Random Thoughts - Part One

I read Jocko Wilnick’s Discipline is Freedom before the hot weather set in. He’s the Extreme Ownership guy with various TED talks and interviews, during which he suggests we all wake up at 04:30. Because, why wouldn’t you? It was just one step of gung-ho too much for me. I know the hurt-your-legs-train-your-arms routine. I do it myself from time to time. But not all the time and anyway, he must have at least 50% more testosterone than me. After a while at the self-improvement game, I have reached a state I can maintain that is challenging but leaves me able to deal with the day job and the household routine. If I don’t get out as much as I would like, that’s a consequence of where I chose to live in 1987, not of doing bench-presses in a gym in Soho.

Being an ‘older man’ also means that my health and fitness targets are about maintenance rather than improvement. If you’re under fifty-five and have not had a serious medical event, you should be looking to improve: mo’ weight, mo’ reps. Over fifty-five, and there will be a day when you realise that maintenance is demanding enough.

Reach this steady state and the excitement, the sense of purpose, goes. A daily and weekly routine, that ten years ago would have been a serious challenge, is now exactly that: a routine. It’s not ho-hum, but it’s not a thrill that I made it to the end of another week.

What do we do self-improvement for? As if the answer is: to be more attractive to women, or to get a promotion at work. We do self-improvement because our lives had become a mess and we looked, ate and felt like shit. Then we get to a decent condition and we realise: it’s one thing to get here, and another to stay here. It’s as much work to stay in shape as it is to get in shape.

As if the question is: now I’m in shape, what am I in shape for? The answer is: so you don’t get out of shape again. And that takes work. Everything around you and your own bodily self conspires to drag you back into the mire of out-of-shape. Being in shape is a goal in itself. It’s like making money: we have to keep on doing it.

The steady state gets to be a different kind of comfort zone. Waking up and going through they day after a decent amount of sleep, knowing that another decent night’s sleep awaits is a pleasant feeling. Going out at 19:30 to something that won’t finish until 21:30 and that I won’t get home until 22:45 and so will miss a cycle of sleep and wake up groggy the next morning...? That grogginess starts to be, not exactly unappealing, but inconvenient.

It’s been a while since I saw something at Sadlers Wells, or an early evening movie in the West End. Or since I’ve been to one of the major museums or galleries. I feel I should be doing those things. Perhaps on some kind of rotation. The truth is, when I leave the gym, either at the end of the day or on a Saturday morning, I don’t have that what-does-the-rest-of-the-day-hold bounce.

Maybe there’s a role for the gang-ho, JFDI, losers-make-excuses-winners-make-things happen, attitude in doing regular going-out stuff. After all, my ‘objective’ for the recent few and next few weeks amounts to re-establishing a routine that worked well a couple of years ago and I let slip. It’s not much, but it’s enough.

Drag your ass to the Tate Modern - what else are you doing today?

Doesn’t quite sound right.