I am a sloth.
My favorite piece of furniture is a chaise lounge. Since I don't have one of those, my favorite piece of furniture is my bed and my favorite accessories are a down comforter and 3 good pillows to lean against.
What I'm trying to say is - exercise is not my first choice when it comes to how I like to spend my time.
Despite that, I have spent quite a bit of my life exercising. My first choice of a career was dance. To that end, I spent over twelve years training intensely in ballet and modern dance only to have the whole thing derailed by a failure to grow to a stature taller than 5 foot 2. Well, that and the arrival of the D cup bust. George Balanchine material I wasn't.
I also did 5 years of gymnastics. Career derailed by injuries and that boob thing again. Plus - I really wasn't all that good.
But I absolutely hated every sport I ever played and every gym class I was ever in. I remember first grade gym class most particularly. Gym for young girls of that time included wearing something called "bloomers". As entertaining as that sounds, it's not nearly so entertaining as it looked. They were basically puffy dark blue shorts and all the girls were required to wear them. The boys got to wear their regular clothes. My feministic streak may very well have begun during this class.
The other horrible thing about first grade gym was the gym teacher's love of the recording "Chicken Fat". We did exercises to this damn song almost every class.
Is it any wonder I spent most of the rest of my life evading exercise? Especially the boring kind designed only to get you fit?
But after I left dance and had three kids and watched my body slide completely down hill, I finally had to make peace with the idea that I was going to have to start working out on some level.
To that end, I began walking outdoors three days a week with a walking buddy about 16 years ago. It was the height of Oprah's "Walk Yourself Thin" program. I enjoy these walks because I have a great walking buddy and we get some terrific chatting in. But I have to confess that, any day she doesn't show up, I just go back into my house and do something else, grateful for the extra time in my day. (Which may have something to do with never getting to the "thin" part.)
And I did spend a year working out with a personal trainer in an attempt to rehab a shoulder injury and get some better tone to my body overall. That wasn't too bad because, again, I got to chat with the trainer and take my mind of how boring the actual exercises were.
But now I have found my exercise niche.
Over a year and a half ago I started walking an indoor track like the one pictured above. (Those of you familiar with my daily bookings know that this is supposed to be part of my weekday routine.)
But I didn't really approach it with any more discipline than any of the other things I tried and I can't say I paid particular attention to how walking the track - or not walking it - impacted the rest of my life.
Then, this fall, I stopped walking the track and in January started up again. After two weeks of putting it back into my routine I noticed something I hadn't noticed before.
I could write again.
Lightbulb.
For me, there is a direct link between a certain kind of exercise and creativity. I say a certain kind of exercise because part of the equation is the time to myself that I get when I'm walking the track vs walking with my walking buddy.
The meditative quality of walking in circles, the time away from other people, the internet, and all the other things that steal my focus, and the uptempo music I choose to walk to, all contribute to making me more creative. I almost always leave a track session with several ideas for columns.
Since I'm a reward junkie, heightened creativity is just the sort of carrot I need dangling in front of me to make exercising worthwhile.
So I guess I'm evolving myself to a point where I can embrace exercise rather than despising it.
Just don't make me listen to that Chicken Fat song.
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