Planet Fitness

Saturday 5/24/25

If you're doing something good that other people aren't doing for reasons that are personally best for you to be doing that thing, they'll often want to put a stop to it. I don't know what percentage of people. It's not like ninety-nine percent. But it's common.

For instance, someone yesterday learned of my diet and I could a discern a note of rebuke in their remarks. A note. But it was there. What I call the parting tone--a tone that is meant to part you from the course you are on. Or have you veer. Less for you and more for something to do with that other person.

I'm not a foodie. Nor a person who pines for sweets or thinks they're "fun." No matter what my life was like--that is, if I had what I deserve to have and things could not be improved upon--there would never be at time when I was looking forward to desert.

Writing a new story and knowing it would be getting to the world? I'd look forward to that more than anything. Hiking the woods of Rockport and then returning to the house I'd gotten back there? That, too. In the extreme. Going to the ballet? Yes. Spending the night listening to "Dark Star"? Definitely.

But cake? No. I will never be the person who is excited, or pretends to be excited, to go to Mike's Pastries and Modern Pastry to do some kind of dessert taste off. There are a million things I'm interested in and that's not one of them. I have no interest in restaurants--I'd rather get books even if I had a billion dollars. It blows my mind--and depresses me--how it can seem to be this ultimate thing for people. And I don't think it's for the conversation, or the night out away from the kids and recharging the relationship with quality one-on-one time.

I am in a historically unique and difficult situation. It takes everything I have to bear up and keep going, including physically. My life, to date, has been almost nothing but intense pain and suffering. Should that eventually, finally, mercifully, meritoriously not be the case, and there's some justice, I want to be healthy to enjoy the opposite of what this is for as long as possible.

More importantly, I have an endless amount to give the world for the world. I would not be done giving it what I have for it at ninety-years-old. I would still basically just be starting. So I need to be here and I need to be at my best. For as long as possible, allowing that one of these days I don't just say, enough, and end it. But right now I am still trying.

As for food, it means little to me. I am not someone to take a photo of food and post it online. I have paper plates. The dishwasher hasn't worked in like thirteen years. But no matter what, I don't care about food. I think a very simple person with no other interests is someone who does typically care about it very much, insofar as one can care about it. It is among the least of my interests.

Of course my diet is boring and would probably drive someone else out of their mind. And sometimes I'm like, man, this isn't exactly a big range of offerings, is there anything else? But it's a choice I've made for the reasons described above. I have priorities. And I have discipline. I know what's important in terms of my life, what I'm trying to do, and what puts me in a better position that I can actually control. Also, the peace of mind I have given myself in this one area--in a life that is a roiling death-sea that's as far from peaceful as it gets--matters. Sometimes it's just a case of one less thing to worry about. And when you have so much to worry about, you can really need that.

It's different, but consider the stairs. Is that fun? Would anyone else do that? Sounds difficult, doesn't it, running up and down the 294-stairs of an obelisk. I do it. Because each stair in that obelisk plays a part in me getting where I'm going, should I ever get there. Every last one. Just like every entry in this journal, every story I write, every piece. I do it for my art. Every single thing I do in my life I do for my art. My art I do for the world. Right now, I am trying to overcome the forces that keep my art from the world. This is not a regular life. It's not a life like any that has ever been. The choices I make are different as a result, and what is required and best is different as a result. I act accordingly.

Yesterday I did ten more circuits in the Monument, and it was a challenge. That's ten circuits the last four days it was open--Sunday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. I believe this is a record for me in terms of ten-circuit days in a row. I don't know how many I'll do later today. Yesterday was a struggle. On Sunday, I could have kept going. Felt fresh and fine. The weather was ideal for stair running, I had on the right attire of T-shirt and shorts. It's harder in a sweatshirt and sweatpants. They're just heavier, and then you sweat so much and they're soaked through, making that situation worse, or a combination of heavy with sweat and rain, like on Thursday after being outside for so long beforehand in the nor'easter. I could have kept going on Sunday. Not the case yesterday. Five felt like ten circuits, and the last three times up--and final two in particular--were a bear. I definitely hit a wall.

But it's fine. That's decent, doing that many circuits over just a few days. Again, no aches. No Advil. No twinges. It's as if I didn't run any stairs or do anything at all.

Some annoying people, of course. There are always annoying people. Whether that's some pot-bellied man I've passed four times being so unobservant and dim that he says, "You're halfway there, you got this!" like I'm in the same boat as him--as someone who does this once and struggles and weren't we so crazy to even try. People. want you to be in their lowly boat with them. It gives them comfort. Makes it easier for them to shirk and do less, which is what they always want to do. And they'll almost always want to pull you down to their level. They don't want to try to go up to yours, or their version of yours. And they'll try to pull you down all kinds of ways, none of which are good, and some of which are evil. Depending.

Then there were a couple guys I very politely said "excuse me" to near the top as we were all starting down so that I didn't have to ride their asses to the bottom at their drip-drip-drip pace. One of them mocked me after I was out of sight. I can always hear. That's a good lesson in life--your voice is never as quiet as you think it is. People hear you under your breath. I have exceptional hearing, and it's also a stone chamber, so sound carries.

The thing is, people will say what they say once you've gone, but in the Monument, after I've gone past you, you're shortly going to be seeing me again. Cut to a minute later, and up I come, and I say, "Want to do some mimicry now, tough guys?" Eyes drop. "Or are you just going to stare at the ground like cowards? Thought so."

Couldn't even look up. It's always the same. People are cowards. They're also emboldened by screen-based culture. That is, they're used to popping off with one hand in the chip bag and the other on their device where there are no words coming back, no eyes on them, no accountability. That's how people live out in the world now. Without realizing it, it's how they've trained themselves to be. Over-made themselves as. Gutless, simple, unthinking post-people.

People will just make comments. Inappropriate comments, like they're not in reality--at that place, out in the world--with you. I'll give you another example.

Americans are usually in poor shape. Bodies are flabby, minds are flabbier. (Which, ironically, seems to make them all the quicker to congratulate themselves for non-things or the most trivial of "accomplishments," whether that's someone who calls themselves a writer, sucks at writing, and opens a new Word doc for the first time in a year and takes a victory lap on social media for having done so, or someone who takes ten minutes to walk up 294 stairs.) They have no curiosity. They're lazy, rotting logs. They can't think their way through anything. They won't think. They can't surmise. Put together. Reason. Observe. Link the various things which they observe to form reasonable conclusions. Deduce.

They're not going to try. They wouldn't know how. They just blurt. First thing that comes to mind. No one can tell what anything is. So it's just chickens going around, squawking. No chicken is paying attention to any other chicken because all of these chickens are raging narcissists.

People talk about main character syndrome. That's wrong. It's not that people think of themselves as the main character in a story--every story--and that's how they go about their lives. They think of themselves as the only character in the story. Never mind that they're boring and basic and bereft of individuality. It's like having a bowl of porridge as the sole character of that story. And every book, every story, is about the same bowl of porridge, and nothing else, just with a different name. Porridge John, Porridge Jane.

If someone enters the Monument and sees me going up three times during the time in which they're in there, they will always, without fail, assume--and often state--that I've done it three times only. "This is his third time!" or "You've done this three times!"--seriously, they say that to me. Like I could not have been doing it before they got in there. Not only am I being informed--by them--but I'm actually being corrected by them, too. And there I was thinking it was five times. Good thing this boob was here to set me straight.

Because in their minds--for lack of a better term--nothing exists before they got there. Before they get there. Or before they were born. Think of how narcissistic and obtuse you have to be to just assume this. To have this as your automatic setting. It's why when people play cinema historian on Reddit and opine with utter confidence which films have the best cinematography ever, they're always films from their lifetime. Again, like nothing exists or counts before their arrival or when they began to show some interest.

And if you pointed it out to them, they'd rage, because they weren't being praised and reality was intruding on what they wished to think about themselves and--this is important--what they wished to think that everyone naturally thinks about them.

They've confused no one correcting them with everyone agreeing with them. But the truth is, everyone else is just hyper-fixated on themselves. No one is even noticing each other. Or anything, for that matter. And when you don't do that, you lose the ability to even tell what anything else even is. You don't know good from bad, painfully unfunny from funny, and so and and so on. Things that are worse become things that are "better."

Say there's a great book. Say there's a book written at a fourth grade level. I don't mean a kid's book. I mean it's that bad--clunky, platitudinous, hollow, simple as can be--I mean, so simple that a squirrel would you were reading it to would ask if you had anything else. There are many people who will think the latter is better because it's closer to what they would do/write and it more closely resembles how they think--or can't think. It's dumb. They're dumb. The other book can be seen as a threat. Something that knocks them back. "You think you're better than me?" That's their attitude towards that other thing.

But back to these two people--they were a couple--who fit the bill of all of these things from a while back when I was running stairs. I was coming down and they were going up. Picture how I look. Athletic, dressed like someone working out. Headband. Not a tourist. I don't dilly-dally when I get to the top. I put one foot on stair 294, and tap it with my other, and boom, back down, fast.

I'm moving at a brisk pace on the way down. I take deep breaths--you have to know how to breathe for this sort of workout--to regulate myself and be ready for when I hit the bottom step where I do what I just did at the top step. I don't hang around, put my hands on my knees. As soon as I get to the bottom, I turn and go again in one motion. I try and be like a swimmer turning in the pool. I'm dripping with sweat. And if you think someone dripping with that much sweat just slowly walked up this obelisk the one time and was now returning, then you basically have no clue how exercise works at all, meaning, of course, you never exercise.

As I'm coming down, this guy, with me right there, says to his wife, "This guy's even out of breath on the way down." In this jeering manner.

Dumb, lazy, out of shape, narcissistic log. And a rude one. But mostly dumb. Like, you can't figure out that we're doing different activities, chief? That maybe you, your wife, and me aren't up to the same thing today in this space? No problem talking about me in front of me like I'm not even there. And in the stupidest way.

I can't imagine doing something like this. I say to him, "You think we might be doing something different here, Planet Fitness?"

By the time he processed what had happened--because he wouldn't be able to put it together right away--I would have been a further twenty stairs down. But, if he wanted to say something about that, he'd get his chance a couple minutes later, because it was back up for me again.