Should-ing Yourself

This isn’t the blog post that I’d intended to write today, but it’s the one that ended up on paper.

The day finally came. The day that I looked at my gym bag not with a sense of purpose, giddiness, and relief, but with a tinge of dread.

 It’s Labor Day, and like many, I too had the day off. Given that it was a three-day weekend, it was our chance to tackle some of the ‘didn’t-yet-get-to’ summer projects... that we didn't get to over the summer. A match of bumper cars, little dog taking big dog’s meds, a broken lawnmower and a mad dash of hail put a damper on our attempts to be productive on Saturday.

Sunday we spent perfecting the furna-dents of our sofa as we got caught up on AMC’s “Halt and Catch Fire”, one of the better-written series we’ve stumbled upon in a very long time. (Since we are both tech geeks, this particular show appeals to us).

Unlike other weekends, I hadn’t worked out on either Saturday or Sunday and today being Monday was day three of the non-gym streak.

 I didn’t want to go, and I didn’t feel good. I felt lazy...and unable to wake up, to get up, to move. Because I hadn’t been to the gym in too many days, and I wasn’t sleeping well. Again. (A correlation? Perhaps.)

But, as Karl and I say to each other on those days when we don’t want to move, don’t want to ‘hit the gym’... “You’ll feel better after.” It’s true.

We do always feel better after.

Gone now for the most part are the ‘I should go to the gym’ moments – but today was the exception. ‘Shoulding’ is a hard habit to break from and one that is so easy to fall into especially now that the days are growing shorter, the crispness of fall is the air, and the kids are back in school so there is less noise and chaos competing for my attention.

The ‘shoulds’ invoke only feelings of guilt and I spend far more time focusing on the need to work out instead of the actual time I would spend there.

I was able to break the ‘shoulding’ cycle today... to remember where I was 6 weeks ago and all that I’ve accomplished, to get dressed, get to the gym and pound out 500 calories on the AMT.

Then I went home and resumed ‘lazy’, at least for another hour or two.

On this Labor Day, I hope that you were able to take a break from the work-a-day routine. Today, congratulations to Karl, my House of Chaos Teammate. During the long cold days of January he made it his goal to participate in a Half-Marathon and today he did just that. He placed second in his category for the Colorado Run half-marathon, and he beat his personal goal by running an 8-minute mile. I can’t say enough how proud we are of his efforts and accomplishment. If you happen to see him – pass along a ‘Congrats!’