A life is judged by actions

 

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I NEED to apologize.

To you. To me. To whoever else really gives a shit.

Because the last week has been rough. Really rough. Belly flopping on broken glass rough. And it’s all my fault.

Look at the goals I put forth last week. Every single one of those is easily attainable with a simple choice and a little effort. But, as Yoda taught us all: You either do or you do not. There is no try.

So far, I do not.

So much of this “quest” (the quotes remain until I do something about it) is just about motivation. But we all know, if we think about it hard enough, that motivation is a load of crap. You either make the choice to succeed, or you make the choice to fail. And nothing over the past week suggests that I am making the choice to succeed.

It’s been an orgy of fast food and gym dodging, a full marathon of porn and masturbation and blowing off work. I’ve been dodging calls from my mom and my best friend, and I repeatedly refuse to do the following things:

- Bathe regularly
Shop for groceries
Save my money
Clean my room
Do laundry (I swear to you that I have been wearing the same food-stained shirt around the house for three weeks without a wash.)

I am heavier than when I started, and I am in worse shape. There are simple remedies to all these things. And that remedy is doing them. I repeatedly tell myself that I am going to do these things, yet plan them all for the following day, which somehow never comes. Why? Because it’s always today, and today is a “Me” day, much like every day for the first 29 years of my life.

There are reasons to make the right choices. Plenty of them. An ex coming into town on Halloween, a trip home at Christmas, a Vegas trip planned for February. But I meet none of these reasons with pressing urgency, as I am looking only for instant gratification.

There is a famous book called “The Road Less Traveled” by the late M. Scott Peck. I was assigned to read this book for my morality class in high school. I did not read this book.

But I was told by my friend, who read the first few pages, that Peck basically says that the key to a happy life is delaying gratification. That doing the unpleasant things first will ultimately lead to happiness in the future. I’ve always put a lot of stock in what my friend told me Peck said in the first few pages of that book. In fact, I truly agree and believe that delaying gratification is the key to happiness. Therefore, if I eat right and lift weights for the next five months, I will have a pretty good time sexing up ladies in Vegas in February.

So why can’t I fucking realize that?

Oh right, it’s because I am stupid.

But I’m not stupid. Even I know that. I just have so little will power that I could convince myself to bareback a 50-year old Hatian whore if I was horny enough.

I see everything laid out in front of me: The life I live now, the life I want to lead, and the path i need to take to get there. And I can recognize that Point A is so goddamn shitty, and Point B is at the very least a marked upgrade. And yet I can’t take that first step down the path to a decent life?

Scott Peck must think I’m a pussy.

But I’m not here to whine about my life to you. This ain’t no therapy session, people. I’m here to detail these missteps in hopes that maybe you’ll find them entertaining, or perhaps even identify with them. But I am still a person, a man in waiting. And there are solutions.

See, this can’t be self defeating. This has to be optimistic. This has to be me saying that tomorrow I will work hard. I will lift. I will record my caloric intake. I will delay my gratification. I will take the first steps toward my goal, and I will keep moving forward.

In that spirit, let’s end this on a happy note. I did do one thing this week that may ultimately benefit me greatly.

I took a hike.

And let’s not belabor the fact that after the hike I took a $30 overdraft charge on my bank account to go to In N Out Burger. Actually, let’s forget that part altogether.

Instead, let’s concentrate on the fact that I got up before noon Wednesday, and I went with a friend down to Tilden Park in Berkeley and I completed a short, yet somewhat uphill, 4-mile hike in an hour and a half. I sweated, I needed water, I breathed hard at times. Afterward, I felt like I may have taken the first steps toward conquering Pikes Peak next summer.

And I kind of liked it.

It’s baby steps at this point, and I realize that. But larger steps need to be taken. Day by day, week by week, month by month. I must develop some kind of resolve. I must become something I always wanted to be but never have been.

I must be stubborn and dedicated. And eventually, I’ll stop telling you about my feelings and start telling you about my actions.

And that’s why I apologized to you in the beginning. Because so far you’ve had to hear about my feelings. And what guy really cares about another guy’s feelings? Certainly not me.

I need to become an action man.