Back problems

Wednesday morning while helping Lola up the stairs I threw my back out in this major way. I know I am a whiner about health issues so I will assure you this was not some, 'looking for pity injury' this was like full on fainting whenever I tried to stand up stuff.

Awful, annoying, made me weep with frustration.

The good news is I have a wonderful friend who was willing to stay with me all day and even to help me pee. Also I have a wonderful neighbour who is a yoga instructor/osteopath, so she helped me to both relax my lower back and feel less panicked that I was going to be 30-something quasimoto for the rest of my life.

Around 3:00pm the pain got so bad I couldn't even sit up, I ate a bowl of chili lying down which is both humiliating and instructive. I realized that I have been working way too hard, that I am really conflicted (not just oh leaving montreal will be so sad) about this future move, and I am terrified that when I arrive in Toronto all my amazing connections, like the neighbour Osteopath, and the friends who are both willing and able to hold me up over a toilet, all that will be gone.

Maybe I will end up with a job I hate, an apartment the size of a Ritz cracker, and the worst part no community left. I know I have family, and I have lots of friends, but I think the sine qua non definition of community is lying on your back in agony and having 3 or 4 people, all of whom live within steps of your home, to walk your dog, go get back-pain medication, rub your achey places etc.. That is not something that develops overnight, that's what comes from 8 years of living in the same place, and I am going to be so sad when I leave it behind.

The other thing I realized when I woke up this morning and the pain was no longer making me stupid tired and dizzy was that I am an "performaholic" or maybe a "planaholic". I don't know the word for it, but as soon as I got up out of bed this morning, while drinking a coffee painstakingly made by yours truly, I started two searches, one on Monster.com for work in Toronto, and one looking at the various social work programs and diplomas available in the city.

This is the one I've got my eye on. Which is crazy I know. I am one week finished my first MA, who says I need a second. Some part of me thinks this is just school finishing anxiety, but there's another part that is aware that since I finished my undergrad I have been busy with "self-improving" stuff pretty much constantly, if we count the first 3 years when I worked at XX while teaching myself web design as self-teaching, than I have been "school-hopping" for almost 10 years. Why should I feel like an MA in media studies is the end of the road. It's the end of the road as far as studying and working in tech/media, but I feel like it's just the beginning as ar as studying/working in youth development.

Mostly I just feel like I am crazy, I have less then no money, I have been in school for the past 4 years, and I am planning to uproot myself and head to a whole new city, but for some reason I have this desire to be enrolled in a social work program by September 2009 - could someone please come and hurt the other side of my lower back so that I can truly take a rest?