proteanme

A short bike ride is better than no bike ride. Doing 10 squats is better than doing none. Lifting weights 2 times a week is better than not lifting weights at all. It should be obvious, right?!?

One thing happening for me during this pandemic is I can’t distract myself from inner self saboteur and the stranglehold of my perfectionism. When I jumped myself into BH’s daily squat regimen of 4 sets of 30 squats, before I’d even completed a day’s worth of squats, I was texting her about how every week we were going increase our sets by + 1 until we were doing 300 total squats a day, at which point we would increase our reps. That was at the start of the month. Since then, there’s not been even one week where I’ve even knocked out all 4 sets every day.

Normally, I would give up. Not only because I wasn’t getting the minimum squats done, which my 300 squat aspirational self made sure of, but also because my future self makes my real time self feel like a loser. So fuck you future self. Saboteur wins.

The saving grace is BH doesn’t care about my saboteur or my future self/aspirational self. She just sends texts that say “squat.” And many times I do, and sometimes I don’t. Same for her. Even better, we jumped our friend, MD into our squat club, so now the 3 of us text each other, “squat,” Every week, inevitably one of us gives up part way through a day, or for a day or two or three. But then we start up again.

I had no idea that my squatting with these friends unravel my saboteur a little. It’s an unexpected experience.

Today, I was riding up a short and steep hill. Effortful. But as I crested the top, I noticed I wasn’t thinking about all the bullshit I usually think about, like why am I not going so slow. . .this wouldn’t be so hard if road more hills more often. . .I’m gong to do that tomorrow – ride mores hills. I got to the top of the hill and was just like thinking that was hard but doable.