I recent weeks my weight has been creeping up, recently topping out at 189 for a brief moment. This is not an all-time high -- I think I tipped the scales as high as 193 maybe early in grad school and probably also when I was transitioning into the private sector around 2000. But we are getting on up there.
I'm sure a bunch of things are at work. For one thing, with Adam injured, it's harder to get tennis on the calendar because it all involves complex scheduling as opposed to just having it on the calendar. But there's also the problem of holiday parties and my humanities-PhD-program engraved sense of scarcity: if there is free food, my body tells me I should eat it. And then my alcoholic inner voice whispers that since I don't drink alcohol it's OK for me to eat it. So I sense that I must simultaneously keep my exercise program up and my calorie consumption an ever duller roar.
What's more, I need to do this while bearing down on the looming 6-0 just around the corner in April. Anecdotally -- and that's all I've got -- my body seems to be pushing back a little. I went running yesterday afternoon and -- as I was trying to extend the 3-mile lake loop by adding a mile or so via the Rolling Road to Oxford Hills extension -- a calf started to threaten a cramp going up Rolling, so I had to slow to a walk. It could well have been dehydration, probably I hadn't focused on water enough through the afternoon of coffee and sitting and chatting with Ashlyn while getting a rare professional cut. I'd like to think that's the case. But part of me suspects it's aging. Everything takes a little more focus and discipline.
But maybe I'm sick of focus and discipline and want to chill out. Is that the siren song of senescence? Arghh, it's all so maddening. Certainly many naked eyes would observe me and my laptop-staring, YouTube-gorging ways and fail to see in me an exemplar of anything other than a very muddy middle. And who's to say they would be mistaken?
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