Personal Journal

A simple rule

I have this CD I made, something I wanted for riding my bike. It starts with the Lynyrd Skynyrd song, Simple Man. It’s one of my favorite songs in the world, maybe one I’d like played at my funeral someday. “Be a simple kind of man/ Be something you love and understand”
I do understand myself. I do think it’s amazing as we get older how much we learn about ourselves, how everything we were instilled with from ages 1 to 18 in terms of our education, that’s really not where life is lived. Those were just tools, some of them superfluous. What we do after 18 is first try to live, then stumble, then try to figure it all out and make sense of it.
“Walking is the act of throwing yourself off balance and catching yourself such that forward progress is made” That’s what my acting teacher said once. Isn’t that life? Isn’t that the most poignant metaphor for living that you’ve ever heard?
Back to Simple Man.
Me and my therapist never really got into discussing whether or not I have an addictive personality. I tend to think it was one of the things she left unsaid so that she could do the more important work at the time. And frankly, I do have one. I’m certainly predisposed to becoming addicted to pleasures.
It’s been almost a year since my back surgery and I have not made the cut for what I expect of myself. I must say, even if I have a propensity to become addicted to pleasures, I am blessed/cursed with a conscience that insists I continue to throw myself off balance in the hopes of making forward progress. I have this incessant compulsion, painful at times, to improve myself and my conditions.
Once upon a time… some 18 months ago, I rode my bike about 120 miles a week, 80 or so in winter. I’ve ridden in the falling snow and found myself in the presence of god. I’ve worked like a hebrew slave in egypt to try to get up this hill that I didn’t believe I’d ever make it up without falling over, and after six months of trying, I made it and wept at the realization that I can do things I don’t think I can. There’s a 3-foot high rock just down the trail from that hill that I was six inches from lifting myself over when I was forced to stop riding…
So, here’s what happened.
I got injured, and they gave me vicodin, and that was a bad thing for me. Vicodin is too enjoyable. And it was so much easier to just tell my doctors, hey, can I have some more, I sometimes have pain… than it was to get into the old habit of exercising. And in terms of exercise, I knew I had to go backwards before I could go forward. Never again will I be able to let my abdominals lie idle. Now they will have to be a major focus for me to get back to where I was. They’ll always need extra attention, or I’ll have back pain…

So for several weeks, I’ve been back at Weight Watchers, with Jean, because like a lot of 34-year olds, I’m a little too fat, and a little too gluttonous. For the first couple weeks, I lost weight, and then I gained almost all of it back, because I was addicted to my pleasures. Last night at weigh-in marked the 3rd in 3 consecutive weeks in which I gained weight, and I told myself that I’m going to give up, or get serious, and I know I can’t give up, because I’ll self-mutilate, if only psychologically.

So I left Jean at home for the night, and I went to the gym, and I started over. And I’m going again tonight, and I’m going 5 times a week, like I used to. And I’m going to rebuild the abs first, with deliberation and effort. Because I want back on my bike, more than I want to be a great writer. I want to be an avid rider. I need it. I don’t know why, but the bicycle represents something of my soul’s salvation (that I can’t get into in this already rambling space). I don’t care if I die on one someday. I just know that my life functions significantly better when I can be riding 4 or 5 days a week. The energies that get pent up inside people, they need outlets, and those two wheels are mine. I am happier today. I am more hopeful today. I can stand the sound of my own thoughts today, because I know a lot about me, and I know what it takes to get the voices of my own thoughts to shut up and respect me. I have to do the work. I have to meet the demands of my soul, and I know that I can.

I’ll have to pray for the absence of pain, and for progress in my routine. I need to keep at it a while and play through some discomfort. And I have to stay away from the pill bottle, and I will.


It is never too late to be what you might have been. -- George Eliot
Courage to start and willingness to keep everlasting at it are the requisites for success. -- Alonzo Newton Benn