There are multiple me’s- sometimes I’m pretty cool and relaxed, sometimes I suck. I’m like a box of chocolates. Delicious. (See what I did there, you may have assumed I would say: you never know what you’re gonna get. But I didn’t.)
This magical list of who I am on any given day is long and I’m sure you have a list of your own because none of us are one dimensional people. Now, my least favorite versions of myself includes days I haven’t had coffee yet, when I’m hangry, and when I’m driving. Yesterday around noon I had just bleached my whole kitchen and started folding laundry to find a whole other stack that, I swear, appeared out of thin air. Damn you, laundry. The minutes ticked and I knew I wanted to get to the gym, but I also knew the hunger was coming on strong.
It was now or never and I found myself threatening and manipulating my friend to come to the gym with me.
She actually called me mean, but I know that we all need tough love sometimes and eventually she would appreciate my cruelty. And she did. So off to the gym we went, in the early stages of hangry, only to find a packed house of resolutioners.
Pause in my story: I need to give credit where credit is due and tell you that Sass and Balderdash, great name by the way inspired this post, so do yourself a favor and check out her page and post here.
Back to yesterday. We enter the gym to a line for the treadmills- no available machines. AND I forgot my headphones. Clearly I can only blame all of these problems on the phony gym rats. Alison questioned, when are they going to stop coming, February? We both hoped our gym would be cleared and went on to find any machine without a wait list.
One great thing about our gym, and there isn’t much, is they purchased a separate space in another building. This building is the red headed step black sheep child of the gym and therefore, no one pays any attention to it. Let’s call a spade a spade, it’s a weirdo. But we found ourselves in an empty back room, used by only one woman that was eyeing us and clearly thinking to herself: I wish these phony gym rats would go away. Probably because we spent a considerable amount of time sitting on mats and talking about how heavy the weights we chose were.
When she finally left we found ourselves actually working out- lunges with weights, abs, squats. And I felt like a newbie at the gym because of that woman’s judgy eyes- seriously, she made us move our mats over for her! I gained a new sense of respect for the resolution goers. We all started somewhere. For me, it was August 2013- because naturally I would start as bikini season is over and no one is going to the gym because it’s too damn hot. But if I walked into a room full of judgmental people, grilling my intentions, it’s possible I would have quit.
My hope is that if your resolution was to change your habits and get fit, that you stick to it. Even when you want to quit or life seems busy. Because if as Americans we spend nearly three hours a day watching television, at least manage to find 30 minutes of leisure in front of a machine with a tv! Compromise… It’s what life is all about.
So to every resolutioner, welcome to the gym.
As for my friend and I, this was our conversation today:
See. We love it.
52 Miles per Month 