35 Days Later

Location: My bedroom, while people are playing Halo outside in the living room

The Date/Time: Cinco De Mayo 2009

Miscellaneous: listening to the new Mat Kearney song "Closer to Love"... and I'm in love. I see myself and Weez at one of his concerts enjoying this song, potentially in the near future...

I find myself not wanting to sleep just yet. I'm in one of those moods where I really just want to bust out in song. Like when I'm doing dishes, and I have my laptop out on the table, spinning a playlist, and I'm just going for those notes as I scrub the dried food off that plate. It makes the arduous task of dishwashing a lot more tolerable, if not even enjoyable for me...

But I can't just bust out into Jason Mraz's "Unfold" right now, as that'd just be weird. I can see it now...

Andy: Do you guys hear something?

OSF #1: It sounds like singing...

Me [singing from my room]: "My hands are hiiiiiiiiiiiigh... and I'm holding on..."

OSF #2: Is Ry singing in his room?

Random guest of Andy's: Who's Ry again? You mean that Asian kid?

Okay, so maybe not quite like that...

But instead of singing, I'm channeling that energy into my fingers and typing out my thoughts on working out for the last 35 consecutive days. And you know what, it feels freaking fantastic, actually.

It was a goal for both Chris and I to be more consistent with hitting the gym this year, and in late March I started going intermittently. And to be honest, it sucked. I hadn't worked out in awhile, and when I did go, I only did cardio. Last year, I used to hit the weights with Kasey, and we'd go pretty consistently after work, but that was back in the graveyard shift days. But since I moved to daytime hours in May 2008, I think I'd barely go once a month. It was hard getting motivated, especially as my various gym partners were never consistent either.

But I remember trying on some of my jeans/pants (around early March), and they were just not fitting well anymore. If at all. And I said "this is not going to work." All that sitting around in the office and eating out for lunch was not doing me any favors. And so there was my motivation for hitting the gym again.

Getting back into the routine was hard, but I eased into it. It was never an official goal to make it through the entire month of April without missing a beat, but it happened. I was adding weight lifting days eventually to the point where I lift every other day (and now I'm slowly increasing the weight too)... upping the difficulty (resistance) on the elliptical (I already could do incline at the max)... and being more conscientious about my eating habits. And so now it's been 35 straight days of hitting the gym, and it's weird to think that I might miss a workout... so I guess until further notice, the streak continues! And I'll read up on different exercises to mix things up...

I'll worry about gaining lean muscle mass with time (and my cousin's help/training, since he used to train hard for his hockey playing days), but for now my stomach is getting slimmer, and I dig it. :D