Keep showing up

Saturday 8/22/26

I was sitting outside the Starbucks reading yesterday. An attractive woman was walking down the street so that it was like she was coming in front of me because of how I was facing and would then pass me by. I was looking around and she looked right in my eyes and smiles at me. There was a pillar, and she passed from one side to the other, and when she emerged she looked at me again, continuing to smile. And I looked down, as if I were shy. I don't know why I did that. I felt foolish. I couldn't even look at her and smile back? There wasn't anyone else she could have been looking at.

I am almost wholly unaccustomed to kindness or displays thereof, no matter how minor, these being as rare as they've been throughout my life but in the last fifteen years especially, and increasingly as time has gone on. It's rare for me to be met with anything but hate, resentment, cruelty. These things are basically a given as soon as someone knows what I am, or has an inkling of that, which takes no time at all. It is similar to a chain reaction.

People are quick to don jackets. You'd think it was mid-autumn yesterday here in Boston. The temperature was in the upper sixties. A drizzly day, but light drizzle. Windy, too. I hoped walking to the Bunker Hill Monument that I'd get inside and do a great job running the stairs, but that didn't happen at all. For the third day in a row, I only did five circuits.

There are times when you going into the Monument feels like you've entered a cool cellar. Hot outside, cooler inside. Yesterday was the opposite. It has been a while, actually, since I've entered the Monument and felt that cooler effect. Quite warm and muggy in there yesterday. Stuffy. I heard one person say to the person they were with that they couldn't wait to get back into the cooler air outside.

Would have been nice to transpose the outside into the inside. That would have been just about perfect. I wonder what is happening. My guess is that this is residual heat. It sticks around like it's trapped in there.

I don't have any idea where I'm at with my fitness. This is as "in the dark" as I can recall being. Am I getting worse? Am I doing great? Not easy for me to do five circuits of late. My pace is pretty bad. My wind isn't good, my legs don't feel nearly as strong as I think they should. I'm definitely not moving briskly.

Has this summer really been that different? I try to be rational. How much worse could I have gotten considering I do this every day? What would make me worse? And, if I was getting worse, and that was because of my body, wouldn't I feel that after? Feel something? There's no pain. No soreness. I feel like I felt as a ten-year-old. I don't take any pain relievers. There's no need. I feel the same after as I do before.

So I don't know. I'm frustrated, which could also speak to a personal shortcoming. That I can't just say, "Okay, the situation is the situation right now, put it out of your mind, you'll get a better read soon enough and will probably be pleased thanks in part to what you've done this summer."

Something to work on.

In the meanwhile, I just keep showing up. That's probably what matters the most. That and starting.