Although I have grudgingly accepted the fact that at least some amount of exercise is inevitably in my future, the conundrum of how best to get it remains. Doing anything resembling a sport is, for obvious reasons, definitely out. A few years ago, before I became completely doughy, I had worked up to running five miles a day. Unfortunately, I had to stop, though, because the cost of taking an Uber to get home was starting to be significant. Besides, it’s really hard to keep the whiskey from sloshing out of a crystal glass when I run, and I refuse to drink good liquor out of a sippy cup.
Here, in California, people often drive for an hour to get to a gym where they can run on a treadmill for 30 minutes. Fitness machines at the gym look like torture devices to me, and I am more than a little intimidated by the thought of risking my life by becoming entrapped in a complex contraption with ropes and pulleys. Though slightly less intimidating, treadmills and their sinister counterparts, stationary bicycles, are dark and crass metaphors for my life, working hard and going nowhere, so I must avoid them, too.
Weights are heavy, and lifting heavy things for no reason at all, except to put them back down again, seems like something crazy people do. You could at least put them away on a high shelf while you have them up in the air. Maybe rearrange the furniture, or build a deck, instead. If you really need a bigger challenge, try carrying me around the block once in a while.
It appears that spending time on repetitive labor to turn sweaty and gross, yet actually getting nothing done, is a common pattern with exercise. My objective driven and sloth oriented nature balks at that, actively rejecting it, even, like my immune system would reject a new liver in spite of how necessary and young it is. Achieving as much goal with as little effort is not lazy, it’s optimization. Hmm, I suppose I could get up early every morning and drive ten miles, but I don’t know if that really qualifies as exercise. The Olympic committee would frown upon someone using a snowmobile during a biathlon; rules, they would say, and cluck their tongues. Oh, I hate them so much!
Well, I do enjoy walking from time to time, especially to the refrigerator, and it seems to come naturally to me, so I might start with some of that for now and see how it goes. If I do it outdoors in the wind, I will need to find a way to keep my hair from moving, since it doesn’t require any exercise there is no need to make it suffer along with me.
—DG.
Inside Doug's Head 