Luggage for the New Year

For all of the talk of a clean slate, we bring with us into the New Year our old baggage.

I noticed a faint numbness in my fingertips in November, prompting me to see a doctor. It was determined that the numbness, along with the accompanying sharp shoulder and the intense achy neck pains, were a work-related cumulative trauma injury.

Ergonomics.

Fixing it would be more than adding a back support and a foot rest to my cubicle. It would involve my posture.

My posture – slumped, eyes to the ground, an attempt to curl into invisibility – my posture can't support my neck.

So I have to learn to stand tall, to sit straight. Shoulders back, chest out, just like my parents insisted. Just as I always resisted.

I'm strengthening muscles I didn't know I had. And it hurts. Early going, the pain is not dissipating, but redistributing. It's becoming more tempting to slump back into my old ways. To pick up old bags, reasserting a belief in my worthlessness. Keeping my eyes to the ground and my shoulders hunched.

But to keep the neck pain from returning, I need to learn to be comfortable standing tall, being visible. I need to develop a belief in my worth. Chin up. Eyes forward. Undeniably present.

Such is the promise of a New Year. We cherish the hope that some of our luggage can finally be shed.