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june 5, 2001.
What to say about today... I've been having trouble sleeping lately. I know this means that I don't get enough physical activity (old, old story) but I just find exercising so purposeless. If there was a reason in my life to be strong and flexible and fit, like if I were to get money or good grades as a result of being able to bench 250, I'm sure that I would do it (I'm nothing if not a slave to authority & Pavlovian praise). What do I have in my life that naturally motivates me to exercise? I work sitting down. That's my whole day: sitting down. Getting up and walking to the break room or walking downtown to buy lunch. Sitting down. Eating. Walking back to my computer. Sitting down. Walking home. Sitting down to eat & watch the Simpsons. There's a whole lot of sitting going on. Teaching is actually an improvement on this lethargic schedule. Contrary to popular belief, most teaching - and certainly most of the best teaching - is done on one's feet, moving around the room. My practicum was more grueling than most, with a 3 hour commute tacked on to my day for good measure. I was up at 6 am and in bed by 11 (if I had a lesson done, that is. if not I burned the midnight oil). I never had trouble falling asleep during my field placement. This month is a horse of a different colour, as the cab driver might say. Part of my problem is that I like sitting down. I like playing with a computer because I get to sit down. I like writing because I get to sit down. I don't mind walking - at a moderate pace, for up to an hour at a time - but I'd really rather be sitting. No matter how refreshing my morning walk becomes (and it's pretty damn refreshing: lungs full of crisp Valley air, downhill slope, an unspoiled day in the works. this is the stuff refreshment is made of), I'd rather be in a car. Well, maybe not. I may be lazy but I'm not really that lazy. Still - I'd certainly rather be chauffeured up the hill, at least. (I guess I inhaled too many cleaning fluid fumes tonight, because that last sentence looks vaguely obscene to me. 'Chauffered up the hill. *wink* !') My littlest sister Scout was in a paramedics program where part of the course requirement was that she be able to bench a certain amount of weight. This is so that people with no upper arm strength (i.e. people like myself) are discouraged from the paramedic profession before some poor schmuck dies because the medic can't lift his unresisting body more than an inch off the ground. When I heard this, my one thought was that it may have been useful to have that stipulation in my degree program. Then again, with an English degree I'd most likely be required to drink a certain percentage of my weight in absinthe rather than build up any useful muscles.
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"You have left a fingerprint on me...just dust and you will surely see..."
