Last night when I went to bed, I discovered that the pillows on the bed were extremely soft, but given I was already nestled in, I was too lazy to call room service to ask for a firmer pillow and made the huge mistake of going to sleep with these. I then woke up this morning to the worst pain I’ve ever experienced in my neck all the way down my right shoulder. I kept stretching and massaging it every which way, and nothing would help. Why am I starting the first day of my President’s Club resort vacation in pain? This must be bad karma, I thought.

Despite that, I woke up early, stretched, went to the fitness club and did a spin and TRX class, then met some colleagues on my team for breakfast. I kept stretching my neck, and although they knew I had booked a facial around noon, they encouraged me to also book a massage, as well, to get the kinks out of me. So after some steaming, sauna, jacuzzi, and facial time, I decided to indulge even further and book a deep-tissue massage with hot stones.

As I got into the room, I told the masseuse about the bad pillow and my neck/shoulder issue. He felt the area and started working on it. “Actually, you seem really tense overall in this area,” he observed. “You may already have had something here before the bad pillow, and that ended up being the icing on the cake.”

Great – all this tension built up in my body, and it culminates in pain on the first day of my only real resort vacation ever. This is just great luck.

The other added benefit of getting the massage was that he also identified the kinks in my lower back that were a side effect of hurting my piriformis muscle weeks ago, and he managed to get them all out. This was the most expensive massage I’ve ever had in my life, but it was all worth it in the end… especially since it was mostly comped by my company.

Now, I’m wondering if I could make President’s Club again this year. 😀