Monday 5/1/23
There's a lot going on and about to be a lot more. Yesterday was a nadir of uselessness. As useless as I've been in a day in a long time in every way. Eventually I just went to the Starbucks and ordered a large black coffee so I might be able to stay up and watch the Bruins game, and I just sat there and stared into the void, with a book on the table in front of me, unopened. Sat, stared, drank.
I think it's humanly impossible for someone to understand what this is like. Living in this situation. Well, I think this journal actually mitigates against impossibility. I would never want to say that there was anything I couldn't get a reader to feel fully. It is still something different, though, living this. But days of out and out uselessness can't be happening right now--or they can't happen much. (I should add here that I was thinking. I am always thinking. And when I am thinking, I am always creating inside my head. And I did help a friend help his kid who is scared of public speaking and had to speak in front of a bunch of people.) It is the time to both create more than ever and fight--and fight back against these people--harder than ever.
But I did want to make what's a kind of fitness note here. I wasn't happy with my push-up form. Most people don't have good form, and I was one of those people. My form wasn't horrendous, but it was holding me back on getting the benefits that one does push-ups for anyway. My elbows were slightly turned out--this made it much easier.
I've corrected my mistake--and there were some others, too--and I'm back at zero. Almost actually. Ten push-ups done the right way is now tough. It's hard to do a technically sound push-up. I gutted my way through 200 of them yesterday, so I don't want to make myself sound feeble. I've done 100 so far today and will probably do some more. But I'm doing a bunch of sets of ten. The general aim is still 100 push-ups a day. Even before, when I would also do 1000, or 500, the bottomline standard plan for each day was at least 100.
Right now I just care about get the form correct and having it become second nature, which it still isn't. I'm having to think through the exercise. If you were going to push someone standing in front of you in the chest, your elbows would be close to your sides. That is, your arms would go back, then push straight out. Your elbows wouldn't be raised at all. That's how a push-up is really supposed to be, but against the ground, obviously.
I want the maximum benefit and I don't like to do things incorrectly. No stairs yesterday. Again, part of my uselessness of the day. I didn't end up sleeping from the night before, so I was up for a lot of hours straight, too. That was a mixture of the noise from outside, stress, and the knowledge that I have to do so many unpleasant things--war-wise--that I don't want to do. But I will do every last one of them.
I also don't want to be slipping and my fitness right now isn't where I wish it to be. That may sound strange, because here's a guy always writing about how many stairs he just ran and the like, but my numbers aren't what I feel they should be and then there is how the workouts themselves are going. I feel like a decent portion of what I do should be easier for me. I have to be healthy and I have to be around for another five plus decades and performing at a high level, and that means doing what I need to do now and keeping that going. Someone saw a couple photos of me just after I had finished running stairs a couple times--3000 stairs one time, 5000 the other--and they said I looked very tired. I shouldn't look tired after running my stairs. Not that many. Takes about an hour to run 5000. You get up around 1500, and you're dripping. You coat the stairs with sweat. There's a trail of sweat beads. Well before you're done, the shirt you have on is saturated. You can take it off and wring it out. If you wanted to. I also need to more consistently get to Charlestown to run the Monument, and produce better numbers in there.
I'm hydrating enough, at least, and also drinking copious amounts of hibiscus tea, peppermint tea, no fat milk, and cranberry juice for my heart health. Virtually all of the water is laced with lemon juice from the three to five chunks of lemon I have floating in most of my water bottles (there are two with smaller openings).
Yesterday marked 2485 days, or 355 weeks, without a drink of alcohol.
I did watch the Bruins game. I did push-ups in the hall between periods. That was me going at it trying to better my form between the third period and the start of OT. Writing something somewhat connected to the Bruins now--it's about what it really means to choke and to fail. Because I don't think people understand either, be it in sports or life. Or they don't consistently understand, anyway. I doubt I will be able to sell it, but it will be excellent when it's done, and, as per usual, easily the best of its kind, if it qualifies as a kind of anything other than a unique Fleming thing.
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