day 53: i woke up at - instead of stayed up until - 5 a.m.

A year ago I seriously thought walking to 7-Eleven for coffee constituted sufficient exercise, so I think I've earned the right to brag: last week I went to spin class at 6 a.m.

When I posted a Facebook update announcing my witching-hour workout, my old drinking buddy Joe Jay responded with the following: "Wow! The only spinning I remember at 6 a.m. was when our heads were still spinning from all those Jager shots the night before!"


Broadway at 5:30 a.m.

And yeah, that pretty much sums it up.



Despite all those old adages touting the virtues of morning - some crap about being healthy and rich, some other crap about worms - I have always found mornings to be offensive in the extreme. In addition to starting petitions to elminate Sundays and to destroy the sun to make mid-August more pleasant, my friend E. and I have also attempted to garner support for starting the day at 11 a.m.

Unfortuantely we have been continually thwarted by a rogue group of maniacs known as "morning people." These mushy-brained psychopaths are easily identifiable by their ability to smile before coffee, their insistence that "the day is half over" at 2 p.m., and the irritating, self-satisfied spring in their step when they've gotten a lot of shit done before noon.

The day I went to spin class I woke up at 5 a.m. groaning and cursing, and I arrived at the gym to discover a packed parking lot. Here they were: morning people. A lot of them. I shuffled inside half-dazed to discover people jogging on treadmills, lifting weights in front of the mirror, and doing crunches. As though this kind of behavior at this hour was normal. My brain flooded with "what the fuck," and I retreated to the bathroom to give myself a pep talk.

Eventually I tiptoed out and selected a stationary bike, and the next hour passed as though I was underwater or in a dream, or maybe a dream taking place underwater. Despite almost puking or passing out at least twice, somehow I managed to survive running, jumping, and skipping from one end of the gym to the other in between frantic bouts of pedaling on my bike. Then I went home, took a shower, passed out, and was late for work.

But, bonus: I ate and ate and ate all afternoon, and I didn't feel the least bit guilty about it.

day 45: i threw away the scale

It sounds insane to admit, but since March I've let a mass-produced electronic gadget from Wal-Mart, a cursed bathroom scale with the deceptive name "Health-o-meter," largely influence my happiness and self-worth.

First thing each morning I'd step on and hold my breath, as though this might somehow cause a smaller number to appear on the counter between my big toes. And each morning was a test: anything below a certain number was acceptable; anything above and I had failed, and my day was off to a shit start.

sunset over Milford Lake

Right now it's probably important to mention that, in a coldly rational sense, I know I'm nowhere near overweight; in fact, I'm in the "healthy" body mass index range for my height and size. My appearance has always been important to me, so I've always watched my weight and have never had much of a problem with it.

But earlier this year I was rejected from every MFA program to which I applied (eight total), and I saw my already tenuous acceptance of myself as a "writer" slip further away from reality. I was appalled by how little control I had over the situation - my admittance was based largely on vague, subjective criteria, i.e., did they "like" my writing, or was I a "good fit" with their program (turns out they didn't, and I wasn't).

More or less, with my life seemingly stagnating while my friends bought houses, got married and produced offspring, I needed to have absolute control over something, and the most obvious option was my weight. I bought the fucking Health-o-meter and allowed it, from its nook by the bathroom sink, to mock me when I ate a bag of salt and vinegar chips for lunch or allowed myself guacamole at Chipotle. I worked out five days a week and weighed myself upwards of five times a day, cursing myself for gains and praising losses, and within a few months I'd dropped nearly ten pounds.

In a phrase, FUCK YEAH.

But this new measure of control carried its own self-imposed misery. Nobody set my weight loss standard; I set it for myself, which made it all the more private and unrelatable. In fact, sharing it with anyone invariably got the same response: "You're already skinny; you have nothing to worry about." But it was about more than just being skinny. It was about getting a grip.

Then last weekend I went camping at Milford State Park in the Flint Hills. Along with waiting out a torrential downpour in a little tent by the lake and biking along rows of trees and prairie grass, I also didn't worry about my weight for the first time in months. I scooped mounds of french onion dip onto potato chips; I scarfed s'mores; I chugged Miller High Life. And on the last day, when I was taking a shower along with about 15 spiders and a small toad (seriously), I caught sight of myself in the mirror - not scrutinizing as usual, just looking - and I realized, hey, I look good.

When I got home, I stared down the dreaded Health-o-meter and stepped on. Moments later I was greeted by the largest number I've seen in some time. But instead of beating myself up, I picked up the cursed gadget and tossed it unceremoniously in the garbage. This morning the trash man picked it up at the curb, and for the first time this year, a week before my 28th birthday, I left my apartment lighter.

day 41: I ran a 5k through the mud and muck

When I signed up for the Mud and Muck Run, I figured I’d jog my three miles and then trot across a semi-muddy finish line while some lawn sprinklers spat arcs of water over my head. I figured I’d end up relatively clean, perhaps splattered with mud from the knees down.

I did not expect to emerge from a literal three-foot-deep mud pit looking like a fucking swamp monster, and I really did not expect to stand in the sun waiting in line to hose off while the muck on my body slowly hardened to a crust, all the while digging handfuls of wet, shimmering glop out of my cleavage.

But because I spent a significant portion of my childhood ruining pairs of white dress shoes while digging mud pits with my brother and cousins in our grandmother’s back yard (one time we dug a pit nearly a foot deep and even caught some toads to put in it before our parents got wise and shut us down), I wasn’t going to turn down a socially acceptable opportunity to get good and dirty. I mean, where else can you glormp down a sidewalk covered from the neck down in stank-ass sludge and have people greet you with a nod and a smile?

The race itself took place along a pleasant, meandering and scenic course in a park on the Unity Village Campus in Lee's Summit. With steep hills and rocky pathways, parts of the trail were difficult and even strenuous, but to me that meant one thing: I was earning my frolic through the filth, as well as the vegetarian chili I was going to eat afterward (at least I would have if they hadn’t shut down the food operation while I was still in line for one of ONLY THREE hoses, ridiculous considering the hundreds of attendees).

As we neared the three-mile marker, screams that fell somewhere on the spectrum from delighted to horrified signaled the presence of the mud pit around the next turn. And as far as mud pits go, this one was totally the bully who makes fun of your sweater and gives you a swirly before stealing your pencil case and your lunch money: I was shocked to see a grinning little girl doggie-paddling in circles around the pit's edge. Holy shit, I thought, this muck is deep enough to swim in.

“Are you guys sure you wanna do this?” my friend J. asked, clearly second-guessing her commitment to completely ruining a pair of shoes.

“We pretty much have to,” I said.

We quickly discovered that standing up in the pit meant sinking ala my worst childhood quicksand nightmare, so the only way across was to swim. Some people backstroked; I scooted along on my stomach and grabbed at god-knows-what to propel myself forward –- “Was that a shoe?” I heard someone yell as I grabbed at something that wriggled as though alive.

We emerged glimmering in the midday sun, telling ourselves it was like getting a spa treatment… right?

day 31: i put my foot behind my head

I have never been one to plan or consider consequences. Instead I sort of shrug and think "we'll see how this turns out" before staying up until 3 a.m. drinking a bottle of wine and drunk-dialing everyone I know, climbing to the upper branches of a tree in the park, or eating leftover Indian food before spin class.

And since I'm about to turn 28, an event about which I am irrationally terrified, I have a feeling this tendency toward extremes is just a part of my nature. Sure, it leads to some pretty fantastic mistakes, but it also leaves me with endless opportunities to surprise myself.

Yesterday I decided to walk the five miles from my apartment to my office. Five miles really isn't that far, though in a place like KC where everyone drives everywhere all the time, people tend to both worry about your safety and assume you're crazy when you tell them you're going to walk from Midtown to Brookside. 

And in my case they might have good reason, because instead of my brand-new $80 hiking shoes I decided to make the trip wearing flip-flops. Sure, they were the fancy Orthaheel kind that are supposed to be good for your feet, but about 2.5 miles in I began to suspect, like the bad guy who turns to dust after picking the wrong Jesus goblet in Indiana Jones, that I had not chosen wisely. But it was too late to turn back, so despite the protests of my toes I sucked it up and finished the trek.

And it was fine. Six months ago before I became an exercise junkie it would not have been fine, but yesterday evening I still felt good enough to go to yoga class at Scott Fitness.

Bernie is the only yoga instructor who has not terrified me. He wants students to push themselves, but he is encouraging instead of threatening, and instead of staying at the front of the room balancing on one hand with his feet in his armpits while telling you you're doing it wrong, he gently helps you correct your mistakes.

After six months of going to his class fairly regularly, I am more comfortable with the rules of yoga, similar to when I learned the rules of baseball and suddenly knew what to do without thinking about it. An inherent knowledge of the rules has allowed me to transcend them, in a way, and experience a greater sense of freedom and enjoyment while seeing how closely I can get my body to resemble a pretzel.

So when, after a series of preparatory poses, Bernie encouraged me to put my foot behind my head, I totally fucking did it. And it was awesome. I didn't know my body could do that; even as a kid, when, as Bernie says, we routinely did crazy-ass yoga poses without even knowing it, I could never get my foot behind my head or do the splits (god knows I tried).

self-illustration of yoga

So in the spirit of eating too many jalapenos, cutting your hair yourself, flipping off every cop and drinking from every geyser, and genrally being extreme in a good way, namaste.