About a month ago I decided to make
yet another effort to peel off a few pounds toward a goal of improving my
overall health. Each time I go through this process, I’m less successful than
on the previous attempt. This round led me to one of those “aha!” moments as to
what seems to be happening. That in turn revealed a truism about my broader
behavior.
My fitness attempts consist of two behavioral
categories—things I should do, and ones I should not do. For example, I should
exercise, and I should not eat sweets or a lot of cheese. I’ve discovered that
I’m much better at the “not doing” than I am at the “doing.”
Other than my morning sit-ups and
stretching on the floor, I’ve had very little exercise over the past months. (I
use the term sit-ups loosely.) Oh sure, I walked a mile or two about once a
week. Maybe twice somewhere along the way. But if I want to get fit, I need to
be walking about three miles at least three times a week. What’s worse, I’ve
missed those daily stretches a few times. I used to do them religiously.
On the other hand, I’ve been quite
good at avoiding sweets and cutting down on cheese. I simply don’t bring it
into the house in the first place, or I bring very little. I no longer eat ice
cream right out of the container.
What about other things I’m not
doing that I should be doing? Practicing my saxophone for one. Jazz band
practice has been canceled three weeks in a row, giving me a good excuse to
skip my own preparation. And you may have noticed that what used to be my
weekly blogging schedule shifted to bi-weekly some months back. I posted only
once in the entire month of April. Then there’s the pile of mending waiting for
me to tackle it.
To be fair, there’s a psychological
impediment to the mending. Last September, I went to fetch another sock whose
toe had a hole. By the time I walked to the bedroom and back, my cat Kallie got
at the needle and thread and swallowed it. When I couldn’t find the needle and
saw her making funny movements with her mouth, I knew what had happened. (She
tried this once when I was still in the middle of darning.) A rushed visit to two
vets and $2,100 of endoscopy later, Kallie was fine but I remained traumatized.
As you can see, I’m not highly
accomplished at performing any number of tasks on my to-do list. On the other
hand, I perform better at avoiding the interdictions I’ve put upon myself. At
least I used to be. I’ve already mentioned the sweets and the cheese, but there
have been non-gastronomical no-noes as well.
In particular, I’m thinking of my
decision to avoid baiting Trump lovers with my blog and Facebook posts. I took
the high road sometime last summer. Not long after, I switched to the bi-weekly
posting schedule. It seems once I couldn’t post political satire, the well
began to run dry. I stayed high for many months, unrewarding though it was,
thus proving that I’m quite good at not doing what I should not be doing.
I have absolutely no idea what
these proclivities say about me. Perhaps they reveal a tendency toward
laziness, something buried for many decades that has been released via the
freedom of being retired. More likely, they’re just random connections without
even a metaphysical explanation. After all, I came down off the high road in
February with barely a second thought.
I decided I was missing out on
altogether too much fun by not jumping on the political satire humor train.
That’s when I wrote the post: “Post-Election Mental Disorders” and submitted it
to Reader Supported News. They picked
it up, the first of six in a row that I’ve sent to them that they’ve accepted.
I guess that means I’m actually
doing something, rather than not doing it. I’m staying off the high road. I’ll
drink to that. Actually, no I won’t. Cutting back on wine was another item on
my “not do” fitness list. Darn! Oops. Not darn. Too dangerous around Kallie. On
that note, I’m going to stop writing this now.
