The Revelation

Hello, ducklings! I hope your Friday is going well. Before I get to the nitty gritty of today’s post, here’s the obligatory awkward Friday fitness pic.

On a related note, my workout is going well. I have added more sit-ups and push-ups, and I can now hold a plank for two minutes! That doesn’t seem like much, but three weeks ago, I could barely do one minute, and progress is progress (no matter how small). Little victories like these are always exciting, especially if you’re impatient like me and you demand instantaneous results. I might not have the body of a Greek god yet, but damn it, I can hold a plank longer now than when I first started!

All right. So, today I want to share something that probably seems blindingly obvious to the rest of the world, but didn’t quite hit me until today.

I can do whatever I want.

Let that sink in for a moment. Read that sentence once, twice, seven times. Allow the words to imprint themselves upon your mind grapes.

I can do whatever I want. Seriously! I just realized today that I have a whole life ahead of me, and a whole world surrounding me, and there’s no one to tell me what I’m allowed or not allowed to do. (Well, except for the law, but 1. most of what I want to do is perfectly legal, and 2. I suppose I can still break the law if I want to—I just have to pay the consequences. I am not encouraging anyone to break the law, however!)

I know this seems really, blatantly obvious. Like, duh. Seriously. As soon as you turn 18 and leave your parental units behind, the world is your oyster. We all know that. But do we really get it?

See, I’ve lived most of my life trying to live up to certain standards and expectations—not just those imposed by my parents, but also those imposed by society. I started breaking free from those chains around last year sometime and ultimately made the decision to take a break from college to explore the “real” world a bit earlier than planned, but it’s been several months and I’ve just now realized that there are so many paths open to me, so many choices available. I can move to Cali if I want. I can move to another country if I want. I can save up money and spend it on ridiculous things, or I can give it to whatever charity I choose. I can use my days off to sleep in and goof around, or I can use them to do something constructive and meaningful. I can spend my time learning to play guitar and understand ASL and make art and sing and read and all those other awesome things that make life worth living. (I’ve been doing that quite happily since leaving college behind, ha ha.)

Why didn’t I understand this earlier? Why didn’t I make the connection as soon as I was a legal adult that I had around seventy years of life left and I could spend them doing whatever I wanted? Why did I automatically think, “okay, time to adhere to the same old plan that every other person my age is following.”

It scares me that it took so long to reach this conclusion. I would like to think I’m just a bit slow on the uptake (don’t get me wrong, I totally am), but I suspect that I’m not the only one who spent several years laboring under the delusion that there are only a few paths available and that you can’t really do what you want—you have to do what’s expected. Even after I took the plunge and withdrew from OU, nervous as a cat and terrified of living on my own, it took me three or four months to grasp the magnitude of my decision to forsake the well-worn path.

Anyway, this realization has pretty much brightened my entire month. I don’t think I have words that can adequately describe the happiness bestowed upon me by this revelation. All I can say is that you have to remember that only one person can really tell you what to do. Only one person can really rule your life and make you follow a certain direction. Obviously, that person is you, and if you don’t like where you are right now, you have to start fixing what you don’t like about yourself.

See y’all next week, angel faces.

The Muscle

Hello, ducklings! First, let me say HAPPY AMERICA DAY! To my stateside readers, I hope y’all are enjoying your cookouts, pool parties, and—of course—your explosives. To everyone else, I hope the weather is treating you well.

So today’s blog title is a bit misleading. I’m not actually talking about physical muscle today, like the kind needed to lift heavy pieces of metal or the kind needed to burst watermelons between one’s thighs. I’m talking about a metaphorical muscle: the willpower muscle.

Now, I’m not sure if my theory about willpower has much scientific merit, but it does make a whole lot of sense. Here’s what I’ve discovered: your willpower is basically like a muscle. The more you exercise it, the stronger you get. If you don’t exercise your willpower for a long period of time, then it will atrophy.

Last week, I had a really sucky day where I woke up in a sour mood and just wanted to lay in bed and watch cat videos for like 12 hours. And at first, that’s basically what I did. 10:30 AM quickly became 3:00 PM, and before I knew it, it was 6:00 PM and I hadn’t even had a proper breakfast…or left my bed. (Pathetic, I know.) The longer I stayed snuggled up in my covers, laughing at the kittens gamboling around on my laptop, the less I wanted to actually get up and do something as simple as fix myself a bowl of cereal, or—heaven forbid—accomplish anything useful.

However, that day wasn’t my R&R day, which is usually Saturday. If it had been, I might not have summoned the willpower to get my lazy ass out of bed and do my workout. But…somehow…I managed to turn off the cat videos, drag myself out of my warm blanket cocoon, and begin my typical sit-ups/push-ups routine. At first, I told myself I’d just do the sit-ups and push-ups and skip the daily 5K. After all, I reasoned with myself, my ankle has been kind of bothering me. And I’m just out of it today…I’ll do the regular workout and skip the run.

But guess what? By the time my regular workout was completed, my energy had been restored and I thought, oh, what the hell, I’ll go run anyway. And I did! It was an excellent run, too. Granted, it was a bit later in the day than I am accustomed to, but it went well nonetheless.

So, even after most of the day was wasted on being a complete bum, I still managed to force myself to get out of the slump and do both my workout and my run. Later that evening, though, I caught myself wondering how I was able to do it.

See, I don’t have a shining track record of sticking to plans and achieving goals that take several months of dedication. I’m still not at the point where doing my workout, or practicing guitar, or learning ASL, is just a daily thing that I do without much hassle. Every day, there is a bit of initial resistance that threatens to hold me back. To be blunt, I’m pleasantly surprised that I was able to pull my shit together, get out of bed, and work on my goals. So what did it? What helped me snap out of my indolence and adhere to my plans?

I think it was a combination of two things. First, I had already spent a solid month following a workout/run schedule. A month isn’t very long, but it’s apparently long enough for me to build up my willpower muscle a little bit. Second, I did the good ol’ “baby steps” routine, where at first I told myself, hey, I’ll just get out of bed and clean up a bit, at the very least. Well, now I’m out of bed, so I might as well do some sit-ups. Okay, guess I’ll do the whole workout, but there’s no pressing need to run today’s 5K. Well, okay, now the workout is done and I’m feeling good. Guess I’ll run after all!

Sometimes, all it takes it just that first tiny step. Yes, I know that is cliché as hell, but it’s cliché for a reason, and that’s because it works. If you can force yourself to do one tiny little thing, and then another, and then another…before you know it, you’ve accomplished something. Sometimes, all you need is to check one item off your list. Then, a little bit later, you discover that you have checked off all the items on your list. (And even if you only checked off most of them, that’s okay, too. Hell, even if you only checked off your one small item, that’s better than what most people do…and what most people do is stay in bed all day and watch kittens frolicking playfully to jaunty music.)

Hopefully this post gave you a little inspiration, a little motivation. Feel free to share any stories in the comments section below. See you Friday!

The Renaissance Man/The Higher Self

Hello, angel faces. Today I’m going to share with you my perspective on goals right now. Basically, I want to do everything. I want to be a published author and illustrator. I want to design t-shirts. I want to be a model. I want to sing and play instruments. I want to teach. I want to be an actor. I want to travel the world. I want to learn to speak a different language (or two, or three). I want to do a ton of stuff—so much stuff that I wonder if I have time to do it all before I die.

Put simply, I want to be a Renaissance Man.

According to dictionary.com, a Renaissance Man is “A person with many talents or interests, esp. in the humanities.” That is a pretty apt description of who I am—and more importantly, who I will be. See, right now I feel like I have maybe two talents and a whole boatload of interests…but with time and effort, I would like to have many talents. That’s why I’m practicing guitar and piano every day. That’s why I complete a lesson of American Sign Language every night. Ultimately, that’s why I’m even writing this blog.

If you’re like me, you probably have a ridiculous amount of goals. But…occasionally…you might feel worn out. You might get tired, or you might think, “this will take way too much time/this will never happen/I can’t do it.” When I am in that kind of rut, here is something that helps me.

I picture what I call my Highest Self: the version of me that has become the Renaissance Man. This version of me is smart, strong, fit, and capable. He has traveled the world and acquired knowledge and wisdom from his journeys. He has many friends and he has become a role model for others. He has many artistic talents. He uses his knowledge and artistry to help make the world a more beautiful place, and to assist others however and whenever he can.

My Highest Self is a long ways away, and I have a whole lot of work to do before I can be anything like him. But when I get to feeling down, I just picture that person in my head and think, “if I want to become him, then I can’t give up now.” I don’t know if that will help you, but it definitely helps me.

Maybe, the next time you’re in rut, think of your Highest Self, and ask, “how will I become that person?”

Before I go, here is the obligatory Friday Fitness Pic. I can’t say I’m seeing a lot of progress yet, but in this for the long haul. Talk to you guys Monday! Have a good weekend!

The Fitness Goal

Hello, angel faces. So, today I am going to share with you one of my many, many goals. I want to be a model. Does that make me sound superficial and shallow and vain? Probably. Do I particularly care? Nope. The bottom line is this: I’ve been told repeatedly growing up that I should look into modeling, I modeled at OU and had a really good experience with it, and I think it’s something I’d be good at. Plus, it seems like a great way to find success in other avenues. Another goal of mine is to be a singer/songwriter—maybe my face will catch someone’s attention. Yet another goal of mine is to direct music videos—maybe by modeling, I could end up in someone’s music video and see firsthand how everything works. You never know, right?
Anyway, the great thing about this goal is that even if I don’t become a model, I will become healthier, happier, and fitter. Part of my process is to work out and tone my body up. I’m as skinny as a broom and it’s hard for me to put on weight—this is good in some aspects, but it also makes it difficult for me to put on muscle. My face is…well, it’s my face, and barring surgery (which is a definite no-no), there’s not much I can do about it. My body, however, can and will be improved.

See, running is my ideal exercise. It’s not about how big you are or how beastly you are; it’s about endurance, speed, and discipline. But weight-lifting is a different animal entirely. For one, I hate it. I feel silly curling my tiny little dumb bells, and I’m not very good at it, and I don’t like it. However, there is more than one way to skin a cat. Instead of weight-lifting (at least right now), I am doing sit-ups and push-ups every day before I run. Sit-ups are a piece of cake for me. I do 400 a day in reps of 100 each and seeing as I’m not even breaking a sweat doing that, I should probably add some more. Push-ups, on the other hand, are not my forte. Right now the number of push-ups I do is so pathetic that I won’t share it with you, but I am proud to say that I have been gradually increasing the number and variety as I go.

So. I’ve been running for a long time now, but I’ve only been doing the push-ups and sit-ups for about two weeks. Here, on this blog, I am going to post a shirtless (gasp) picture of myself every Friday. Hopefully, over time, I will see positive changes in my build and mass. Unfortunately, I do not have a hi-tech camera, but I do have a cell phone and a bathroom mirror. Classy, right?

I’m hoping that posting these semi-embarrassing pictures will help motivate me and hold me accountable. I suppose I could be opening the Floodgates to Internet Hell by inviting who-knows-how-many-trolls to drop by and leave horrible disparaging comments, but I will climb that beanstalk when I get there. Until then, please continue to read my posts, and feel free to offer any tips and tricks on working out! See y’all tomorrow!

You see those eyes? Those are the eyes of someone with NO SHAME.