Maybe it's time to stop making goals. Another week gone by without a run, and the prospect of achieving my revised mileage goal for the year seems like a pipe dream.
The dark nights have scared me away from trails during the week. The cold ground has scared me away from barefoot runs around the neighborhood. A desire to get back to playing my banjo more regularly, reading comics, watching football, visiting family and spending time with my wife have taken up my weekends. The excuses keep coming.
What is deeply troubling is a severe disinterest in taking good care of myself. Exercising? Meh. Eating well? Nah.
Some of you commented about my poor choice in eating McDonald's before my last run. Once upon a time, I swore off fast food altogether, but lately there's been some backsliding.
For the longest time, I've wanted to stop eating breaded, fried foods. Guess what I had for dinner? Fried chicken. It was delicious.
Each year, I come up with a to-do list. Goals and objectives for the coming year. It's what I call a "Betterment Plan." It encompasses heath, hobbies, finances and work. I've had some good successes with it over the past few years, but 2012 has been problematic all around the board.
My mileage goal was part of this plan. It's all but a certain failure. While there have been a couple successes, the majority of this year's action items are soon-to-be failures. It's disheartening.
How do you deal with diminishing returns? My spark has gone missing.
9 comments:
Really only focus on one thing for the whole year. That's flossing my teeth (for real). My goal is to do it 5 times a week.
Eating well is a weekly goal. I no longer set weight goals or I would get depressed. As long as I stay the same or lose, I'm good with it.
For running, the goal is for prepare for a race (I already figured out I won't run without a race to train for).
Most everything else...what can I get done after flossing my teeth and running and eating.
Do what feels right.
I stopped blogging because the constant reminder of my self-improvement failures was too disheartening. I have no answer for you. If you figure one out though, let me know.
Hmm... a little perspective: Haven't you done big things in the past year(ish) like get married, buy a new house, fix a leaky toilet??? Oh, and nurse Mrs. Viper through some surgery?
Those sound like accomplishments to me.
Sometimes we make (arbitrary) goal lists, and life diverts us to other plans.
My (ahem... humble yet unsolicited) advice: Run for fun and stop worrying about the goals.
I feel your pain. I also made a list of 2012 goals (instead of New Years resolutions), which included everything. I got through half of them, but some, just stay there. I had TWO surgeries this year, which knocked me out for some time on exercising. It's like I start and then something happens. And it's scary to run in the dark in the area I live...it just is. So, it makes it hard to run nowadays.
Who cares if you ate Micky D's?! Nobody should care either.
I sympathize with the fear of running in the dark; there be monsters out there, for sure!
I run so that I can eat whatever I want; I've never been able to clean up my eating, so nutritional advice from me is like marital advice from General Petraus (too soon?).
I agree with what someone said above: Try to focus on what you have done this year, not what you haven't. It's easy to beat ourselves up and surprisingly hard ot give ourselves a break. And, playing the banjo, reading, spending time with friends and family? Sounds pretty nice to me!
If you want to force yourself back into a regular running habit you could sign up for a big race and start training for it. But it doesn't really sound like you want to start running regularly again. That's ok too.
I remember when I played golf regularly, if I didn't get to play that week my nerves would be shot. I'd be stressed about not getting in my stress reliever. My game would suffer and I'd shoot a high score. Finally when i decided to hang up the clubs it was quite a relief.
you're married now. you are supposed to totally let yourself go. get all fat and happy and pile up shitloads of credit card debt buying larger sized clothes. Start smoking a pipe. it really is a glorious downhill slide. Eventually you'll come back around, when you are ready. I knew when it was time to clean up. Before you have kids, enjoy it.
I fail miserably at goals, so I quit setting them. Instead, I've been mixing it up by trying something new and not getting hung up on my mileage (which is embarassingly low).
How about you and Mrs. Viper try volleball or co-ed soccer? It doubles as a fun night out AND has health benefits. Just don't fall into the trap I did and also add "trying a new IPA" afterwards!
I love these kinds of posts. Let me stop and warm my hands a bit over your Bonfire of Failures. Feels so good. Do they have a sad trombone app? You should get one of those.
Happy T-day.
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