I intended it to be a throwaway observation, but the hearer took it as an affirmation.
It happened in the locker room at the pool.
In that locker room -- and on the pool deck, and in the water -- greetings like "How are you?" and "How's it going?" aren't just small talk. We're a community of people who know what it's like to live with chronic pain, and we really want to know how the others who come to the water with us are faring, even if we don't know their names.
When a woman, whom I hadn't seen for a while, asked me, "How's it going?", I answered honestly.
"It's going great. How's it going with you?"
"Oh, OK," she said.
I heard the hesitation in her voice, but I don't remember whether I specifically invited her to elaborate. But she did.
It seems she's in the process of moving to a new home, and the move has been so time-consuming and unsettling that she hasn't been able to keep up with her warm-water exercise schedule.
"Well," I said, "you know all those people who say 'I can't find the time to exercise' is just a lame excuse? They're full of it. Finding time to work on your body -- and to do all the rigamarole that goes with it, like changing clothes and showering -- is a very real challenge."
The woman smiled, as though I'd just told her she looks like Miss America in her swimsuit.
It helped her, she said, to hear someone affirm that she's not being lazy, or insufficiently committed to physical fitness, or any of the other guilt-phrases that we so often hear from doctors, personal trainers and total strangers.
This morning I read another blog, with just such guilt-language. The blogger's assertion: We all have the same 24 hours in every day, the same 168 hours in every week. So there's no reason not to set aside some of those hours, on a consistent schedule, for working out.
Uh...actually, there are very good and very real reasons why that can be difficult, if not impossible.
Although I do indeed have 168 hours in a week, and I'm awake for roughly 112 of them, there are no two days in which I have the same hours available.
For each swim, I need to set aside about two hours, including time to get into my suit and goggles, get the equipment I need (kickboard, pool noodles, floating ankle weight, etc.), work out in the water, shower and get dressed again. Which two hours are available to me depends not only on my never-routine work schedule, but also on the schedule of the pool, such as whether there's a class in the warm-water pool or the swim team in the lap pool.
The gym is a little easier, but not much. I work in a city 30 miles from my home, and it has turned out to be a good investment to join a gym in the city where I work. I carry my gym bag (changes of clothes, gym shoes, soap, towel, water bottle, lock, etc.) in the trunk of my car at all times. But even then, I have to locate about 1.5 hours when I'm not on the clock at work, and when I can be finished in time to get home and cook a meal for my husband and me. (No lie: Sometimes I've left the gym after a workout without showering, driven home in my gym clothes and come home stinking of sweat.)
The time challenges are real. Most of us are busy with non-workout-related activities because we have to be -- because we have obligations to our families, our employers and others.
And while it is sound advice to locate time, as regularly as possible, to work on one's body, it is condescending and counter-productive to assert that the challenges of doing so can simply be solved by prioritizing and will-power.
Yes, I'm an example of that. From that swim session, I went directly to a story assignment.
It happened in the locker room at the pool.
In that locker room -- and on the pool deck, and in the water -- greetings like "How are you?" and "How's it going?" aren't just small talk. We're a community of people who know what it's like to live with chronic pain, and we really want to know how the others who come to the water with us are faring, even if we don't know their names.
When a woman, whom I hadn't seen for a while, asked me, "How's it going?", I answered honestly.
"It's going great. How's it going with you?"
"Oh, OK," she said.
I heard the hesitation in her voice, but I don't remember whether I specifically invited her to elaborate. But she did.
It seems she's in the process of moving to a new home, and the move has been so time-consuming and unsettling that she hasn't been able to keep up with her warm-water exercise schedule.
"Well," I said, "you know all those people who say 'I can't find the time to exercise' is just a lame excuse? They're full of it. Finding time to work on your body -- and to do all the rigamarole that goes with it, like changing clothes and showering -- is a very real challenge."
The woman smiled, as though I'd just told her she looks like Miss America in her swimsuit.
It helped her, she said, to hear someone affirm that she's not being lazy, or insufficiently committed to physical fitness, or any of the other guilt-phrases that we so often hear from doctors, personal trainers and total strangers.
This morning I read another blog, with just such guilt-language. The blogger's assertion: We all have the same 24 hours in every day, the same 168 hours in every week. So there's no reason not to set aside some of those hours, on a consistent schedule, for working out.
Uh...actually, there are very good and very real reasons why that can be difficult, if not impossible.
Although I do indeed have 168 hours in a week, and I'm awake for roughly 112 of them, there are no two days in which I have the same hours available.
For each swim, I need to set aside about two hours, including time to get into my suit and goggles, get the equipment I need (kickboard, pool noodles, floating ankle weight, etc.), work out in the water, shower and get dressed again. Which two hours are available to me depends not only on my never-routine work schedule, but also on the schedule of the pool, such as whether there's a class in the warm-water pool or the swim team in the lap pool.
The gym is a little easier, but not much. I work in a city 30 miles from my home, and it has turned out to be a good investment to join a gym in the city where I work. I carry my gym bag (changes of clothes, gym shoes, soap, towel, water bottle, lock, etc.) in the trunk of my car at all times. But even then, I have to locate about 1.5 hours when I'm not on the clock at work, and when I can be finished in time to get home and cook a meal for my husband and me. (No lie: Sometimes I've left the gym after a workout without showering, driven home in my gym clothes and come home stinking of sweat.)
The time challenges are real. Most of us are busy with non-workout-related activities because we have to be -- because we have obligations to our families, our employers and others.
And while it is sound advice to locate time, as regularly as possible, to work on one's body, it is condescending and counter-productive to assert that the challenges of doing so can simply be solved by prioritizing and will-power.
Yes, I'm an example of that. From that swim session, I went directly to a story assignment.
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