Exercising Need Not Be Torturous

One planned activity that eluded me during the first several months of being retired was to exercise daily. Sure – I walked a lot – but, according to my Fitbit, not nearly enough. I went to yoga but just once a week. I bowled with my brother every weekend, but never worked up a sweat or had an out of breath moment.  On occasion I would dutifully head down to my basement where I had set up a working out space as soon as I had moved in, complete with an internet connected television, a Wii sports system, ballet barre, lots of interlocking floor mats, and a separate tap dance floor. 

My goal was to begin a three-week workout DVD that I had purchased over a year ago.  I was intent on starting at the beginning and conquering the workout. But the problem was I hated every single second of doing it. I didn’t have the strength or endurance for most of the moves – even the ones that were considered ‘modified’. I hated being out of breath. I hated sweating like crazy and still feeling like I failed. I hated my hair curling up as the perspiration descended from my scalp and down my nose and cheeks.  

Most days I just avoided going downstairs and putting the DVD in. Then one day early this spring, I realized that there were no rules written in stone that I had to conquer that particular series. Everything didn’t have to be a test of endurance nor success determined by doggedly finishing what I had started. My goals were not to look good in a bathing suit nor to lose weight or inches. Maybe it was not necessary that I feel tortured while en route to physical fitness.  Novel idea.  

So after wasting more time than I like to admit trying to make it work for me, I allowed myself to move on. I did find that another DVD series by the same company was more to my liking. Challenging but fun because it was more like dancing. I didn’t dread doing the 30 minute routines, even if I did sweat.  I opened some ballet DVDs and reacquainted myself with steps I’d done on and off my whole life. After some trial and error, I found a tap dance series that actually simulated a real class. And just like that, I no longer dreaded turning off the morning news and heading downstairs for an hour to exercise.  The best part is that my coordination is improving. My memory for sequences is improving. I feel like I am getting an aerobic workout every morning. I don’t mind working up a sweat because I am having fun. 

I still need to find something that I will stick to for strength training. For now, I settle for a few pushups every morning while I have the news on. I know it’s not enough but for the moment, it’s something.   If anyone out there has something that works for them, I’d love to hear about it.

Resolved: Just Keep Moving in 2014

I’ve slid once again, along with everyone else, into another new year. It is one in which I will turn 61 (Gasp! How did this happen?). I will return to Barcelona (and Gaudi!!), explore the northeast quadrant of Arizona, and shuttle happily from city to city around the Baltic Sea during 2014. I will also begin the arduous (and hopefully fulfilling) work on my dissertation.

As I always do at the end of one year – as many others – I take an internal survey. What was positive, what was negative? What did I accomplish that I wanted to and what did I not do? What am I thinking about as I move my life into another calendar? Here’s what it looks like:

Positive:
* No longer have to walk on eggshells every day. Some readers will “get” that.
* Passed the rest of my comprehensive exams
* Spain with my sister
* Grand Canyon with my brother
* Maine with my daughter
* A class of (mostly) terrific students who stayed awake Thursday nights long enough to learn research
* My wonderful – repeat, wonderful – staff who have my back and are my friends

Negative:
* I’ll get back to that

What did I accomplish that I wanted to do?
* Passed into the dissertation phase
* Consumed less sugar
* Practiced my guitar most days
* Eliminated some of my clutter (go Ebay!)
* Entertained friends at my home - I’ve been talking about that for years

What did I not do that I wanted to do?
* Dance
* Write regularly
* Take another surfing lesson (I’ve GOT to get up!)
* Visit certain older friends
* Exercise more -- or just exercise. Forget the 'more' part. Who am I kidding? I can’t figure out how to exercise and not sweat so much. It’s bad for my hair.

What did I learn?
* Facebook friends can be a real source of support during trying times.
* I really do not have to answer the phone. So if you want me, email me. 
* People have the same personalities as adults that they had as children. If they irritated you then, they will probably still irritate you now.
* I am not ‘stuck’. There are ways out of impossible situations.

What do I want to do in 2014?
* Start working on a dissertation. I gave myself off the holiday season so I could enjoy it for once.
* Figure out a way to include dance in my life
* Write more regularly. The barrier I encounter is not wanting to p** off the living.
* Go take that 2nd surfing lesson. I finally have feeling back in my left knee from my first attempt.
* Visit those older friends.
* Tighten the sugar ban. Eat less gluten.
* Sleep more.
* Spend less (read: Stay OFF Amazon)

I was supposed to get back to the negative but I have nothing to say. Sure, there were days that didn’t go well – even weeks. But I have nothing to complain about. Nobody close to me has died or gotten seriously ill or been in any accidents. Nobody has lost a job or suffered financial ruin. Everyone is speaking to one another. There is a lot to which I look forward. Dare I say I am content?

What are you thinking about as you enter 2014?

Losing Momentum

I lost my momentum. It’s as simple and as complicated as that. ’m not sure why I just stopped writing after about 18 months of almost weekly outpourings. It isn’t that I got too busy. I’m always busy, and in some ways, since I was taking courses in the doctoral program at the time, I was busier then than I am now.  If you take into consideration the fact that I was under constant time pressure to do homework, write papers, and study for exams, it just doesn’t make sense. Despite unwavering deadlines, I managed to carve out time to express what was going on in my head. And then I stopped.

This stopping is familiar territory for me. I have not always been aware of that but this year – no, last year now – it happened often enough to seep in to my consciousness. I finished my coursework in the doctoral program one year ago. Without missing a beat, I studied like mad for one of four comprehensive exams I needed to take. I passed that exam in January. And then I stopped…stopped studying….stopped reading anything related to academics… just stopped.

I picked up my guitar and started practicing again. The last time I played had been the winter my mom passed away – my sister and I had taken our guitars to mom’s home where we were spending half-weeks each while she was in hospice care. We practiced playing Christmas hymns for the Christmas eve service we would conduct in the living room at her bedside. That was December 2005.

I bought a lesson book….relearned the chords, the notes, the runs, one page at a time. I practiced daily no matter how late the hour. I regrew fingertip callouses… nice ones. It felt great. I felt alive – as I have always felt when playing music has been a regular part of my life. Then my long-planned kitchen renovation began. And I stopped playing. Not a gradual miss a day here, miss a day there. I just stopped. 

I took a six-week series of tap dancing classes. This required a weekly Sunday night local train trip into Manhattan in the middle of winter. It did not matter to me what I had to do to get there. I loved it. I couldn’t wait from one week to the next. After the series ended, I joined a regular class on Sunday evenings, and never missed a one. I felt alive – as I always have during the “dance period” times of my life. And then in the early autumn, my elderly uncle who lives in western New York state had a stroke. My aunt and uncle have no children so nieces, nephews, and godchildren came together to help out. My presence was needed on a consistent basis on the weekends to provide relief for those closer residing help-givers who were on duty during the week. The 350 mile distance from their home to mine was too far for me to make it back in time for my dance class on Sunday nights. And so I just stopped.

The crisis has passed. My aunt/uncle are in Florida for the winter. He’s playing a better game of golf than he has in years. I am free on Sunday nights. But I am not dancing.

Not dancing. Not making music. Not writing. Three things that feed me, fuel me, give me hope, fulfill my need to create. I should add ‘not studying’ to the mix. Not that studying feeds, fuels, provides hope or makes me feel creative. But it is a necessary ingredient to keep moving toward the doctoral goal that I’ve set for myself.  

I’m not one to make New Year’s resolutions as I view them as a set-up for failure. But the passage of 2012 in to 2013 is as good a time as any to resolve to figure out what makes me ‘just stop’ so I can ‘just stop’ letting it happen.  

What have you stopped that you need to jumpstart?

Exposed: Being Seen and Heard

I feel all alone in the middle of my aunt and uncle’s living room. There are a lot of big people in the room, all related to me, but I don’t really know most of them. It is my fourth birthday. I have been given a gift – a large rag doll almost my size with elastic on her feet designed to be pulled over my shoes. Someone commands me to put the doll’s feet on mine. Another command follows, “Come on, dance with her.” What do I do? There is no music and all these people are watching me. I don’t know what to do or how to be. But they are expecting me to perform. Please God who I still believe in, let this moment end. I do not want to be watched.

My fourth grade teacher brings a new machine to our classroom. It is a tape recorder. She commands each of us to speak into the machine as we read a passage in our readers. She plays the tape back for everyone to hear. I nearly die of embarrassment. I hate the sound of my voice and don’t quite believe that it is me. It does not make the same sound as it does to my ears.

I do not want to be heard.  

I sit in 7^th grade social studies and pray for invisibility so I will not become a target. There are already two targets in my class, a boy named Bruce, a girl named Cindy. They have done nothing to deserve all the fun made at their expense by some of the boys in my class. Looking around at everyone else, I calculate that on the misfit scale, I would probably be the next one at whom they’d take aim. I shrink in my seat and bend over my text book looking down.

I do not want to be noticed.

I sit in my 11^th grade English class and listen as my classmates talk and laugh about the party Saturday night at George’s house – to which I was not invited. I tell myself I don’t care, I wouldn’t have gone anyway. I wouldn’t have known how to be with them. They talk over me, ignoring me, not unkindly, just not anything.  I wonder if I have achieved the invisibility for which I have prayed from the God I now doubt.

I sit in a women’s group in my early twenties and find it hard to take my turn. When the timer rings (so no one hogs all the time, as some might) and our charismatic leader with piercing eyes turns her attention to me and commands that I pound a pillow and emote, the real me vacates the premises, leaving the play actor behind to perform on demand.   

There are many similar stories. I recall them with sadness and sometimes detachment, sometimes curiosity. But as my daughter and others of her generation might say, “It is what it is.” Or was what it was.  I know that these tiny events (and they are tiny in the grand scheme) have defined me in ways that are difficult to escape. I am who I am despite multi-year efforts to change that.

Writing from the heart is the epitome of exposure and an act of courage (or foolishness) for someone who aimed emotionally for invisibility and silence for years. I never press “post” without wondering if I’ve said too much or been too honest. I feel pleased when my words resonate with others and am grateful to those who respond from their own hearts and share their experiences. In those moments, I feel connected, heard, and visible in ways that are tolerable and pleasant.  

I emailed a few blog entries to a relative around Christmas. I handpicked some that I thought she might particularly enjoy – reflections about the holidays, an entry about my brother. Nothing that I thought would kindle any fires. So I didn’t see the meteor coming when she wrote me that she doesn’t understand why I don’t write about another relative who “loved you [me] so much, maybe too much.” I started to tremble with something approaching rage. The message I sent back was clear and direct. Do not tell me what or who I should write about. I don’t write to meet your needs. 

                             

Put another way, I will no longer dance because someone has commanded me to dance.

                            

I snail mailed some entries to an elderly friend I’ve known for over forty years. When I was 16, she used to read my adolescent attempts at poetry. She is always interested in knowing what I’m doing so I thought she might enjoy reading some of my current efforts. We used to be quite close but in recent years I’ve kept my distance. I grew up with her pointing out every discrepancy she found in what I had to say.  Even as an adult, she’ll remind me of something I said or thought when I was 19 and demands that I justify any changes in my viewpoint. Frankly, I often just don’t have the emotional strength to endure her questioning. The other day I received a telephone message from her. She’d read my work, some entries two and three times. She loved my writing. So far, so good. But then she said she’d like me to call her back. She wanted me to talk to her about some of the things I’d written.  “When you’re ready,” she said. That sounded ominous. Rewind.  “When you’re ready.”  Every danger antennae in me went on high alert.  My emotional brakes engaged. If she wants to share her story with me, relative to something I’ve written, great, I thought, wonderful. That’s what this is all about.

But I will no longer speak because someone has commanded me to speak.