Dilute

I am scattered. It’s becoming an issue again.

I keep wanting to say that I’m not working out because I can’t get to the gym; we’ve a single car, and if Bridgette is tired, ill, or what-have-you, if Othello has been alone too many nights and we’re already coming home late, if I’m working late (or she is), then the gym doesn’t happen on the way home, and is a 40 minute round trip from the house. That’s what I want to say; that, essentially, my life enmeshed with other people’s needs and expectations, covered over with my perceived duties and obligations, creates a straight jacket from which I cannot escape.

Except…down the hall from me right now, is a weight bench. I have enough weights to work out poorly and uncomfortably, but work out. There is much floor space for yoga. I live at the end of a 1/2 mile long dead end road; I don’t like to run back and forth, but I could.

The fact is, I go to the gym because once there, I will not cop out. Unfortunately, I am not good at getting unwilling people to go to the gym with me, and I am not good at taking myself away for the entire evening (essentially, if I come home and go back and work out and come home) from people who want to talk to me and, living with me, may reasonably expect to. So I’m not going to the gym. Once home, there are life’s little duties plus a wife who collapses once through the door and wants cuddlies and company…I’m slipping. I’m not exercising. I’m not writing as much as I can and should and want to.

Watch: watch as I pare this down to essentials.

I am slipping back into the habit of living to other people’s needs and expectations.

[teeth gritted] I will. Not. Be this stupid. Again.

I will start with the gym; chores cycle ’round so that one day out of three I am idle, chore-wise. I will exercise that night, if I haven’t. If everyone misses me, that’s a good use of their time while I’m gone.

Writing…This week I’ve been sleeping instead of rising & writing. I slept at my office rather than write at lunch today. And I’m unlikely to write tonight – I want to sleep now, but I’m still cooking. The concentration to do something more than bitch here is very, very difficult this week. [maybe I’m just tired?]

I need my two pages, minimum, five is better. I don’t know what to do about concentration, will, and rest.

This is what happened last fall, when I went on months-long break in writing. I can’t, again. I was too afraid. I need to do this.

Essentials. Uhm.

I need to live for me.

I’d like to do that without leaving everybody behind and living in a cave.

Okay. That’s what I’ll work on. I (why do I feel Thingmaker looming over me, ready to strike?) have and will trust everyone to love me while I’m not serving out their every whim, not spending every moment cuddled ’round them, not matching my needs to theirs.

Hey. No one had to hit me, this time. I call that progress.