Sabotage!

On Tuesday, my roommate left for Gen Con, where he'll be showing off his excellent new game, Torchbearer, and hanging out with a load of people I would love to see. I'm a little jealous, but quite glad I am not there because right now I can live without the punishing schedule and lack of a gym. 

I have been exercising more again, after gaining a bunch of weight when depressed earlier this year, and fighting to remind myself that "good enough" is no such thing when it comes to my recovery. It gets easier to accept compromise and not recovery, so I have to actively remind myself first, that I want to recover physically as much as humanly possible, and second that such a recovery only happens if I take exercise. 

To build up my overall endurance, I swim laps of a pool that is miraculously on my block, but is a bit skeevy. Fellow New Yorkers will know how unusual it is to have a pool right there, so the skeeve is a minor hindrance. I go to the pool on weekdays, typically, and to the gym on the weekends. Since swimming in a straight line requires concentration, my vision is poor and the pool has enough chemicals in to be murky, those are the times I can go and hope for fewest other people to collide with.

Anyway, on the Tuesday, I was primed and ready to go to the pool, when Thor set off, and a naughty thought popped into my brain: I could stay at home, not go the pool, and nobody would ever know! Never mind that this is not true, because I log all my exercise on Fitocracy, and that it makes no appreciable difference to Thor whether I swim or not, there was the delicious temptation to get away with something.

It didn't matter that I would, in the long run, suffer for not going, nor that after the first half dozen or so lengths I settle into a pleasant rhythm; the opportunity to pull a fast one was almost irresistible. Almost, but not quite: I told my brain to go screw itself and went to the pool. 

Unfortunately, my brain had a few tricks lurking in the grey matter. When I got to the pool, I discovered that I had left my fancy new swimming watch behind. I went and got it. Back home, I was again tempted to be all huffy about being jerked around by my brain and just not go, but I quashed the temptation, and set off again. 

I got about two steps out of my front door, before realizing that my brain had made one last desperate attempt to skive off: I had left my walking stick behind. Happily this all had the reverse of the desired effect: I was more determined than ever to go swimming, and I did. 

My brain has had the last laugh, though. This morning, I took my time getting up, and faffed around on the Internet, until my brain gleefully remembered that I have an acupuncture appointment today. There's not enough time to go swimming and to make it to happy fun needle time. Bugger.