Exercise

So, I'm something like four or five days behind my Advent blogging. I'm not going to bother catching up.

Disappointed?

Well, 'tis the season. Nothing says Christmas like constant disappointment and a lingering sense that nothing, including yourself, will ever live up to your expectations, even though you've consistently and steadily lowered your expectations each year of your short life. Apparently, they are still too high for whatever scanty set of tools I'm you're working with.

To add to that disappointment, I recently decided I would try to get back into shape. Until late last week, I hadn't run for exercise since May 2008 as part of my give up on life plan. Unfortunately, it turns out that there are consequences to eating like you ever do anything physical without every doing anything physical. There are about 30 pounds of consequences, all of which droop over the top of my pants like a corpse-filled burlap sack dangles over the edge of a bridge. Or at least, I think, since I've never actually seen a corpse-filled burlap sack dangle... that I know of.

Once I started getting disgusted every time I had to take a shower, I decided it might be a good idea to start exercising again. Not that my give-up-on-life plan has been derailed. I'm still trying very hard to give up, I'm just making sure I don't become an unlovable blob monster in the process.

Turns out that not running for almost four years makes it a bit difficult to get back on the ol' running wagon. I tried for 30 minutes today and I spent about 20 minutes of that time silently challenging God to prove his existence to me by mercifully ending my suffering. Or at least sending a hobo to mug me so the beating would take my mind off the excruciating pain shooting through my body every time my atrophied heart struggled to beat.

I survived, though, despite myself. There was no hobo nor any other sign of God's mercy, which confirms my belief that if there is a God, it is a spiteful, vengeful God who really enjoyed watching me struggle through an objectively easy workout.

Or it doesn't exist, since those are the only two options.

The upshot of the run, though, is I swear I passed by a man who I swear was reading a book of poetry aloud to the ducks and seagulls in the park. I like to think he was reading "The Second Coming" by W. B. Yeats and the birds were truly, deeply terrified.