Re-establishing habits is a struggle

So, sometime in May of 2019, I injured my ankle.  I don't even remember how I did it, I was just on one of my walks and went "man, my ankle hurts".  It hurt so bad I had to take a few weeks off to let it recover.

When I started being able to walk without pain again, I slowly ramped back up on my walks, always erring on the side of caution.  I eventually got back to 100%, completely pain-free, and thought I was back to business as usual, but in reality, the damage to my established habit had already been done. What followed over the next several months was me gradually going out less and less, absolutely dreading the thought of it on most days, and forcing myself to go out anyway a lot of the time.  In mid-February 2020, the burnout became clear and I stopped going out for my walk altogether.

It seems rather coincidentally-timed with the rise of the plague, but the months of prior experiences are solid evidence to the contrary.  It took until a few weeks ago for me to feel like going out again.  However, I decided to ramp back up even more slowly than I did after the injury.  Several months of rather extreme inactivity had taken their toll on my legs (and probably my weight, but I don't know for sure; I also stopped weighing myself in February).

Fortunately, Nintendo to the rescue.  They released Jump Rope Challenge on the Switch, which I started playing daily, just to work my legs through the inevitable soreness.  Once I got to the point where my legs hadn't been sore for a couple weeks, I started going for a walk on every other weekday (that's Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, in case you live under a rock).  It's not "The walk", it's just "a walk".  One lap around my immediate neighborhood at a (comparatively) leisurely pace.  My leisurely pace is probably a pace others would have to push to attain while walking, and the fact I can still do it is a good sign.

I don't really have any concrete plan for ramping back up further, but I need to approach it differently than I approached the walk when I originally started doing it.  I'm honestly kind of surprised I was able to keep doing it nearly every day for three years.  Leading up to the ankle injury I'd begun taking Saturdays off.  The original reason for starting it is no longer the case; I'm still reasonably fit and just need to keep my weight in check.  To do that, I need an approachable schedule that's easier to maintain than "every day".  That's where the Monday/Wednesday/Friday thing came from, and so far it's working.

I think my next course of action is to increase the number of laps.  This echoes how I did it originally.  It's worked once before, I see no reason why it can't work again.  The only difference is that back then, physical endurance was the limiting factor, and now the limiting factor is not wanting to immediately burn myself out again.

Things are looking up in this regard.