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I promised a new post every Friday, and I thought that would be easy, but consistently writing something I think people will find interesting is harder than I thought. I also started going back into the office this week since my calf has healed quite a bit, leaving me with even less time due to my long commute. But a promise is a promise, so here I go.

Also, if you read this and regret spending the 1000 XEC, don’t hesitate to ask for a refund, because the truth is it’s not about the 1000 XEC but about knowing that I was able to create something others valued enough to read. Another way of putting it is that each unlock is a market signal. Same goes for a refund request.

I guess one thing I can tell you about, though it may not be very interesting to some, is my recovery from my pulled calf muscle. To be specific, the doctor described it as a grade 2 tear of the gastrocnemius muscle. It’s also commonly called “tennis leg” since it happens so often to tennis players.

When it happened, I thought it would be many months before I could play tennis again, but I’m happy to report that it’s only been four weeks, and I’m already walking almost pain free. Hopefully I’ll be back to 100% in the next few weeks.

Something else I’ve learned through this process is that physical therapy really works. At first I wasn’t so sure. Usually you would think that if something is painful, your body is telling you not to do that anymore, but maybe that’s not true. Each session the therapists would work with me, and sometimes it hurt so much that I wondered if they were doing it on purpose, like they didn’t like me for some reason lol.

They started by massaging the injured area just using their hands, which was painful to the touch, then in later sessions they started using a technique called “scraping”, which hurt even more, followed by a massage gun, which was the most painful of all. But after every session, my calf felt noticeably better, and I realized that I was just being a paranoid idiot as usual.

In case you’re curious, the reason they do all that is to break up scar tissue and make sure the muscle fibers are healing correctly. They also have me doing various exercises, but I feel like I’ve benefited most from the deep massage work I just described.

I’ve never torn a muscle before, so I have no idea what the healing would have been like if I’d just waited for the pain to go away. My guess is I’d still have a big knot where the injury occurred, and I would still be in a lot of pain today. Instead, the knot has gotten a lot smaller over the last couple of weeks, and the hope is it won’t be there at all soon.

A funny aside is that I told my wife about all this. I explained the whole “scraping” technique since I’d never heard of it before. I’m guessing you probably haven’t either, so here’s a short description:

Basically they use this smooth metal tool and “scrape” (don’t worry they don’t break the skin or anything) the injured area while applying heavy pressure. I wasn’t expecting my wife to know what scraping was, but she was like, “Oh, you mean Gua Sha,” and I was like, “Gua what?”

It turns out Gua Sha is another term for “scraping”, and women use it on their face to help their skin look younger and healthier. I see her do it every night, but I just didn’t know what it was called. All I can say is Korean women and their beauty routines…

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