Blogging? Taking photos? Making videos? Knitting? Always.
Answering email? Doing laundry? Emptying the dishwasher? Buying groceries? Getting a haircut? Usually.
Cleaning bathrooms? Weeding? Catching up on paper work? Organizing closets? Going to the dentist? Sometimes.
Such are the activities that always, usually, or sometimes pre-empt, delay, forestall, and otherwise interfere with my exercise routine: an impressive name for a small effort with modest goals. Just a little something to push back on the decline in my strength, flexibility, and balance. Just an attempt to reduce the acute events with back, knees, and shoulders that have led to physiotherapy interventions.
Although I want the benefits of regular exercise, I don’t really want the work of it: not even the small amount of work that I have set for myself. Just how little I really want it is evident from the range of things that bump exercising off my day’s agenda.
Creative pursuits taking precedence? Hardly surprising. Maintenance activities? Disappointing. Unpleasant tasks? Disconcerting.
But so it is. I can be philosophical or discouraged, or any place in-between, but what really matters is carrying on. If not always then at least usually sometimes.
Having a large dog turns exercise from an occasional routine to a daily necessity. But I have the same difficulty with practicing the recorder as you do with exercise. Everything “sometimes, usually, always” gets in the way. The group of us gets together on Monday afternoons; we learn what we’re weak at; we commit ourselves to practice and improve during the week…. And then Monday rolls around again, and I realize that — if I’ve been lucky — I might have done one, maybe two, rarely three practice sessions.
Incidentally, I enjoyed the triplets in this piece.
Jim T
Jim T – Yes to the “not getting around to something I supposedly want to do.” At some point, it makes me wonder whether I know what I really want. 🙂 But I can also avoid the truly unpleasant. Decades ago, I used to find myself rearranging furniture, literally, when I was avoiding studying for a calculus exam.
Do it with a buddy, by most accounts that helps folks stick to a regimen they want 🙂
Or join an awesome gym with fun and different classes 🙂
See you soon!
Kate
Kate – I expect I can defer implementing the workarounds also . . . 🙂 I think I hear my dishes calling.
I’ve hurt myself exercising too hard — that’s MY excuse!
Barbara – And an excellent excuse it is, too.
If I don’t go for my daily walk first thing in the morning, it won’t happen. Not usually, not sometimes, not ever.
Tom
Tom – I did try doing my exercising first thing (before even breakfast) and that wasn’t good. But after I eat I need a little settling time, right? Problem is, I get too settled.