In Brief
As noted previously on this site, I spent nearly six years homeless. My plan while homeless was Get Well, Get Well Off, Get Off The Street kind of in that order, though in reality I have done a LOT more healing in the nearly six years since getting back into housing and still have room for improvement.
From a piece I wrote elsewhere today:
For me, my stint of homelessness was a case of exercising some of the policies noted on this site in an extreme fashion. Being homeless helped me break the cycle of infection by owning very little and doing so very intentionally.
Rather than have a giant pile of filthy crap in a shopping cart and sticking to a very limited area, I camped where it made sense for health and safety reasons even if it was a LONG walk to the library to spend my days online, charging my laptop or tablet, using free wifi, trying to make a few bucks and do research to sort my problems.
I HESITATE to say this because I think people will read the following detail and go "Oy, vey. I will just give up on getting better. There is NO FUCKING WAY." BUT: I got better in part because at one point I spent SEVERAL MONTHS walking six to eight hours a day, every day as part of my homeless routine.
As I described in this HN comment, being active -- aka exercising -- promotes the rate at which interstitial fluid gets returned to the circulatory system as lymph and this is how the body takes out the trash.
We were camped in a little patch of woods and it initially took us three to four hours to walk to the library carrying our backpacks. We routinely picked up lunch on the way -- often a rotisserie chicken with fresh bread and sodas -- and stopped at a public park with picnic benches and ate.
At first, we were getting to the library around noon and leaving around five p.m. to start the long trek back to camp. My sons would go straight to camp and set up the tent and I would make a slight detour most nights to grab any snacks we needed or what not.
Over time, we got healthier and quicker and the walk began taking 90 minutes to two hours instead of three to four hours and I sometimes arrived at the libary before it opened at 9:00 a.m. and we stayed later into the evening, giving us more time to do things online.
If you want to know what it will take for YOU to get well, I DO NOT KNOW. But if you are sick enough, it may take a LOT of time and effort to reverse your health issues.
There's a saying: "The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best is today."
I've been working on getting better for more than twenty years AND I've had those years to work on it because getting better extended my window by letting me keep NOT DYING.
Whatever time this has taken me, it's a quicker answer than "You are NEVER getting well because you were born with defective genes and, oh, by the way, you were supposed to have already died."
It doesn't bother ME but it's hard to talk about with OTHER PEOPLE who want me to tell them "Here, eat this super healthy granola bar and magically get all better." and don't want to hear that the implication is that if you have a substantial backlog of serious health issues, walking for exercise -- aka "to take out the trash" -- may be something you need to do more than the CDC recommended minimum of 30 minutes per day.
From a piece I wrote elsewhere today:
People with shopping carts full of crap inevitably have TERRIBLE hygiene in part because you can't keep your giant pile of crap CLEAN while homeless. A lot of homeless people have health issues and this is a recipe for staying sick and getting sicker -- or becoming unwell if you weren't sick to begin with.So people carting their crap around in stolen shopping carts are generally wallowing in their own filth and this makes it HIGHLY UNLIKELY they will ever get their act together and be functional enough to work to support themselves.
For me, my stint of homelessness was a case of exercising some of the policies noted on this site in an extreme fashion. Being homeless helped me break the cycle of infection by owning very little and doing so very intentionally.
Rather than have a giant pile of filthy crap in a shopping cart and sticking to a very limited area, I camped where it made sense for health and safety reasons even if it was a LONG walk to the library to spend my days online, charging my laptop or tablet, using free wifi, trying to make a few bucks and do research to sort my problems.
I HESITATE to say this because I think people will read the following detail and go "Oy, vey. I will just give up on getting better. There is NO FUCKING WAY." BUT: I got better in part because at one point I spent SEVERAL MONTHS walking six to eight hours a day, every day as part of my homeless routine.
As I described in this HN comment, being active -- aka exercising -- promotes the rate at which interstitial fluid gets returned to the circulatory system as lymph and this is how the body takes out the trash.
We were camped in a little patch of woods and it initially took us three to four hours to walk to the library carrying our backpacks. We routinely picked up lunch on the way -- often a rotisserie chicken with fresh bread and sodas -- and stopped at a public park with picnic benches and ate.
At first, we were getting to the library around noon and leaving around five p.m. to start the long trek back to camp. My sons would go straight to camp and set up the tent and I would make a slight detour most nights to grab any snacks we needed or what not.
Over time, we got healthier and quicker and the walk began taking 90 minutes to two hours instead of three to four hours and I sometimes arrived at the libary before it opened at 9:00 a.m. and we stayed later into the evening, giving us more time to do things online.
If you want to know what it will take for YOU to get well, I DO NOT KNOW. But if you are sick enough, it may take a LOT of time and effort to reverse your health issues.
There's a saying: "The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best is today."
I've been working on getting better for more than twenty years AND I've had those years to work on it because getting better extended my window by letting me keep NOT DYING.
Whatever time this has taken me, it's a quicker answer than "You are NEVER getting well because you were born with defective genes and, oh, by the way, you were supposed to have already died."
It doesn't bother ME but it's hard to talk about with OTHER PEOPLE who want me to tell them "Here, eat this super healthy granola bar and magically get all better." and don't want to hear that the implication is that if you have a substantial backlog of serious health issues, walking for exercise -- aka "to take out the trash" -- may be something you need to do more than the CDC recommended minimum of 30 minutes per day.
