Live Wires

My attempts at personal improvement seem to come in spurts. The dystrophy becomes too much to ignore, and I revamp my approach to existence. This includes a serious and in depth cleaning of my room, reorganizing of my finances, sometimes the rearranging of furniture, and the creation of a To Do list from which the idle fat has been stripped. Feverishly good intentions take hold and I become ambitious and upbeat, and for a matter of weeks, I am the person I want to be.

But order cannot prevail forever against chaos when I must pit my resolve against entropic decay and my own creeping ease. It is an uphill battle of Sisyphean suffering, and though, when I first heard the sordid tale, I wondered why the poor man continued to roll his stone, I find myself following his cursed compulsion.

I become downcast when my boulder rolls from peak to valley, but have found that giving up on my toil only makes it worse—the bottom of the hill is lower than I previously believed, and I know I have not yet descended its full dismal depth.

And so, I push again, finding what I always thought was a perverse satisfaction in my futile work.

I have a new strategy. In the past, I always relied on finding a new source of internal energy, some hidden dynamo waiting, thrumming in the tangled darkness of my spirit. It may well be there, but blundering through the twisted jungle of humming power lines takes too long, and in the meantime, my boulder is giving in to gravity.

My conclusion, drawn only recently, is that my current power source must suffice, until I find that mystical machine, and I must divert and redistribute my energy, one line at a time.

My current effort is called the “Quit Smoking Weed Fitness Program”. I will explicate: Weed makes me lazy. Despite my atypical response to the drug, which is to get up and do something, I lose time and energy. I dumped four hours at a time into unremembered thoughts, incoherent scribbles, work out sessions that lack the focus and intensity required for improvement, and other confounded efforts. Also worth mentioning is the cost of the substance itself—another form of energy I cannot afford to waste. I have redirected the mental, physical, and financial energies into upgrading my flesh casing, the money spent on supplements, the time given over to a variety of beautifully destructive work-outs, supported with the desire, intent, and motivation of an unhindered mind.

It has been two weeks since I decided to quit altogether. I started a serious diet and exercise regimen only four days ago, and the difference is already apparent.

I will continue to push myself. Hopefully, because the energy sinkhole has been severed from the system, maintaining this intensity will be easy. The intent is to make change in my lifestyle, not just my weekly schedule.

There are other things that require improvement as well, obviously. I need to practice bass more, and write more frequently, and more professionally. Those things will have to wait until I prove that I can make lasting changes to my energy distribution. One step at a time.

I have a tendency to forget that a mile is made of steps. I find myself looking at the thousand mile walk, and breaking it into blocks of miles. I must not forget the steps.

And I must keep walking in the same direction.