Ugh. A 6 AM flight meant a 4 AM wakeup… and I slept terribly. The cross country flight was uneventful but I am a walking zombie after getting off the plane.
I promised myself I’d get a run in this afternoon to shake off the cobwebs but my body is pulling an Amy Winehouse and saying, “No, no, no.” This even after and perhaps because I indulged in far too many salty junk food snacks this afternoon trying to satiate a seemingly bottomless hunger. In the face of the bloated self-pitying shame of the after effects of same, my legs and soul are just refusing to go.
Ultimately, I decided to listen and skip the day, the fact that I’ve probably gained a few pounds through meaningless, joyless food hanging heavily on my heart and my scale. I kept having this vision today, especially as I walked down to the grocery store for some refrigerator supplies: I kept seeing myself tripping over the uneven sidewalk, falling to the ground, bloodied and bruised. It was a haunting image, one that consumed my thoughts; I was and remain worried that such negativity would become a self-fulfilling prophecy if I did venture out for a run today.
And so I have remained slothful and gluttonous.
I’ve set my alarm for 5 AM tomorrow to help reset my internal clock and the kinesthetics of me.
Tomorrow I will run.
Tomorrow is a new day and a new day begs for a new start and a new commitment. While it is better to make the commitment in the now (the old adage that there’s no time like the present comes to mind), the reality here is that living in the now means I have to acknowledge and respect what my mind and body are telling me at this moment. I hate what they’re telling me, and I kinda hate myself for shamefully scarfing down any and all salty snacks I could lay my hands on. However, so long as we’re going cliche, we might as well go all in on it and listen to that ol’ master of the bloat, Sir John Falstaff:
“The better part of valor is discretion, in the which better part I have saved my life.”
-Flastaff, Henry IV, Part One, Act V, scene 4
Of course, some Shakespearean scholars would point out this is perhaps best viewed as a joke and not to be taken literally… oh, what a tangled web I find myself embroiled in.
“When spider webs unite, they can tie up a lion.”
-An Ethopian proverb
As long as I’m reading into things and justifying my actions willy nilly – it’s the little things that trip me up… and when enough of those little things get together, it’s a big problem.
Today is a big, big problem. Tomorrow? We’ll see what tomorrow brings. Starting at 5 AM.