While I was between jobs, I put on a bit of weight, most likely due to reduced activity due to my being out of work, and out of a routine. My current job, where I operate a bus, is not exactly conducive to physical activity, considering that I sit strapped to a seat for nine hours a day. Pushing pedals and turning steering wheels does not count as physical activity, though I was getting nighttime leg cramps from it for a while. I also was a bit lazy when it came to exercise once I finished training and got my own assignment. I work late afternoon into the wee hours of the morning, and initially would tend to sleep in a bit. The only exercise I got was just under two miles on Sundays, going to and from a street relief that was just a shade under a mile away from the bus garage. I also now drive to work in my car, which means that I don’t get any activity related to my own commute.
However, now that the bus has finally become routine and I’m really starting to get the hang of things (and – heaven forbid – having fun at work), I can start getting serious about fitness again. After all, one of my more recent splash photos shows me looking like this:
However, roll the clock back to early 2013, and I looked like this:
This is where I want to be again. I got there once, and I’m going to get there again. I liked being that size, and I was displeased to have lost some of the figure that I had worked so hard to attain. After all, this was me in October 2012:
I’m still convinced that this was a trick mirror, though. But anyway…
In any case, I am going to look like this again, just you watch.
However, I do have certain mixed feelings about getting down to that size again. On one hand, I know that it’s a healthier size to be at, and as such, it’s the right thing to do. But at the same time, when I was that size was not a particularly happy or fulfilling time in my life. Something clicked when I turned 30, and it’s like I got more mature all of a sudden. My interests started to shift, and my career started to stagnate. I started to find the people that I used to joke around with a lot to be amazingly immature, and I found myself being left at the sidelines at work on things where I used to have a more prominent role, and my pushing for additional responsibility led to a significant demotion, which ultimately caused me to leave the company. In other words, I was happier when I was heavier, as strange as that may seem. Now I’m doing things that interest me and that energize me (not just anyone can sling an artic around a major city and have fun doing it), rather than pushing papers around for a nonprofit that didn’t appreciate what I did for them. But I’m also carrying around about 50 pounds that I wasn’t carrying in those less happy days, and I don’t like that.
Of course, now that my job is starting to become routine, and I know my block numbers by heart, among other things, I’m working the pool back in. My goal is to swim from 11:50 AM until 12:45 PM on Mondays, Thursdays, and Fridays, do my walk to my street relief and back on Sundays, and hopefully work in another swim or a deep water running session on one of my days off. Then once it warms up, I want to take the bike out and about. I’m thinking it’s worth just going a few miles out somewhere, and then throwing it on the front of a Metrobus to go home again. I did that in July, biking up to Olney and taking the bus home, but I also ground up the chain pretty well on that trip (oops), so it was either take the bus home or walk home in that case. Would also be a good time to get a new helmet, since mine doesn’t really fit as well as I would like. But in any case, I want to have a destination in mind, and not just pedal around aimlessly.
And then, of course, I would be delighted if I have to go back to Muscatello’s to get my uniform tailored again for a new, slimmer size.