Several Thoughts Upon Completing 20 Consecutive Pushups
Okay, good. I am very glad I was able to complete those twenty pushups without too much difficulty. I could probably do several more pushups if called upon. Ten, maybe twenty more pushups. Forty pushups. Now that’s a good amount of pushups.
Is it, though? Forty? That’s how many pushups I could do in high school, and I looked like Screech from Saved By The Bell back then. If Screech-me could do forty, then man-me should be able to do, I don’t know…fifty? Sixty? Let’s say sixty. That sounds like a fair number to work towards. After all, it’s been a long time since I’ve done any pushups at all. Probably…a year at least. It’s been that long. No wonder my doctor said my cholesterol is a little high. I can’t just eat whatever and go actual years between workouts. I’m not nineteen. I haven’t been nineteen in almost ten years. Oh dear god.
This morning while I was flying to Madison, I put my head against an airplane window and I could feel whatever that not-glass is pressed up against my scalp where there used to be hair. Thanks for that, maternal grandfather’s genes!
Twenty pushups is better than zero pushups. (By twenty!)
My arms hurt more than they should. I guess should is a strong word. I brought this on myself. My arms hurt more than I wish they did.
How jacked do my arms really need to be? I don’t want to be one of those guys with a nerd head and a preposterously jacked body. Those guys are the weirdest. They are always nonverbally communicating the message: “NO ONE’S GOING TO SHOVE ME INTO A LOCKER NOW! AND IF ANYONE AT MY INSURANCE SALES JOB CALLS ME A PUSSY, I’LL RIP HIM LIMB FROM LIMB!” I don’t want to be that guy. But I also don’t want to be the guy who gets winded asking for directions to a pizzeria. I’ve just got to maintain a physique somewhere in between those two extremes. I can manage that.
If I do twenty more pushups before bed, that’s forty pushups total for the day. Nice.
I would go running more if my headphones weren’t broken. That’s totally what’s stopping me from running more. I don’t have anything to listen to. Plus, I hear that treadmills are bad for your knees, and I don’t know where to run in this neighborhood. I could get murdered! Someone could just murder me in the eight block radius around the Wisconsin Statehouse where I’m staying.
I’d do some sit-ups right now, except I just took a shower, and I don’t want to lie down on this hotel room floor. That’s totally what’s stopping me from doing sit-ups right now. I bet I could do sixty sit-ups right this minute and work my way up to a hundred over the next few weeks. If only I’d thought of that before I’d taken a shower. I’d be well on my way to Ryan Gosling abs.
I bet if I just cut out soda, I’d lose like five pounds in a month. It’s so bad for you. I don’t know why fructose is poisonous, but apparently high fructose corn syrup might as well be high-octane gasoline in terms of it being inadvisable to ingest. Fructose gets such a bad rap. Glucose and sucrose get off pretty much scot-free. So no more soda. And skim milk exclusively in my coffee. That’ll probably be, like, another five pounds by the end of the month, if I stick to it, which I totally will. Without a doubt.
I’m definitely going to drink soda this weekend.
Exercise brings my mortality into acute focus. It’s like: “You can’t run ten miles? You’re going to die.” But then I think: “Why run ten miles? Death’s going to happen anyway.” I have the laziest awareness of my own existence.
It’s weird that when you die now, all that’s left to remember you by is an electronic record of every thought you’ve ever had and all the pictures ever taken of you. It used to be, like, two photographs and a wedding ring was all you left behind. Times have changed. Everything moves so fast now. It’s overwhelming.
I’m going to go eat some pizza.