The Need

Today's workout was enjoyable enough that I may have accidentally caught the elusive unicorn of 'fun.'  That being said, why is it now that blogging feels like a leather-clad act of masochism without even the courtesy of some twisted, erotic jollies?  I'm actually asking here.  Why, on a shitty day, does the reflection flow so beautifully and with so much purpose, while on an awesome day I wanna gouge out my own eyeballs with a dirty spork?  Also, how come the term "dirty spork" makes me feel like a utensil racist?

Well, seeing as this is my third post on an obscure blog, I have no followers to date, and this all sort of feels like intellectual masturbation anyway, allow me to venture a guess.

The word, ladies and gentlemen, is need.  Why does anyone start anything if not for a raw, unadulterated, snot-covered, tear-strewn, don't-look-at-me, please-help-me, I-love-you, I-hate-you ball of need lodged tightly in his or her throat.  In my first post I called this blog 'an act of desperation.'  That wasn't a joke.  Sadly, that was a self-heimliech.  That was me choking on need.

In situations like these where you find yourself feeling lost, inadequate or just regular unhappy, the need for reflection becomes a matter of survival.  It requires a brutal, honest, and fair assessment of the thoughts, emotions, and actions that both put you in and will free you from your aforementioned misery.  If your mind were an ocean (and it is), treading water is no more useful than drowning.  We must reflect, we must understand and then we must swim for shore.  Failure to do so is fatal.

Today was a really good day.  In the gym I felt my feet on the ground, I dug deep and I smiled.  I smiled a lot today as I should.  Today, I have a little more control over my life than I did the day before and today (thank God) the reflection feels a little less necessary.  The need is shrinking and I can finally somewhat breathe again.

Unfortunately, this blog now runs the risk of becoming an unpleasant chore, as pain-in-the-ass as ironing.  It sucks/is awesome that this happened to me so quickly, but it probably won't last forever and for the duration of this project it is a chore that must be done.  After all, I rather enjoyed Day 2.

So, thanks for reading, and I'll see you tomorrow.

The Musical Stylings of Chaz and AJ

No music speaks to you quite like classic rock when enduring an hour or so of self-inflicted physical anguish.  When you're five reps deep in the third set of your second rotation of wide-grip pull-ups, veins bulging out of your neck, eyes bulging out of your face, and Axel Rose welcomes you to the jungle, baby, you actually feel like you're gonna die.  Nothing like pumping iron to a little Iron Maiden (trust me, the lyrics hit you on completely new levels).

The first day of anything is difficult.  The doubts and worries associated with a new journey are somehow magically amplified just before that first blindfolded step, like playing an existential game of Pin the Tail on the Donkey.  You have to pretty much trust you're not dizzily walking into on-coming traffic, but you're not 100% about it.  Maybe you'll trip down some stairs, maybe you'll crack you're skull open on the landing, and maybe you'll wind up in an emergency room thoroughly regretting you ever played at all.  Suddenly the couch calls out your name and ambitions seem a little more silly than they do important.  You find yourself staring at the family dog sprawled out on the floor, dragging his balls across the living room carpet, looking back at you with a mixture of shame and satisfaction and you think to yourself nostalgically, "God, that could be me."

I was that dog from 8:30-11:45 this morning (and years upon years before that) desperately postponing the inevitable.  I retreated to the refrigerator, the television, the Internet, the toilet; I read a chapter in my book, and brushed my teeth twice, and racked my brain for anything I'd rather be doing, please God I don't wanna exercise.  My call time for work rapidly approached, my window of opportunity slowly chipped away and I almost didn't make it.  I almost pushed it off to tomorrow, yet again.  I almost quit this project on the very first day.  But then... I didn't.

I swear if I hadn't published that damn mission statement yesterday I would've just popped some jiffy pop, popped in a movie and pretended this whole thing never happened.  Yesterday it would've been far too easy not to hold myself accountable.

Rep by rep, inch by inch, the universe kicked me square in the crotch over and over again with a sadistic little smirk on its smug fucking face.  Ow, my arms hurt already.  Oof, I'm out of breath.  Christ, I'm cold, or I'm hot, or I'm just freakin' uncomfortable in a million different ways but I held to my Classic Rock and then! ... a screw gave way.  Not a figurative screw, an actual screw.  One second I'm mid bench-press, the next I'm 45 degrees closer to the ground struggling to stop 125 lbs of bar bell from crashing down on my throat.  Not making this up.  Somedays the universe is just a raging cunt.

It took me about 30 seconds of cursing through clenched teeth before I managed to set bar securely on safety catches.  I wriggled out from underneath the bench station, sit-up sat up, and breathed out one giant, grateful exhalation.  On the radio, those sons-a-bitches from Stone Temple Pilots told me, "I'm half the man I used to be."  (... Yeah, I get it.  Fuck you, too, Scott Weiland.)

It took long minutes to convince myself that this wasn't some terrible omen.  My mind buzzed with a million and one reasons to stop, every excuse as enticing as that second pot brownie, but heading for the door I realized, Wait... I didn't die...  Damn it.  In fact, I survived rather thoroughly.  Not a scratch, not a bruise, my heart still beating and my back still sore and excuses are for dead people.  Unfortunately for my lazy Irish ass, I found myself quite alive, and so I turned around.

It is now forty-five minutes later.  My tits hurt, I can't scratch my shoulder blades anymore, and I smell like 26 different flavors of ass.  However, I feel more alive than I've felt all month.  Shocking no one more than I shock myself, I'll call this a begrudgingly successful day one.

Thanks for reading.  See you tomorrow.

The Obligatory Mission Statement

Waiting is a difficult thing to do.  It causes anxiety, frustration, and worst of all boredom.  I hate waiting.  I hate commercials, and lines, and traffic, and timers ticking down time that could probably be better spent.  If minutes were mushrooms they'd accumulate and compound on one another into one giant, decomposing pile of fungal, festering years wasted in waiting.

The worst part is the willful nature of it all, as in we actually have a say in how choose to spend our time.  However, when  free and capable adults choose to spend their time miserably, you know, not spending their time at all, the word changes.  Suddenly we're not merely waiting anymore, we're procrastinating and the wasted years of our lives become thoroughly, shamefully, embarrassingly, our own damn fault.

Well I say fuck that.  I am 23 years old with dreams and ambitions and places to see and people to meet and an entire life to live and love and I am sick and tired of waiting for it to start.  I am an awful offender.  I have procrastinated my entire childhood down the disappointing drain.

If I'm being honest here (and this is anonymous, so why not) this blog is a pitiable act of desperation.  A drowning man's flailing attempt to take control.  When I was 18, I was emotionally stable and physically fit to the point of comfortable nudity.  Today, I am far too thin yet somehow still soft around the middle and yesterday I cried alone in my room for no less than four hours.   When I was 18, I felt good both with my body and my place in the world and simply put, I miss that confidence. 

I'm not claiming I was perfect in my youth.  In fact quite the contrary.  As is typical of teenage angst, my unbridled love of self was only outmatched by my internalized hatred of the world.  After half a decade of fuck-ups, fuck-offs, fuck-my-lives, and thank-fucking-god learning, I find myself looking at a photographic negative of my 18-year old self.  While fortunately I have lost my virginity and learned how to somewhat appreciate the world for all the gifts I am lucky enough to have a part in, I am also unavoidably disappointed in myself.  If the world were my favorite television show, I feel like the failure watching it from his couch.  I seek balance.  I seek rediscovery.  I seek a love for self while maintaining a gratitude for the world that allows me to do so.

The title of this project is '150 days.'  That's roughly 5 months total, or one month for each year I've pissed away since I legally became responsible for my own actions.  Within this time I am requiring of myself only two things: exercise for no less than 30 minutes a day and blogging for no less than as-long-as-I-freakin-feel-like a day.  A note: It takes 30 days of due-diligence to effectively establish a habit and 3 days of fucking-off to thoroughly screw it up, so "daily" is the key word here.  I am absolutely forbidden to skip a day.  The blogging serves a dual purpose: 1.) so that I can prove to myself that a self-imposed obligation can hold me accountable for my actions, and 2.) so that in the process of a mini-metamorphosis I can better remember and reflect upon the often painful and more-often-than-not wonderful ups and downs of change.  Even if I won't see it 'til retrospect, this project is a cocoon and today I am a larva.

Thanks for reading.

See you tomorrow.