Some days it’s much harder to get going than others. It makes me wish for a teleporter, really. If I think about it, the toughest part of any activity that has become difficult for some reason is starting it. Putting on the ol’ exercise pants, chopping up the bell peppers for hummus, or getting in the car to drive somewhere. I just wanna skip all the preamble and just be doing whatever it is I’m getting ready to do. If there’s any sort of brain hack that will let me retrain myself to like the lead-up to things, I’d love to know it.

As hard as it is to get moving on those days, when I actually DO get moving and do whatever it is I’m trying to do it feels amazing. In fact, it feels far more tremendously amazing than it has any right to considering the thing in question might be as simple as going to the store or doing a workout class. Feeling like I climbed Mount Everest on these occasions seems to be a bit aggrandizing, but if that’s what’s motivating me to push through the sludge of Getting Started, I’ll allow it.

I’m at a point in time where I’m trying to reward every bit of consistency that I offer up for myself. Demanding everything be perfect right now is the way to ruin and madness. Keeping the baseline habits that contribute to longterm goals is the highest priority for me. So things like walking every day, going to the exercise classes I’ve signed up for, trying to eat more vegetables even if “more vegetables” is “A vegetable”. I’m a visual person who really likes external validation, so I’m thinking of getting a paper calendar to keep track of all the stuff I do every day so I can point to it and be like “Look at this, see this? Keep this going, keep your streak.”

The other enemy of progress for me is my constant comparisons to others, always at my detriment. Even the axiom “The only person you should compare yourself to is your past self”. Cause like, right now, my self from two years ago is kicking my ass in that regard. I want to get back to where I was then when I’d lost 60lbs and was walking an insane amount every single day. Slowly crawling back to the exceedingly modest level of fitness I had before my back injury has been somewhat damaging to my self image, to be sure. It wasn’t ever that great to begin with, but months of being basically sedentary and not physically active lest my back seize up in protesting pain definitely ground it down to a nub. A nub of a nub, really.

Making little steps forward helps a bit, and I need to allow it to help more. It’s that comparison demon again, though, with a big helping of diminishment. “Big deal, you went on a 25 minute walk. Whoop-de-doo! What, you want a medal?” “Hey, congrats, you’re the fattest person in this Zumba class!” Getting that voice out of my brain is a lifelong process and I have a lot of doubt that it will ever go away entirely. I have to just give it the finger and not let it have power over me. Writing it makes it sound way easier than actually doing it is in practice. Day by day, that’s how I’ve gotta look at it.

Just gotta keep on trucking through all these obstacles with the parameters I’ve set for myself. Holding onto those parameters is what’s keeping me going and I am very thankful for them. I don’t really have a fancy, rounded way to end this unfortunately. Right now I’m marching through things with the loose mantra of “You’re doing this. You. are. doing. this”. Cause that’s just how it has to be, really. Not just that I can do it, but that I AM doing it, currently in the middle of it. Whatever it is, I’m doing it.