Day 23,721: Finding My Way Back.

After more than month off, I finally made it back to the gym. It took me months to develop the habit of going a big two times a week, with an occasional squeak in of a third visit. It took having a paid accountability partner, aka trainer, for the first year, but after that I had the habit and could trust myself to keep going on a regular schedule. Until I couldn’t.

I stopped for good reason. My back went out. It happened soon after I started this blog. At first I stopped to give my back a break, but within two weeks even the chiropractor gave me the green light to get back to the gym.  I had good intentions and packed my bag two to three times a week but still didn’t go back.

The weather was just awful. It was too easy to just go home and turn up the heat. Then daylight savings time hit, and I was really thrown off. I could come up with other excuses including the blog. Reasons don’t really matter, and don’t really have much sway (except perhaps the first two weeks).  But, I had my reasons and stuck to them.

Finding Hidden Energy

Tonight I was about to skip again due to serious fatigue. Luckily a  co-worker came into my office with a problem to solve around the 5 o’clock quitting hour. If the problem had taken long to solve, I would have said it was too late to hit the gym. But, here’s the truth. The problem energized me. I knew what to do and had the answers, so when it was time to leave at 5:30 my fatigue excuse had evaporated.

I’m always glad when I put in the time – at the gym, on the blog, or for whatever I’ve committed. So the question becomes why is it so easy an so quick to break a habit that takes so long to establish?  It’s what keeps alcoholics reminding them to take one day at a time because just one drink can suck them back into a bad habit. Just one miss of any sort can steam roller into a very big miss.

And here’s the sad flip side: Just one day back at the gym does not a habit re-establish.  I have my bags packed for my next trip. If you’re reading this, consider yourself my accountability partner.  I’ll be talking to you in my brain when I work at convincing myself to skip two days from now. I’m expecting you to not let me off the hook.

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Daily Focus on Gun Sanity:  Today is the 50th anniversary of the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King. In the 60s, we were shocked to the core first by JFK, then MLK, then RFK. Insanity seemed to reign, and we felt in a vortex of evil. Somedays, it feels we’re back in the vortex, but now with lesser known civilians taking the hits. If there is justice in this world, perhaps it is this:  Dr. King was killed with a shot from Remington rifle.  On March 26, Remington declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy. It was owned by a private equity firm, and is now being managed by Franklin Templeton Investments and JPMorgan Asset Management.  If you want to discuss how money affects policy, keep in mind that the once great Remington company is not owned by patriots who believe in the Second Amendment, but rather by financiers who are very attentive to the great American dollar.