Am I a "Gym" person? Time to find out...

Hi all,

Last weekend I had the discovery that my belt makes me uncomfortable. It took me a few hours to figure out, but when I did, and moved my belt one notch in, my world darkened. I've known for awhile that I've been out of shape, but this brought things home. I'm extremely happy it wasn't a health issue or anything serious, so I decided to take action before anything serious happened.

Some backstory:

At the end of 2011, I was working for RIM, and they have an amazing package designed to keep people happy. They give you a certain amount of money every year to spend on fitness, smoking cessation, or to make your health better in any number of ways.  It's a fantastic idea, and I fully commend them in the pursuit of happiness for their employees. One of the cornerstones of their idea is a deep discount on gym memberships at Goodlife.  When I joined RIM in 2006 the number of Goodlife franchises in Nova Scotia was 1, and the number of those franchises which allowed men to work out was 0. Since the merger between Goodlife and Nubody's - that number has increased (11 in Halifax Regional Municipality), and the discount increased, so... what the hey, I got a year's membership.

In January of 2012, I went into the Goodlife near me, signed my membership agreement, got my swanky barcode thingie to let me in the doors, and I was all set to go.  Although it was offered (and kind of expected), I had no intention of working out that day, but would absolutely return to do the exercising.

Fast forward to last weekend, and I went back a grand total of 0 times. I returned tonight to make sure I was still able to come and play, and sure enough I was. The staff were super keen to have me join classes, and it kinda weirded me out, but I went on the treadmill for 30 minutes (running is way too generous a term for what happened) and came home.

It was kinda surreal, as I hadn't been in a gym or locker room environment since my teens, and I was very unhappy at first, but I've decided to keep going when I can.  I won't do any classes (yet), but I'm going to "run" on the treadmill and listen to music, and see where that takes me.

Any helpful hints of stuff to try?

Deep thoughts while lawn mowing (or how I learned to stop worrying and keep doing chores)

Hi all!

My first sentence of this entry seems sarcastic, but I assure you it isn't.  I was lucky enough to get to mow my lawn today. It's a chore that I don't mind doing, but when the chips are down, I'd rather sleep, eat, surf facebook, or whatever. It leaves me with a gnawing guilt kind of feeling, especially when I feel the blades of grass tickling my knees (only slight exaggeration).

Today's domesticated bliss was enhanced by inspiration yesterday when a friend's awesome t-shirt read "What if we all lived like heroes?" The thought went around and around my head through the chore like a fly that doesn't quite understand why the light it's bashing itself against is awesome. I started thinking about how I express my likes and dislikes, which used to be done the old fashioned way (telling people about them), but then progressed to t-shirts, and then evolved to facebook.

Somehow, my mind went from thinking about that expression of what I like to faith and the potential of the human mind.

I can't explain how it happened, but that's kinda what's cool about it.

This evening, a series of chores lined themselves up in such a way that I could get a bunch done really quickly, making me think that I leave too many chores undone because they don't line up properly.  Regardless, I got them all done, but because there was a bunch of them to do, my mind didn't have the freedom to wander like it did when I was mowing for an hour.

Conclusion - I should mow the lawn more and really get to work on WebThought so I can capture these thoughts directly from my brain and transcribe them somewhere quickly.

Yay labour day!