Posts Tagged ‘fitness’
Twenty Eighteen
Happy New Year!
Time to turn over a new calendar, or something like that. The health clubs and fitness centers will be crowded for a week or two, and based on past evidence, the numbers will return to normal again by the end of the month.
Humans.
We’re a funny bunch.
However you notch the passage of time, may this eighteenth year of the millennium greet you with unlimited possibility for optimal health and well-being.
Find the happy! It’s a worthy goal for which to strive.
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My Choice
The other day I picked up a pitchfork and worked up a sweat stirring compost. It was late afternoon and I was already tired from a full day of chores, so my energy was waning. My arms sent a notice of complaint to my brain.
“Tired. Don’t feel like working anymore.”
It occurred to me that, despite a prevailing mindset to use machines to do all our exhausting tasks, I prefer the precise control I can achieve with hand tools. I’m not as fast as a machine, and I tire easily, but I get more satisfaction.
In my head, I imagined someone interrupting my effort to suggest I use the bucket on the tractor, because I was huffing and puffing, straining at the effort, and breaking a good sweat.
I actually like the exercise, despite my body complaining that it is tired.
How hard is it to convince yourself to get up early and go to the gym for a healthy workout? The body would rather remain at rest, for sure. But to be physically fit, we have to push ourselves out of that resting comfort zone.
Next, I imagined myself at the gym, huffing and puffing at the effort to work my arms, lifting weight. Would someone suggest that there is a machine to do that for me, so I don’t have to work so hard?
I choose my pitchfork.
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Rest Day
Sunday was certainly a day of rest for me yesterday, after having ridden so many miles on Saturday. I took a most luscious nap in the middle of the day. My eyes just didn’t want to be open, so I gave them some rest. The rest of me followed suit.
After my nap, I revved up to do the tiniest of chores. I was able to mow the overgrown trails in the woods, because it has dried up lately just enough I was able to drive on it without getting stuck. I wound new line on the spool for the trimmer in the cool shade of the shop. I stood with the horses while Cyndie tended a scrape on Legacy’s front leg.
I also ate a few extra calories, to make sure my body had more than enough to regenerate itself. Visions of the week of biking that lies ahead next month.
Will I be ready? I think I already am, despite having been on my bike only twice so far this season. Must be all that pitch fork work and hill walking I do around Wintervale that has allowed me to stay fit.
Rich Gordon snapped a photo of this athlete in action…
I wasn’t hurting too much yet!
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Choosing Hardship
Things are not going very easy for us on the ranch right now, but despite the difficulties we face, we are still basking in the richness and fullness of this life we have chosen. The primary frustration is the current weather pattern we have been under for a week. It has been chilly and rainy every day. Too rainy, for many of them. The wind has calmed a bit in the last couple of days, so we do have the benefit of that misery being removed from the rest of the miserable onslaught we have had to endure.
In direct correlation to the troublesome weather is our plight in caring for the horses in the manner we aspire to maintain. We just can’t alleviate their predicament of too much mud. We anticipated a certain amount of hassle, but this week of rain is just over the top. Not just the rain, but the cold, cold temperatures, too. We have tried to provide some relief, by allowing them time in the barn, but that is a temporary solution for a problem that has far exceeded being of temporary duration.
The amount of work required to manage our property is significant, but adding the universal difficulty of non-stop wetness compounds the burden dramatically. Every building is leaking, including my wood shed! The grounds are a mess. That makes the house a mess, and clothes a mess. It’s hard!
But it’s good. It’s a good hard. There are easier life styles a person can choose. Mankind spends a fair amount of energy devising ways to make life easier. I make jokes about the situation where life gets so easy a person has to join a fitness club and pay money to engage in sessions of doing hard work. People will workout in a gym, running in place or moving weighted levers up and down to get sweaty, develop strength and muscle tone. But, dig in the dirt? Carry heavy objects long distances? Walk the hills of 20 acres? Why would someone choose to do that?
Maybe we choose to live like this precisely because it is hard. A life of hard work offers special rewards that more than justify the effort. At least, that’s what I keep telling myself whenever our hard life starts getting really hard. Of course, I’ve got the benefit of being in proximity of Cyndie’s positive outlook, which she graciously shares, encouraging me to check my focus and recognize our many blessings.
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Relative Something 