Version Me

I have not written a blog post in a really long time.

In fact, I haven't done a lot of things in a really long time.

Since I last posted, it's a new year. Worldwide, some beautiful and some horrible things have happened, and my prayer is that the horrible will come back around and birth some beauty soon.

In my own little speck of the world, I turned 30. In fact, I turned 30 while I was sick in bed, not yet realizing that I had pneumonia.

The pneumonia is gone now, but it certainly took its time.

One of the other things that I haven't done in a really long time is go to the gym. Day after day, I left work, looked at the big neon Bally's sign literally directly across the street (it could only be closer if it were in my building), sighed a little bit, and drove home.

Being sick makes you depressed, and getting sick when you're already. let's be honest, pretty depressed, makes you REALLY depressed, and when you're depressed you don't want to work out--maybe you want to go home and watch mindless TV. Like "Wipeout." Not that I ever did that. But, you know.

SO.

Without making this post too full of self-pity or just plain boring, I decided to go back to the gym today. No more maybe. Today.

Nevermind that it's Monday.
Nevermind it's a night I'm working late.
Nevermind I don't feel like going to the gym.

So, I went to the gym. Having cerebral palsy at the gym tends to make everything a little more intense, a little more daunting. The machines are scary, and could potentially throw you to the ground. Everyone around you is very fast, and very thin.

I got on the treadmill and got a look from the guy next to me, who was casually strolling. Not a mean or hurtful look, but that look that everyone gives me initially--the  flash of sizing up and 'what's-going-on-here'-ness.

God, I thought, He's gonna be watching me.
And then I realized: I didn't care.

I listened to our side-by-side footfalls on the treadmill belts. There were two of his for every one of mine.

God, I thought, I'm so slow.
And then I realized: I didn't care.

I started sweating (like, really sweating) at about five minutes in.
God, I thought, I look a mess. And I'm going so slow. And this guy's watching me (he wasn't, for the record).
And I realized I didn't care.

I walked a half a mile on the treadmill. That might not seem like much, but I don't walk a half a mile anywhere, ever. Every goal I set for myself, I reset a little further out. When I return to the gym, half a mile will be the expectation, not the stretch goal.

I was thinking on the way home about going back to the gym, and about how likely my body was to hurt in the morning (I also did some tricep and chest presses, some tiny free-weight things, and some odd things with an eight pound medicine ball, AND I stayed on that Precor swoopy machine (swoopy) for three entire minutes.

And at first I thought, Heather, you're new! And then I thought, no... this isn't Heather 2.0, or Heather 30.0 or anything else. This is Heather as she is right now. And that's pretty awesome. Not looking in the rearview mirror brightens the horizon exponentially.

Also, the musical selection in Bally's is terrible, and someone needs to give me an iPod, stat.