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2002-07-30 - 9:06 p.m.

EXERCISE: conspicuous in its absence from my life since the summer heat cranked up. I keep ignoring it. I keep breaking promises to myself. I keep having a million other things to do. And it isn't like I need convincing that exercise is important to every aspect of health: it is practically the fountain of youth. I haven't been exercising, and I feel appropriately guilty.

It's just that..... I don't like it much. I was never much of a jockette. In school, sports involving flying objects (balls, bats, rackets) invariably terrified or humiliated me. I was always the last chosen for teams, and spent P.E. class so far outfield that I usually didn't know when the game was over so I could stop picking daisies. As far as I was concerned, exercise was simply one of those tortures that you eventually got to outgrow, and it couldn't happen too soon. I used to say "There are no such things as PE and algebra in real life." Well, I was wrong about the PE.

The rules of life changed. We learned it was important to be physically fit. People were voluntarily doing all that gym stuff. And still for a long time I faked it: young and strong and full of energy, I could always count on my body to do what I asked of it. It might be sore and tired the next day, but it never let me down. I still didn't think I had to exercise. Of course that didn't last forever.

But, I have been dragged kicking and screaming into the world of exercise. I have been a runner and a race walker. I have worked out at the gym, and walked on the treadmill and tried various fitness fads. But it is always a struggle. A part of me always resents having to spend so much of my precious free time on this activity, just for body maintenance. Every day I exercise represents a major battle with the opposing forces.

Today, for the second day in a row, I won the battle. I tossed the Pipsqueek into the car and exported to an area where I wanted to walk. We walked three miles, fast, in the sizzling afternoon heat. It was so hot that things seemed to be moving and changing colors before my eyes..... So hot that I just give in to it, detach my mind, and float in a sea of heat. I am no longer telling myself it is too hot, I am just telling myself to walk. Because it will be hot here for at least two more months, and I can't use this as an excuse any more, although it makes a damn good one.

I have to exercise. While I was walking today I was trying to think of why it is so hard to keep going. And I think it is because there is no goal, or no end product in this endless cycle of working the body. There is the big intangible goal of health. The long range goals of a more active old age....but when I think about what bothers me the most, it is all the time spent uncreatively, when time is in such short supply. Every decision you make represents not only a choice to do something, but a choice not to do other things.

There may not be a perfectly elegant solution to this problem but perhaps there will be some kind of workable compromise. As I was tromping through the heat this afternoon, I was thinking that maybe this was a chance for me to learn to let go of my expectations. Maybe I don't have to be good at something for it to be good for me.

So I am going to experiment with using my exercise time as a time to just free my mind of all incumbent thoughts and be open to new strands of thought. As a kind of observation and incubation time. I'm going to try to incorporate exercise into my creative process in some way.

Who knows how successful I will be.... I'm always coming up with new ideas for managing my life. But I suppose it is what keeps me going. Just the belief that I will get it all figured out someday. Never let it be said that I let anything go unanalyzed. Even exercise.

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