Working Out, or The Pleasures of Procrastination

Exercise is a lot like love. You meet, pledge your troth, have a long honeymoon period, and then after a while you start coming home later and later, you forget birthdays and anniversaries, and if things get bad enough you stop speaking altogether. Later on, you look at old photos and sadly remember the way it used to be.

Last June, I stepped into a thrift store fitting room to try on a shirt. I have no full-length mirrors at home, so I hadn't seen my body for a few years. I took off the shirt I was wearing, looked in the mirror, and screamed. Would I make it to the delivery room before my water broke?!

I was always the skinny kid, the one with the pet tapeworm that ate everything anyone set before it. But somewhere along the way the tapeworm moved out and left a vacant stomach behind. So who was this stranger staring back at me in the dressing room? It wasn't me. It was the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.

I left the store empty-handed and got off the bus at the downtown YMCA. The front desk staff rushed me into the ICU, where I filled out a membership form before being taken through the facility to see the machines that would save my life.

(I know what you're thinking right now: "Pledge your troth?")

Long story short: in three months I lost the weight. That was the easy part. I maintained the new weight up through October, eating right and working out five or six days a week. But then came . . . The Holidays. I thought I was impervious to setbacks. I said to myself, "What's one potato chip going to do to me? Haven't I earned it? OK, now what are two going to do?" Do you have any idea how difficult it is to regain momentum after 8,628 potato chips? My holidays lasted four months because I started listening to The Little Voice Inside. You might recognize it:

"You're already home. Why go out again just to get all sweaty?"

"You've kept the weight off all this time. Have another Ding Dong."

"That's OK, you'll work out tomorrow. Well, that depends on when the big game will be televised."

I call it procrastination by rationalization. No, it isn't fun. But don't most of us do it? No matter how accomplished I might feel, picking up where I left off feels like the hardest thing in the world because I've allowed myself to stand still. Mercifully, mysteriously, I've managed to keep my weight down, even though only I work out half the time now and can't resist the occasional strawberry shake at my local Fanci Freez. But why isn't it easy anymore? I want to go back to that thrift store mirror and say, "Motivate me!" But because I now look like I'm done giving birth to triplets, there's no more urgency. I have to jump-start the momentum on my own.

Writer's block is another serious impediment to doing what I love. I sit down every day and devote a set amount of time in front of a blank notebook, scribbling down whatever brainstorms drizzle their way into my head. Some days nothing comes. That's OK. Two days? Mere child's play. But when it gets to be a week or two, I suddenly realize this has the potential to become the Berlin Wall of writer's blocks. Pacing won't help. Distracting myself with other tasks won't do it, either. Short of having Ronald Reagan come over and say, "Mr. Corvaia, tear down that wall," I feel just the way I do when I've been away from the gym for a few days -- it's becoming too comfortable not doing what I love. How can I not want to? Sometimes I think the worst word God ever invented is "complacency." How did He even know what it was? If He had been complacent, we might still be waiting around for Him to get on with the eighth day.

But then an amazing thing happens. One day the block disappears, and the next poem I write turns out to be the best poem ever produced in Western civilization. I'm telling you, the angels weep. Of course, this doesn't actually happen, but I feel as if I've climbed another rung up the ladder of creativity; I'm convinced this new poem is slightly better than anything else I've ever done. So what feels like death is really dormancy. This process usually lasts a few weeks at most. My last block, though? It lasted a year. I was almost done traversing the five stages of grief (I'd just gone from depression to acceptance -- I literally thought I would never write again, and that was OK) -- when I sat down to write a grocery list and out popped a first draft. I had to continue it on paper larger than the list sheets that stuck to my refrigerator, but there was no stopping me. I think I even wrote across the tabletop on my way from one sheet to the other because I was afraid even a pause would kill the momentum.

Although the story has two happy endings -- I liked the poem and I eventually got it placed -- my plan to be a lean, mean writing machine proved to be premature. Poems are coming out far and few between lately; each one seems to take more and more effort. Plus, I don't like the new stuff very much. That first poem set the bar high, and, except for rare blessings like that, I'm easily disappointed.

So, while it sounds like I'm shifting topics here, I'm really not. Exercise is a lot like writing. Either we keep going, or we learn to tell the difference between speed bumps and Berlin Walls. In fact, writing is a lot like love, too. (Not really. I was just going for a syllogism.)