Time to Just Do It
We ran the Hot Chocolate 5K last Saturday with our best friends. Well, they ran it and we walked it. (Also, Enrique did the 15K. He’s incredible!) I love me a metal and I have to say those jackets we got with our entry were pretty darn nice. I will be wearing it in the future. Yes, I realize Kevin and I are dwarfed next to Enrique and Tammy, but we make up for it in girth. Oh wait, that’s not a good thing, right?
Okay, look. We work desk jobs and are stuck at home in the suburbs where you can’t walk anywhere for errands. It’s such a difficult thing for me to get ready, leave the house, walk in a circle around the neighborhood of houses and barking dogs, then return to my damn desk.
We tried a gym membership for variety and weight training. Yeah, that didn’t work very well either. For about a month, it was stimulating and exciting, then “I’m bored!” That was me yelling that by the way.
I love yoga. Well, not yoga exactly. I like how I feel after I’ve completed a yoga class. Ann and I used to attend a regular weekly class at the local gym before Covid. It was so boring. I don’t know how people make their brain quiet to just enjoy existing; it’s can impossibility for me. But I showed up every week because Ann was there. Peer pressure, baby. And I always felt better afterward. My back never felt better. But we haven’t been back since the world shut down and trying to do it at home to a stream bores me so much that I get distracted and start cleaning my room instead of doing the yoga.
But it took me 63 minutes to finish that Hot Chocolate 5K you see pictured above. That’s pathetic. I have zero interest in being a great athlete, but I’d really like to be in better shape. I’m always exhausted, and you’re supposed to have more energy if you’re in shape, right? Theoretically? And my joints hurt—getting old isn’t for the weak. The extra pressure this weight puts on them from carrying it around to bending around the layers is just too much.
So after complaining that there is no way and I just can’t, I’m gonna try. I just need to start with walking and do it in a way that’s stimulating so I’ll keep doing it. Maybe I’ll learn to dictate while I’m walking. I’ve been wanting to do this anyway. So I’ll be the crazy old lady walking around the block talking to herself.
I actually think that fits me too well.
Do you squeeze exercise into your schedule? How do you do it? What has worked for you and what hasn’t?
Yeah, I have to. Sedentary job and all that. I force an hour a day for exercise into my schedule—it’s actually on my daily list, otherwise it would never happen—and I either do it with Lena (walking the neighborhood), or in front of the TV (treadmill and Total Gym). The only “trick” is to admit its importance and then take that seriously. I *will* put a million things in front of the things I need to do if I allow myself to, so I don’t. I treat it like what it is, which is part of my job. I want to write books, but I can’t if I’m falling apart because I’m in such shitty shape—like I was when we met. So I work at being able to keep working.