A couple of nights ago, while lifting weights for the first time in a few weeks, I paused for a minute before my last set on the bench. It was, by the way, also my second set. I only really had a half an hour to do it. Would you like some excuses? I can make you some. One becomes adept at concocting excuses if he allows himself the opportunity to practice.
Anyway, I lay beneath the silver bar, staring up at it. There was a reflection, a mutated, warped one, fuzzy, unrecognizable, but it was me. As we blinked at each other, some innocuous classic rock in the background, I fell into a brief revelry. “Is that me?” I blinked. That lazy guy that rides an exercise bike 4 times a week. Runs maybe once. Does some push-ups and pull-ups. Hasn’t lifted for a month. Is that who I’ve become, lazy, resigned?
I don’t write anymore. I don’t take pictures anymore. I certainly don’t (in my defense, can’t) run anymore. I’d be flattering myself to claim that I have any useful faith anymore. I lay and stared at the bar, wondering what, exactly, I was if not everything that I once thought I was.
All I do is work and recover from work. I come home, sit in front of the computer for 20 minutes, bother Jen for 20 minutes, shift some dirt around in the garden, eat dinner, ride the exercise bike, get tired, go to bed, go to work. Work. Filthy, mandatory, pervasive, work. At all hours, work. In my head whenever I leave it, in my dreams when I sleep, no running to vent it, just work.
I could hardly recognize the oblate, warped image staring back at me in the bar. Close your eyes, breathe out, silence, breathe in pause and out – UP.
Words 
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