Inaction Man

Dear J-

Head up. Feet shoulder width apart. Eye on the ball. You’re going to get rotation through the waist, that’s where the power comes from. Ready? Good. Here we go.

When I think about our relative athletic ability I can see our kids doomed to a life of being picked last for teams, but I’m convinced that much of that is down to a question of practice and muscle memory, and the sooner we get them involved in actual physical activities (structured) then the better off they’re going to be and the more confidence they’ll feel. That sort of stuff is a self-fulfilling cycle; the more you do, the better you get, and the better you are, the more you enjoy it, and the more you want to do. Now I just need to summon the motivation to do just that.

Lord knows that I’m the laziest person on earth, though, and that’s going to be hard to overcome: the inert body at rest tending to remain at rest. The other night theVet went off for a dinner presentation by a potential vendor, and came back to find me furiously brushing away at figgy’s teeth, trying to make up for time lost playing video games together; I admit there have been instances where I’m even too lazy to get up and play games on the TV, which is not that much effort: find batteries, make sure the remotes are charged, switch the input on the TV …

Something I learned in June beyond the regular operation cycle and teardown of a Carrier 19FA chiller was a phrase that Dwight said and which started to resonate in my head: what a privilege it is to sweat. Here’s a guy who’s spent his whole life running or biking or swimming and coming off back and shoulder surgery, is itchy to get back on the bike — and in North Carolina heat, no less — while I barely have the motivation to tear myself away from the screen long enough to find a park and drive over there to stroll around. True, too, the guys from North Anna were inspiring, going jogging every evening and bringing bikes along too; this life is what you make of it, and letting opportunities go doesn’t make much sense, does it? What a privilege.

Mike

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Years Gone By

Dear J-

I’m finding more and more ways to while my life away online without actually doing anything. Virtual ink is spilled, pixels shuttered on and off at my whims but one EMP later and it’s all so easily gone. There’s a thousand things that you can spend tiime doing but I suppose the entertainment value of having yuor name in print offsets the time it sucks down from your life. At any rate, that now makes three primarily blogging accounts and two social networks. If I wasn’t disconnected from the physical world yet I might as well be now. Great.

Then again five years from now I’m sure that the things I thought were totallly profound will turn out to be as ephemeral as the food that seems to disappear from Calcifer’s plate every time I turn around (that kid’s gonna be an eater). It always seems to happen that way; things you spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about turn out fine without much further intervention; it’s the little things that’ll trip you up. For want of a nail and all that, right? As long as you’re willing to be alive, though, that’s how long you’re going to have worries. We all have them: we worry about money and stretching our budget, figgy worries about the next dessert, Calcifer worries at his teeth (now showing, a double feature starring canines).

In the big scheme of things having to wrry about having too much time is so ridiculously leisure-class I can’t begin to describe how privleged I feel. I keep meaning to figure out different things around the house and life (what’ll we do about the saggy closet, should I scan that bigger-than-a-shoebox of photos, what’s next for us in five years, in ten; do I walk away thinking I’ve done as much as I can?) but for now it’s jusst enough to have the time available to watch the days and years churn by.

Mike