Six weeks ago, I sprained my foot. And then toddled off to yoga. As you do. Turns out, it’s difficult to balance on an injured foot. Also, kinda painful limping home after. Who knew? So anyway, after a text exchange with my doctor (translation: friend who is a doctor though not my doctor and also not a doctor of feet or bones but it’s pandemic times and needs must), I finally took it easy. Except for this one optimistic Sunday when I went berry picking in flip flops. On account of my foot had swollen up and wouldn’t fit into real shoes. After which part of the injured foot went a teensy bit numb and I texted Dr. Friend an aggrieved message demanding to know why the foot wasn’t better yet and she told me to chill, it would take six weeks.

A sprained foot is not a big deal. Is one thing I’ve learn, in case you too should happen to sprain yours one day. No X-rays needed. And no special treatment except ice, elevation, rest, repeat. So many things about our bodies are self-healing. And self-cleaning, for that matter. Though not our hands. Wash your hands.

But still. Six weeks is a long time. No walks. No hikes. No yoga. No berry picking (during blueberry season, no less). No shoes. All the while, the summer with all its glorious physical and outdoor possibility burned itself out. Being on pause is not my forte and neither is gleaning treacle-y life lessons in setback. There have been no upsides to being out of commission, even in this very minor way. I didn’t have any personal epiphanies. I am not grateful for this idiotic accident that could have been so easily avoided if I’d just stepped a millimetre to the right and not walked foot first into my own bed at eight twenty in the morning.

Yesterday, when my bench time was up, I woke early, laced up my hikers, and met a friend for a nip up Signal Hill. The sky was big and blue, the sun flaring over the ocean, a fishing vessel cutting a V through the water. It was pretty close to perfect except a part of me was feeling sorry for myself too and all the morning climbs I’d missed.

Which is how a lot of this year has felt: begrudging cancelled plans, grieving the loss or deferment of my own tiny, selfish dreams. And all because one corona virus hitched a ride on a pangolin or a bat or whatever instead of some other animal and happened to mutate in just the right way to infect a human. A millimetre to the right and it might never have happened.

Later that night I got to thinking about vision boards and charlatans and the Wellness Industrial Complex and the ruse of positivity, that scam finely calibrated to dupe the powerless, peddling the lie that anyone can manifest any destiny they want with positivity, glue, and scissors. And if it fails? That’s on you. You didn’t try hard enough, you didn’t want it enough, you aren’t enough. Except then a virus comes along to expose the fraud. Good vibes and glue guns aren’t worth a damn in a pandemic. Negativity is an unavoidable, necessary, part of life and elbowing it out of the way, discarding it as useless, doesn’t change that fact. Sometimes it’s fine to just be bitter and annoyed. Bad vibes also, please.