This week has been fairly mild considering all that’s gone on. Last weekend was rough, then I over-ate all week and gained back the 5 lbs. I previously lost, which was embarrassing discussing with my gym trainer. Ugh. So it’s back to square one, still hovering around 162 lbs. despite working out regularly for the past 3 weeks. The issue truly does appear to be my food quantities. Bummer. But last week I did very well and was satisfied and this upcoming week, beginning last night so far as I’m concerned, will be better still. Last week was a glip, a reaction to life’s stress, now it’s time to get back on that horse and keep learning to ride.
Forever trying to convince myself that exercise is fun. 
It is, for a while, especially when you’re not thinking about it. Hence why I bring a good book while walking on the treadmill (not nearly as easy to read while jogging I’ve discovered), but each machine is equipped with a small flat-screen television for when I care to plug in my earphones. Still. It gets boring. BUT I’VE BEEN GOING, DAGNABBIT! Oh yes, went in 4 days last week for cardio, with two combining weight training. Might need to return to the workout videos to help round-out my cardio regimen. Gotta do more on my own time since there are only 4 visits left with my trainer before I’m on my own. Dammit, I will reach 150 lbs. in short order. This WILL happen.
I am fairly motivated and am trying to do well in this arena. But when you quit working out for a couple years it’s so darn easy to become too sedentary. It’s tough getting back into a routine, especially when routines have never been your thing to begin with. But my body deserves exercise, needs it, craves it, and my smoking-damaged lungs cry out to be worked. This must happen. Not sure what form it will take later on down the road, but for now I will pursue gym activity along with improving my interpretation of healthy eating. There is no real choice in this matter. My body needs and wants this. My mind finds it a complete bore and wishes my body had a means of staying fit while remaining relatively inactive. Haha! Everyone’s dream!
Still kinda pissed at myself over last week, but it’s okay – moving on and feeling more optimistic about the upcoming week. Reading while working out makes it more satisfying. Maybe I can look into downloading audiobooks to play on my mp3 player. Hmmm….
My knee hurts from spending so much damn time sitting at this computer. I’ve tried propping it up on a cushion since sitting with my feet flat on the floor isn’t a comfortable option, and it works nice, but my legs are so restless, always have been. They move and stretch and try to curl up into an “Indian-style” position, which means the tendons in my knees get stretched and pulled, leading to inflammation. A couple years back, a doctor handed me a bunch of samples of Mobic, an anti-inflammatory medication, but I so rarely take them. Don’t like taking pills if I can help it, only begrudgingly began taking baby aspirins recently (which I need to read up on – by smoking while taking birth control pills, my risk for bloodclot or stroke is enhanced). Ugh. Hate pills. Still wishing to get off these birth control pills too, but…whatever…
Can’t win for losing, that’s how it all feels. But we have to keep plodding along, right? Because there are people we care about in this life, things to do, places to see. That’s what health means to me – keeping my body going long enough for my brain to sufficiently experience and enjoy this life. 
Don’t want to live too long though. My goal is to aim for relatively healthy living to last me another 30 years or so, but we’ll reassess that once we’re further along. 
Sad things do happen, but it’s still a life worth living. I exercise because I do love my life and wish to keep at it. There are some really tough spots, but life goes on. Shit happens, and when your time’s up, it’s up. Never can know when. Rest in peace, my little friend.
The main question that’s bugged me over the years has to do with why we do keep at it. For purely selfish reasons? Because we otherwise might miss our loved ones? Because we want to contribute in our own way to improving the lives of others we come into contact with? Because we care about the human race as a whole and wish to aim toward helping it along? Because we believe a god in the sky will punish us if we do not continue “living out His word”? Because we’re afraid of the unknown? Because we’re simply “instinctively-driven” to remain alive?
I don’t know, dude. My reasons have a lot to do with curiosity, marking boredom as the thing to avoid, which so far has been easy. Hopefully it will remain easy, as it certainly should considering I cannot possibly hope to know but an infinitesimal speck of what truth exists out there. Should occupy a person many lives over. Just gotta keep learning. Gotta stave off as much jading as possible so as to remain open to meeting and interacting with new people. That’s where friends come from…a person can never have too many good friends.
But people will forsake you. Always have, likely always will. Not everyone shares the same life philosophy or abides by the universal “golden rule.” Gotta remain open though, not letting all of that weigh my soul down to where I can no longer to be open to better relationships. This is something that concerns me a good bit, partly because of jading with men but also because of my squeamishness with women. I greatly desire friendships with women but am very nervous in going about doing so, particularly with middle-aged women. It’s a real hang-up I have and it’s bothered me for quite some time. There’s really only one woman I remain close friends with; the rest are composed of acquaintances and “galpals.” This is partly due to moving around so much and never setting down roots anywhere to where I lost contact with people. But it goes beyond that. I have guyfriends spanning many states, but only one true-blue girlfriend.
Not sure why I gravitated toward males. As a child I hung out with girls, but then entering teenagehood we began drifting. We became competitors even when neither of us wished to compete. We became too busy in our own lives, and my lifestyle differed from many of my peers’. Girls tend to judge other girls rather ruthlessly, and my reputation preceded me (unearned and undeserved back then if you ask me – frickin’ wannabe-Puritans). Remembering back, it was my girlfriends’ mothers who took issue with me, thinking me to be a bad influence or some such nonsense. Because I do whatever it is I do does NOT mean I encourage others to follow in my footsteps. Quite to the contrary. Never being popular among my peers, it wasn’t a matter of trend-setting. Geez. Sure, I probably appeared shady in how I avoided my friends’ parents like the plague, smiling sweetly before dashing my friend off, but it was my peers trying to pressure ME to try things like drugs. Sex was more my game, and I’m sure mothers figured that out too. Maybe I had more of an impact on their daughters than it appeared at the time, but it surely wasn’t a result of my urging them to do anything. But whatever. Mothers can’t generally stand me. LOL They used to think I was up to no good, and now middle-aged women and I are living on such separate planes that it’s tough to find a comfortable common ground. Unless they’re stoners, that is. They’re easier to hang out with than the uppity, upper-crust types. Ghetto mamas liked me. Hmmm…now that I think about it, maybe this has a lot less to do with gender and more to do with socioeconomic realities.
Because poor middle-aged women tend to be cool with me. Must it always go back to that class division shit? I mean, what gives? Maybe. But the only low-income women I really know are young, around my age on down. Middle-aged women that I meet tend to be middle-class, or at least fancy themselves to be. But I tend to get along with middle-class, middle-aged men, so what’s the hold up? Maybe because I can speak more candidly to a man than to a woman. Maybe because I worry too much what the woman will think of me or how I might offend her sensibilities, even if indeed they deserve to be offended. See, that kind of thing never worries me with men. We’ll either reach an understanding or we won’t. Plain and simple. With women, nothing is ever simple. That creeps me out.
Plus, most middle-aged women I know are either staunchly Democrat or staunchly Republican with little imagination for anything else. That bugs me. Plus, they seem to care about stuff I personally think is mundane and/or trifling. Like home remodeling/decorating. It’s cool up to a point, but I see no reason in getting ga-ga obsessed with it. Or fashion.
Whoops! Out of time. Gotta head out for a little while.
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