And just like that, I entered the underworld.

Where consistency beats intensity.

How blissfully unaware I was of this underworld. I cruised along the surface like an ice skating olympian in my asymmetrical sequinned leotard, wind in my hair sprayed hair - flicking shaved ice in my wake and seamlessly landing spins and shimmering tricks. Until one day, a hole in the ice appeared. The ground was now above me, going on as though nothing had changed. I had slipped through a crack in the ice. I had entered the underworld.

A place where I am silent, surrounded by cold water and darkness. Every day trying to survive. Nobody can hear me above the surface - I get it, I used to live there too. A day down here is like a minute of time up there. I’m in a parallel universe - and I’m shamefully aware that there are a lot of us down here. It really is a wonderfully descriptive title: Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. ME/CFS, long COVID or post-viral fatigue - whatever diagnosis you’ve got and whatever virus and/or stress triggered it, the outcomes are the same. We are silent millions, all trying to work out whether a shower or making dinner should be today’s priority. That’s the world of recovery and pacing. The tools that got me here can’t get me out. I need to learn recovery and pacing, the hard way.

It feels like a hallmark moment of middle age: accepting that consistency beats intensity, over time, every time. Compound interest and all that jazz! So, in an effort to back a winner, I’m having a go at backing consistency - having recently adopted a ‘pacing’ strategy.

Pacing is not Instagrammable, is psychologically tough, has no end date and may be for life, and is non-linear when coupled with a menstrual cycle  - so whilst not very appealing for these reasons  -  it is also: freely available to me, gives me agency over my own recovery, and is working.

Pacing works contrary to my previous understanding of my body: that to build capacity, we stretch ourselves, over and over again. For example, if I swim 1km today comfortably, next week I can likely swim 2km - with the occasional recovery day in between. Doubling distance while maintaining intensity was a real possibility that I could rely on when I needed to. Now, if I stretch myself even a tiny bit - I pay for it in a crash-and-burn cycle that has felt like an existential crisis with a twist of confusion, disappointment and grief. So, I am learning this new way. I’m stumbling, but I do eventually keep getting up. Instead of extending my top line (distance and intensity), I am slowly stabilising my bottom line (baseline movement each day without a crash) with a view to have more good days, fewer bad ones and one day soon, be back in the water - at Greens Pool specifically.

My charismatic Year 3 sports teacher always asked me (via yelling!), to give 110%. While nerds rolled their eyes and said ‘That’s not mathematically possible’, I thought, fuck yes! That’s what I want to give! Gimme that start line!

Intensity thinking is the culture we’ve been immersed in. Achievement-oriented, we’re ready for intensive bursts ALL THE TIME while the breaks and recovery times dwindle.

I think of it in context to the way we (humans) treat this planet as an extraction economy - as if it has unlimited resources or that we can ‘fix it later’. Our ‘boom and bust’ economy in Western Australia is a case in point. Now add to that overdraw the compound interest we are accruing. There’s the rub. We need to treat this planet, our bodies and our communities with the respect they damn well deserve. And sometimes, that means giving up what we think we need and creating space for our planet, our communities, our bodies - to recover. You catching my drift? It’s personal, but it’s also a fractal, whole-planet approach (yes, I took a lot of mushrooms in the ’90s) to healing and recovery. Perhaps it is narcissistic of me to think that healing myself might change the world, but what choice do I have on this razor edge?

If hope is a skill we can practice by imagining alternative pathways for the future, this is my ground zero. Every morning, I take a chance on pacing and hope that things will get better.

Photos by me, Bo Wong.