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victoriousyoungtriads · 5 years

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My contributions to the cart during this evening’s trip to Wegmans included a canister of Cafe Bustelo, a box of Turbinado sugar, a quart container of organic half and half, a giant box of Grape Nuts (the original pea gravel kind, not the flakes), and a gallon jug of organic milk. I passed on the Eggo waffles I craved and the carton of ice cream Kelly suggested. She made some comment about how disciplined I am, and I snort laughed and assured her, put an open box of anything I have a weakness for in front of me, and it will be gone before anyone knows it.

At home during my ongoing YouTube binge of the PathLessPedaled channel, she treated herself to decaffinated herbal tea and I treated myself to some coffee. With lots of sugar. At 8:30pm.

And I’m fucking wide awake.

So I’ve been trying to lull myself to sleep with fantasies of getting up early, drinking more coffee—literally, the ritual of making and drinking it has been absent from my morning routine for going on five years now, at least—eating aforementioned Grape Nuts, doing something productive during the day tomorrow with the pair of 25lb kettlebells, the weighted jump rope, the medicine ball, the exercise band, the pull-up bar, that have been sitting unused in my office for over a year, going for a bike ride after work (up Hamburg?... lol), or maybe hitting that heavy bag that’s hung in the backyard for even longer. I finally tracked down the website to that boxing gym up the street, only to find that a membership with “open gym access” would cost $125 monthly. And I’ve been “donating” $50ish a month to the Y with nothing to show for it for how long?

Of course there’s always that weekly Tuesday morning kettlebell class that I was committed to for a hot minute there, the same one I’m petrified to show my face in thanks to just how far I’ve let myself go since then.

Lib’s group rides this Tuesday evening at 5:30. How difficult will it be for me to keep up with their “casual” pace?

In the past two weeks or so a thought realization has circulated and recirculated—over the last few years and, in particular in the last year, in my work life, my personal life, my home life, things are generally falling into place really nicely.

Professionally speaking, sure I’d love for my raise last year to have been a little higher. Sure I would’ve loved for my promotion to have been more meaningful and come with a more significant—and realistic—title change. I’d love to be better at what I do and would relish opportunities at training and professional development that I have probably already let pass me by many times over. God knows I’d love not to be as stressed out as I have been in the past few weeks with my daily+plus+bonus+rebranding workload that is the hallmark of this fall. Maybe I’m too quick to look to comfort and stability over ambition and professional growth. I’m a Taurus, that’s my thing. I’ve already accepted the fact that the nature of the work I’m doing, the flexibility in my time, and its proximity to home make leaving there a really fucking hard sell, one I’m not much interested in anyway. Not now.

Personally speaking, things with Kelly are humming along so smoothly, it’s still kind of taken me by surprise. We complement each other so well, and living with her is almost effortless. She’s the best sleeping partner I’ve ever had, tonight’s caffeinated insomnia notwithstanding. She puts things back where they actually belong, which, all on its own, is shocking in the best way possible. This is a mature relationship, one in which both parties are squarely on the same page, about stuff both big and small. And it’s pretty awesome.

I’m thrilled to be sharing this new and improved home with her, and, all in all, I’m thrilled with how the house has turned out. Sure, there are details here and there that have given me some pause—

Sure do wish they hadn’t gotten drywall compound all over the exposed brick in the master bedroom and on the chimney downstairs

Could the electric plug have not been installed more securely in the drywall outside the bathroom?

One of these days I am going to yank those bits of T-shirt fabric out from under the washing machine

The removal of the drywall in the guest bedroom and the kitchen looks a bit hackjob-esque here and there, though not unforgivably so

I probably would have been instantly happier with that sleeker, more minimalist and modern staircase setup, but what’s there is growing on me

Seriously, what exactly is powered by that one switch?!

—and maybe I will always crave a modern, industrial, wrought iron staircase. That isn’t in the cards right now and won’t be for some time, if ever. Maybe new kitchen countertops, at some point. DIY, if we’re feeling brave. Exterior windows first, though. And how about I get my head around paying for the goddamned thing first (thanks, Mom and Dad!).

Oh, and I like cooking. And I do a decent job of it. True, all I’m doing is following recipes with pre-measured and pre-provided ingredients, and I’m not thrilled by every recipe we’re given. It still counts. I’m enjoying it. And it all tastes pretty damned good.

So, really—and my therapist agrees—stuff is going, like, really well. Night and day compared to two years ago, to say the least.

The only piece that’s not there—really, at all at this point, by my own standards—is my physical health fitness.

A lot of it is missing how strong and physically able/adept I was, or thought I was. Once upon a time a mere five years ago, I did successfully do one unassisted pull up, and around that same time the goal I’d set so many years before of doing a few at a time actually seemed within reach, in the big picture.

But fuck it, I am a vain creature, and I miss how lean-ish I looked in photos from 2012, at least compared to today. Admittedly I was depressed as fuck and living through the painful dissolution of my marriage and longest relationship, so maybe that’s not a look I should be striving for, but I don’t care.

When we moved back into the house post remodel, I got ride of a shit ton of clothes, most of which fit me reasonably well as recently as two years ago and very much don’t fit me anymore. Honestly I’m not really fitting all that well into any of my clothes, specifically those I’ve elected to hang onto... except the (music) performance wear—billowy black pants with elastic waistbands and clearly plus-sized aesthetic black blouses with dreaded three-quarter length sleeves, all in sizes I once would have been swimming in—my mother has insisted on buying for me in the last year, despite my repeated requests that she not do so, since she’s not a fan of how I look in what I already own (...thanks, Mom).

I decided to hang onto some other stuff I’ve convinced myself it would be worth it to work towards fitting into again. Standing beside Kelly this evening in Kohl’s as she unenthusiastically browsed shelves of rhinestones embroidered into the ass jeans, stretchy jeans deliberately marketed as Mom jeans (don’t you idiots watch SNL?!), and jeans with threadbare fronts and bullshit for pockets—seriously, fuck women’s fashion and fuck women’s pants—I reaffirmed my determination not to buy any new clothes until they’re necessary to replace what’s become too big for me, not too small.

It’s all doable, I hope. I’m stubborn enough, still, to want very badly to be able to get to that point by succeeding on my own, by virtue of my own motivation to exercise and eat better. My faith in that reality has wavered enough to spend $250 on all three phases of Jay Maryniak’s Functional Method workout protocols, the proverbial spine of which I have yet to crack open. And I messaged Nik... a little while ago. He sent me links to visit, including the PayPal one where I send him money for him to help me realize these dreams. Haven’t gotten around to that yet, either. This week, maybe? Cause now I have coffee and Grape Nuts, and boxing gloves gathering dust and a heavy bag hanging in the backyard whose chains are probably already collecting rust.

And all the while I am sitting here thumb typing out these thoughts, I am realizing that this fitness I so desperately want to reclaim—the fulfillment of these goals—is eluding me in the same way that sleep does some nights, tonight included.

I’ve never had complete awareness of the crossover between wakefulness and sleep (does anybody?)—when it happens, whatever my mind was doing in the moments before it finally succumbs to sleep is erased from my memory by the time I wake again. Some nights my conscious, alert mind will catch myself starting to drift, to dream. Once I do, it’s gone... I’m back to being awake and thinking, which is the opposite of what I need to do to sleep, to let go. It just has to happen.

Maybe getting this all back—the routine, the rhythm, the habit of regular, beneficial physical exertion—has to happen, and it hasn’t because of how much I’ve been thinking about it.

So, okay. Can I stop questioning when, and how, it’s going to happen long enough for it to actually happen?

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