I have always been a skinny little thing, which I took as God's way of saying "sorry for everything else, but at least you don't need to go to the gym??" I thought I could sit around and eat Golden Grahams, Golden Crisp, Cookie Crisp, Waffle Crisp, Cocoa Krispies, Cocoa Puffs, Cocoa Pebbles, Fruity Pebbles, and Fruit Loops until my stomach bled and bask in the glory that is not having to go to the gym. The path to happiness was slathered in high fructose corn syrup.
It wasn't until my first and (thankfully) only break down during law school that I realized that the gym isn't necessarily a place where you go to lose weight and self-esteem, but can be a force against the general malaise I usually feel during school, winter months, and late-night internet sessions.
When my motivation for going to the gym came from knowing that it would make me feel better, as opposed to mere vanity, I started going regularly.
Another nice thing about the gym is that it gives you plenty of time to think. Here are some of the thoughts that go through my head on a typical day at the Lakewood YMCA:
1.) I've been going to the gym for a few years now, but I still feel like this every time I go:
2.) Though if I'm having a good day, I feel like this:
3.) Motivation doesn't come easy all the time. I find that ex-girlfriends and women who never call me back are basically infinite pools of inspiration.
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| Comic by Brad Neely |
4.) Better than ex-lovers though are the attractive people who are invariably at the gym. Now please, I don't ogle every beautiful woman that passes me by. That would be rude. No, I fall in love with them in the Ted Mosby fashion. Yes, this is much less creepy.
OMG! I never noticed how little of a fuck Robin gives with this look! She's basically saying "creeeeeeep" with her eyes
5.) Planks. I hate planks. It requires the least amount of movement - none - and still sucks than most anything else. I have to pretend I'm one of those angsty witch-teens from The Craft and tell myself I'm "light as a feather, stiff as a board."
6.) I'm pretty sure Tom Selleck's great-grandfather goes to the Lakewood YMCA. He is bad-ass and he is not to be fucked with.
And damnit if he isn't in better shape than me
7.) However, this douche-mongrel is also always there. I try not to let his tribal tattoos intimidate me. He is at the gym for the wrong reasons. I am not there to look like him, but to feel better about myself. So put the heavy weights back, Jonathan and return to the bouncy green ball of wussiness.
Another Brad Neely Comic
8.) It's okay to be a hipster and go to the gym. In fact, you'll be the first hipster there! +500 hipster points!
9.) Putting Dairy Queen right next to the YMCA was the biggest flim-flam whoopsie-doodle of the century. It's just evil. I have to ride past it on my way home and deny my inner child:
Sorry kid, next time
10.) Once I pass the Last Temptation of Dairy Queen, I am always amazed at how great I feel after going to the gym. Great like Paul Rudd and Ryan Gosling had a child and I am that child and now they're trying to cope with the hard, cold truth that their child has finally surpassed both of them in terms of good looks and when their own repressed fears of mortality are about to surface, I come back from the gym and they're all like:
"Woah"
"Damnit he looks good"
That feeling is what gets me through the winter. It gets me through bouts of depression, stress, and anxiety. It got me through three break-ups, six finals, and the bar exam.
And I'm slightly less gangly.
Lucky Charms, thou art a false prophet.
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