It's returned, yes it has, the neck and upper back pain. This is slightly different than the constant I-work-a-desk-job-and-always-mouse-with-the-same-hand upper back/pinchy nerve sort of pain that I've had for years. This is the I've-been-cowering-like-a-dog-with-my-shoulders-around-my-ears pain I get when I'm holding my stress in my shoulders. You could bounce a quarter off any part of my upper back right now.

I work at home. I have an actual desk. On the actual desk is my work laptop, and behind that is our home desktop computer, which is one of those crazy-huge Macs that we got refurbished (side note: refurbished is the way to go) about five years ago. Unfortunately for me, I can see my reflection in the Mac. It's unfortunate because since I work from home, I usually don't shower and get ready until after I've worked out over my lunch hour, so I'm looking all nasty most of the time in that reflection. But I can also see where my shoulders are, and it's like I push them down and then five seconds later, they're floating back up to my ears without me even knowing it.

There are things that help, and I know this. One of them is stretching. Once when it got really bad, I ended up in physical therapy, and so I went looking for PT stretches online and I found this list of stretches for the neck and upper back. It takes a ridiculously long amount of time to do these stretches properly, which is why I don't wanna. But they help, they really do; it's totally worth it. So I thought I'd share them here in case you, too, have a major pain in your neck, or will because you have to spend a few days straight with your extended families next week.

You're welcome.