Sorry to write about something unpleasant during a holiday about food, but the past couple days, I don’t know what I ate, but something didn’t agree with me. Sorry if you consider it too much information, but I consider it a part of life.

My gastrointestinal tract was unsettled, keeping me up at night, forcing me to go to the bathroom a lot, so I only slept a few hours each night.

An injury like a cut or bruise hurts and annoys, but doesn’t make you miserable. Your GI tract being off makes you miserable. It makes itself the most important part of your life. You don’t want to move or eat. I guess we evolved to avoid making mistakes twice regarding food, though I haven’t figured out what caused it.

I’m feeling healthy and normal today, but I couldn’t help noting that however well life is going, sickness, especially GI problems, can interfere with everything. I’ve written before how starting my burpee routine is hard, every set I’ve ever done, even after thousands of sets and over a 100,000 burpees. Feeling sick to the stomach, which moving stirs up, makes them about as hard as anything (the 50 after the 2014 marathon comes to mind).

Therefore doing the burpees then are the most valuable. I won’t lie: I did them slow. I barely jumped. It wasn’t pretty. But I figured out how to do them. I’m not proud, but I’m satisfied.

I think of challenges under adversity as finding out who we are. I’m not fooling myself that a little GI problem compares with the adversity people face around the world every day. I’m working to reduce some of those problems. In the meantime, training on what I can prepares me for the bigger challenges and adversity, even if they never come.

People ask me if I do my sidchas when I’m sick, injured, or busy. I say, of course, they are the most valuable. Sidchas develop values including that

• Daily practice prepares me for challenging days
• Challenging days tell me who I am
• Challenging days prepare me for yet more challenging days
• Challenging days brings less challenging within my abilities

Well, doing sidchas develops them. Talking about doing things doesn’t seem to do as much.

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