There is a particular pain I live with most days. Nothing profound, at least not in this case. I just come from a long line of people with bad joints and, as a result of taking after that side of the family so strongly (physically, anyway: I represent all of the mental health issues on both sides of my family rather than leaning in any one direction), I also have bad joints. Thanks to a lifetime of largely avoiding high-impact sports save for a period in high school and preferring cycling and swimming as my forms to cardio to running, I’ve managed to get pretty far into my life without joint issues. In fact, in the last few years, I’ve had a great deal of success improving my joint health thanks to regular excise targeted at maintaining flexibility and improving joint strength. Unfortunately, all of that has gone out the window due to the medication I was on a couple years ago and my subsequent struggles to get back into a healthy exercise routine. Which means an old foe has reappeared after quite a few years away: my right shoulder pain.

For most of my adult life, the cause of the pain in my shoulder was my propensity for sleeping on my right side with my arm lifted. Years of trying to sleep in different positions all ultimately ended with me sleeping on my right side again as soon as the pain finally went away since I just gravite towards that position. Even when I was at my most anxious and couldn’t sleep with my back to an open door (which meant I slept on my left side for most summers in), I still kept finding myself on my right side when I’d wake up. Using a bunch of pillows to help keep me in position and to correct my bad sleeping posture helped, and while a lot of that help eventually vanished in the destruction of my back at the hands of my worn-out mattress and body-wrecking medication, it has mostly returned with my new mattress. Up until recently, I’d say I made a full recovery.

Unfortunately, for reasons I have been unable to determine, sitting at my desk at home is suddenly a very bad experience for my right shoulder. It’s exacerbated by my working conditions, but the thing that seems to set it off is sitting at my desk. I didn’t have that problem in the past, before my bed wrecked my back and that medication wrecked all of me, but I also didn’t spend as much time in front of my computer as I have in the last year and a half. I mean, I’ve spent PLENTY of time in front of the computer every year, but it’s definitely gone up since I started playing Final Fantasy 14. I’m hoping to get the Switch 2 version (depending on how good/bad it winds up looking) this summer so I’ve got something to do the less-focused stuff on, but this also shouldn’t be a problem. My desk and chair meet every single ergonomic standard for prolonged use (I made sure of that during the early days of covid), so I shouldn’t be having any problems. Sure I sit in my chair funky sometimes, but it shouldn’t be enough for things to get this bad.

Which means it’s probably everything. Lack of proper exercise or stretching, additional use and wear at work, sitting at a desk a lot, sleeping on my right side constantly, my propensity for leaning on my elbows at my standing desk at work, and bad genetics. Why should only one of them be the reason when they all could be the reason together? I mean, I’m in my mid-30s now. This is the period of life where I’m going to start to develop various constant body aches and parts of myself that I haven’t taken good care of or that are more inclined to fail will begin to fall apart on me. There’s only so much I can do, after all, and my consistent lack of proper sleep for nigh-on two years now certainly isn’t helping, especially not when mixed in with everything else. It’s a recipe for a bad time and boy howdy is my shoulder having a bad time right now. I know it’s not going to fix anything immediately, but I think tonight I’m going to try to sleep on my left side. I should be tired enough for it to work, considering the low quality of last night’s sleep and my sleep in general the last few days, but I definitely also need to get back to proper stretching and exercise, too. Hopefully this will be enough. I am really tired of my shoulder hurting.