Day 26 - Doing It Everywhere, All the Time

Today's sweat arose from the disappointment of a sold out showing of Les Mis.

After unsuccessfully trying to convince Amy that she might love to watch a musical on a big screen, Katie and I lazily took the subway all the way around the loop to the Dundas Square Cineplex to watch Les Miserables. 

UC, I love you.

Of course, it being Friday night, when we arrived the show had already sold out (COULD ANYONE HAVE PREDICTED THIS?). After significant hemming and hawing, we decided to head home rather than spend money on an IMAX showing or a drink. Katie took the subway, and I decided to seize the moment to get some sweat in by speed-walking home. I had originally planned to run, but had realised too late in the evening that the sidewalks were icing over and running in the dark would consequently be a dangerous prospect. So I set off on the walk back to Amy and Katie's apartment, with a nostalgic detour through the U of T campus and through the Sir Dan's quad. It wasn't as intense as I would have liked, but at least I squeezed in those 40 minutes.

Last time I asked Amy what I should blog about, she suggested broiled cheese chips as a topic, but this time she (more helpfully) suggested I talk about fitting physical activity into little packets of time.

The truth is, I have had plenty of time over the past few days, but most of my life is about finding little packets of time into which to slot all the activities of my daily existence - and isn't everyone's life like that, really? My schedule is irregular, and it's dictated mainly by people who don't know anything about me, my goals, or my life, and sometimes don't care. It would be easy to use that as an excuse to not get in any physical activity.

Other good excuses?

I'm tired. My knee hurts. My shoulder clicks. I need to relax and decompress. I need to study.

Need a few more?

I have to do laundry. I just ate. My apartment isn't clean. My sports bra stinks.

Cats don't need excuses to do the things they need to do.
They just watch squirrels whenever the opportunity arises.
I want to be like this with physical activity.
Bam.
 Just fit in another cat photo.

All of these are reasonable, rational excuses, and I'd accept them from anyone else but I just can't accept them from myself because if I accepted every reasonable, rational excuse, I'd never get anything done.

Not every day is going to yield a perfect opportunity to be physically active. In fact, most days won't. There will always be good excuses for not getting things done. But there will also be great opportunities for squeezing in physical activity - like walking home from the cinema instead of taking the subway (take note: I got home only a few minutes after Katie!).

A friend of mine is engaged in 365 days of self-care, and her first blog post about it (which I won't link to here, lest I violate her internet anonymity) talks about a need not to wait. I think that's true for my project, as well.

The fact is, I just can't wait. There are a million good reasons to not be physically active, and I may not be able to spend 2 hours at the gym, but I can squeeze in 40 minutes walking instead of a 30 minute trip on the subway. Sometimes what stops us from getting started is the seeming impossibility of the task.

I need to make it not impossible. 

I need to make it easy. 

And I need to git 'er done.

This is not a picture of me, but I wish it were.