December 5, 2009 - Fitness
Nasty day out today so I jogged in place for an hour and lifted my dumbbells. About ten minutes into the jogging I decided, [Wife] being out of town, to remove my shirt and pants and look in the mirror. It was a fine counterpoint to all the praise I've been given lately, to bear jiggling witness to a whole life in pumpkin pie. Gut flopping around like a sack filled with balls. And the condition known as dudeboob.
Though there's something inherently funny about the fleshiness. If I move quickly it takes a moment for the rest of me to catch up. If I jump in the air there's a comic pause while my gut arrives; there's another one as I come down. Like watching a dog move its head as you wave a tennis ball in the air.
Later with the weights and pushups I began to struggle. Who wants the pain and fuss? And so I gave myself a motivational speech. It was this: "Listen, goddammit, what you want here is not to win, not to attain anything in particular. You simply want to be less reactive. Unmoving, unmovable, less afraid. Hard to knock over. You stand in the middle of the wind tunnel and the wind moves around you. Someone comes up to you and offers you love or money or a BLT. And you can take it or not take it and feel fine either way. You do the next ten lifts you're not going to find happiness. You're not going to be less depressed. All you'll be is someone who doesn't equate book sales or paychecks or the approval of strangers or hit counts with your happiness. You can be still and plain." So I said that out loud in my slightly hungover voice, and then I rocked the last rep of ten with great huffs and grunts.