Fitness Zombie is back on the trail.

A little stiff. A little confused. Probably under-caffeinated.

But moving forward.