Ambition vs apathy

I am definitely not the poster child for "stick-to-it-ness." I'm more like a New Year's resolution--full of good intentions but completely lacking any ongoing willpower. So I am both totally proud of my five days in a row last week of (any kind of) physical activity, and pretty much ready to throw in the towel with all of that.

It would be different if I enjoyed sports, or loved the gym. Liking exercise would be so helpful...and I don't hate exercising necessarily, I just don't enjoy it in a way that gets me up from other things I'm doing to go exercise instead. I don't have any huge improvement I'm trying to see. I'm not training for a marathon, I'm not signing up for a team sport...there's nothing to keep me at it every day. I could probably not run all month and then go and do a 5k and be okay enough to complete it. And when I'm so terrible at anything resembling a pullup, not doing an arm workout on any given day doesn't feel like it's going to have a detrimental effect on any non-developing super abilities.

So I'm having a hard time convincing myself to keep this up, let alone step up the program. I get all these great ideas--I should run a mile every morning before work! I should do my chinup attempts every day, not just on the days I don't do an evening run! I should do pushups every day, and then each day add just one more! Except then when it comes time to actually DO any of these things, I find I am far more interested in doing the dishes. Or facebook. Or sleeping.

But I do want to keep myself at a level of fitness that makes 5ks and obstacle races possible. And the overachiever (at least mentally) in me has all these grand visions of what I could look like in 6 months or a year if I really commit to improvement. So I am left with a constant battle. Weights, or facebook? Running, or errands? Chinups, or tv? I think that if I do wind up in the kind of shape I want to be in, it's going to be by far a mental victory rather than a physical one.

It's 10 pm, so too late to run, but I am going to GET UP and do at least a lame arm workout before calling it a day. Small victories lead to bigger ones, or at the bare minimum, they avoid establishing a precedent for "not now, maybe tomorrow." Today, at least.