I feel like this blog could become my diary. “Dear Diary, it was time for me to write about training and practicing–and then I took a month off from writing.” This is hard to say, but that is exactly what happened. I needed to tell you all about the importance of discipline, but I hate it so much that I procrastinated for an entire month. To be fair, I only took 3 weeks off from working out (over the July 4th holiday, after traveling, and an inconvenient doctor’s appointment for my daughter), but still…. I could not lift a finger to tell you about my intentional poor planning. (INSERT LOUD, JUDGMENTAL SIGH HERE!)

I do not like training or practicing. I never have. In high school I had a horrible motto. “If you are not good at it, don’t do it.”

I remember going on and on about loving basketball one day. Whomever I was talking to asked me if I played basketball. I just laughed and told them about my problems with visual-motor integration (I can’t do with my body what I see in my mind), and how I would never disgrace such a wonderful game with my “two left feet.”

Whatever!! It was true that I was very bad at basketball; laughably so. But, I never really tried either. I never practiced. I never trained. I never really tried.

At age 31, I hired my first personal trainer just to teach me how to exercise. I had a baby the prior year, and I was ready to work hard to get my shape back. During an early morning workout, I almost fainted. Not a cute little swoon, but a sick on my stomach, knees buckling…..catch-me-before-I-bump-my-head kind of pass out. We thought I hadn’t eaten enough food; turns out I was pregnant, AGAIN. Baby #2 was on the way, and there went any motivation to get healthy and continue exercising. I WAS OFF THE HOOK. Can’t exercise now. Baby is on the way; exercise made me faint. Gotta lie around and gain 30 additional pounds. I’m sure that I tried again at some point. But honestly, I was just full of excuses because I didn’t like it.

Yet, here I am telling you that in this phase of life, I do all sorts of things that I procrastinated about before.

I exercise…I eat my vegetables…I pay my bills….I put gas in my car. Why now? The honest truth is because I have lived long enough to know what happens when I let things slide. We do not just need to practice and train and have discipline and follow a schedule and do things well and right the first time because it is good character and it will lead to good things in life. We have to do all of those things because life is hard, and every area of life has sneaky little things that could harm you. If you don’t stay up on those things, then….. BAM….. seemingly out of the blue you are no longer getting away with bad habits, and something bad has caught up to you or in this case, me.

Did you see the sentence about putting gas in my car? Yeah, that’s me. I’ve had enough near misses and “Oh my God, if I had just…” moments to know better. You’d think I would just write this blog entry and move on…Nope. I had to embody it. I had to let it become a life enactment….a moment where what I planned to talk about happened right in front of me. I did not write, and I did not exercise, and I have spent the better part of weeks 3 and 4 in this state, riddled in pain.
Because when you get to be my age with my DNA and car accident history, exercising is not just about fitness; it is about the ability to keep walking. It’s about the ability to lie comfortably in bed at night.
And the writing? It’s about making a living or not…..

I am happy to say that today, however, I feel alive. I am walking with only a minor limp. I am sleeping a bit more comfortably, and I even paid some bills before finishing this blog entry.

Oh! And there’s a half tank of gas in my Honda.

I Must Train.
I Must Practice.

Next Time:

IF I AM GOING TO BE HEADSTRONG AND STUBBORN, I BETTER BE RIGHT