Health and Fitness

Checking In- Don’t Let Monstrous Times Make You A Monster

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Where are you Matt?
What are you feeling?
Check in- what’s happening now?

This is the litany of questions that has gone through my head on repeat for the last few weeks. It’s one of the tools I use to ground and re-center myself when I catch my thoughts ruminating or spiraling.

You don’t “hate everything,” Matt. You are tired and sad. Hate and anger are easier to feel and parse than pain.

This is the other mantra I’ve found myself repeating over and over when I find myself slipping into depression. That’s been increasing over the last few months. The usual anxieties and tribulations of life seem to magnify themselves when you constantly poach yourself in a broth of bad news. It feels like everything hurts, and the world is too hard and painful to keep being kind in.

I insist on continuing to be kind, though.
My core values remain Patience and Compassion.
My “Way of the Floured Hand” dictates that “I choose love, I chose love, and I will always choose love.”
“It’s Chaos; Be Kind.”

I know that ideals like this will always be worth it in the end, always me– but that doesn’t mean it’ll always feel good.

Bilbo Baggins from Lord of the Rings saying "I feel thin.. like butter scraped over too much bread."
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Our Insecurities Can Speak Out Of Turn

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My exercise routine has been yielding interesting results lately. After injuring my lats by increasing weight too fast on overhead presses, I decided to switch it up and give Romanian Deadlifts a shot, and while I will be going back to running in the spring I really enjoy just taking long walks in Mount Tabor Park.

The Romanian Deadlifts don’t seem to be doing much for my weight, but I’ve noticed I’m able to touch my toes more easily. The walks, similarly, have become less about getting exercise in and finding time to be quiet and mindful and piece my way through life.

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Learning To Be What You Need

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Would you have wanted you (as you are now) in your life when you were a kid?

I know it’s not always wise to start off blogs with a question like this, especially not one that “buries the lead.” Normally I try to start off a bit more gently- a good anecdote that puts the topic in context, or generally coming at a deep topic sideways. In this case, though, I feel like any attempt to answer a loaded question like this can only be given in story form. Ultimately, it makes us check in on our own stories. Has time actually conferred wisdom and maturity? Did we become the mentors and guides we would have wanted?

I don’t know, but I hope so and I’m always trying. That’s where stories help- we use them to understand character and how we write our own every day.

“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exists, but because they tell us dragons can be beaten.” – Neil Gaiman
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End-of-Year Reflections

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When exactly does a journey end?

If you are looking to go somewhere new or better, ideally you find yourself in a different place, put down your stuff, and start about the task of living a new life in your new location. Joseph Campbell’s famous “hero’s journey” structure includes The Return- our brave hero, having crossed the border of the known into the unknown on their grand quest, returns across that border to the world they knew significantly changed.

Maybe they brought the “Magic Medicine,” as Campbell calls it, to solve a problem and the quest of seeking and finding the Medicine was only the first (albeit largest) part. Tripitaka, having successfully reached India and received the sutras from the Buddha along with his assistants Monkey, Pigsy, and Sandy, must now complete the quest by returning to China with them. Frodo, having seen the One Ring destroyed and the quest complete, returns home to free and rebuild the Shire.

For Tripitaka and Frodo, though, that still wasn’t the end of their stories. Tripitaka and his friends are magically whisked back to India after finishing their delivery and receive their ultimate rewards: Buddhahood for Tripitaka and Monkey, and sainthood for Pigsy and Sandy as their undertakings on the journey expunged the sins that set them on the road in the first place. Frodo, forever wounded and traumatized by his quest and prolonged exposure to the evil of the One Ring, realizes that he “can’t go home again” and leaves Middle Earth to seek peace and healing in the uttermost West.

Returning home but returning differently is just as much a journey as finding yourself in a new place- you set down old ways and start the process of living again as someone new.

Photo by Johannes Plenio on Pexels.com
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Making Progress

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I’m sitting at the bar at Toms for one of the first really autumnal days after a bit of a heat wave, just in time for Casey to fix me a Pork Roll, Egg, and Cheese sandwich- then chase it with a stout when they start pouring at noon.

I actually ate breakfast at 7am, but then I successfully ran it off, and proceeded to walk the thirty minutes out here for my Hobbitesque “second breakfast.” Of all the ways to refuel after a run, the PREC is a solid winner.

I’m slowly getting back into my good habits- I’m back to working out daily, eating better/less/smarter, and slimming down a bit. It’s easier to make progress than it has been in a while, and it’s because I have the freedom to slow down, take stock, and learn to accept.

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