Another one of my moments of ‘why am I doing this?’ in my life is related to exercising. I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with running – in fact, it took me years to even consider it as an exercise option.
When I was young, I played sports and so being active involved being part of a team. I loved playing volleyball and have often missed those days. However, as I’ve gotten older and moved around, it is harder to find a team to join with people I like to be around. Thus, I have been limited to individual exercise activities.
Initially, I took up swimming because it didn’t hurt my back or knees and I love to be out in the sun soaking up the heat. However, I couldn’t always find a pool when I was traveling and so somehow, somewhere I started running.
Most of the people I know who run have some goal in mind – a marathon, a training scheme, to lose weight – and I just started slowly without any goal. For a while I was doing well and loved that I had lost weight and was nearly the size of my high school days. Even lately, I thought I would do a triathlon, but the reality is that I’m not that interested in such a thing. I’ve never really been competitive in sports. I like to just enjoy it…. Thus, I just run now – but why?
To motivate myself, I do follow a running schedule based on Nike’s ‘coach’ online. Sometimes I follow it, other times I skip a day here and there.
So, what’s my point? Well, I realized that I feel guilty if I don’t run or I miss a day on the schedule. Like this morning, I could have gone for my scheduled run. It’s the weekend and I have time. But, I didn’t have any clean and dry running clothes and I really felt tired, so…I didn’t go…. Now, I feel as if I should have, but WHY?
Part of me wants to believe it’s my body telling me it misses the exercise, but most of me knows it’s the guilt from not sticking to my schedule. So, I rebel. I’m not tied to a schedule – especially not one I chose and I have the power to do or not do.
Yes, I’m like an adolescent right now expressing my independence from…the world! π
