I have found a new way to punish myself.
Counting to fifty should not be difficult. Not for a grown
man. But on more than a few occasions recently I have been in the midst of a
set of pushups and lost count of how many I’ve done. This happens mainly
because I have this habit of not counting by ones.
Sometimes I’ll count to ten, then instead of eleven I’ll say
‘one’ and proceed to nine, followed by ‘twenty’. Then back to one, up to nine
and then ‘thirty’ and so forth. And whether from a lack of blood reaching my
brain due to the ongoing physical strain or a lack of brain cells from my
ongoing brain-cell-challenged life, I will sometimes forget what should be
coming after one of the nines.
On occasion I will count to twenty, then twenty again, then
finish off the set by counting to ten. This should lend itself to fewer
mistakes; how can one possibly forget whether this is the first ‘twenty’ or the
second?
I don’t know. But it happens.
And when it does? I punish myself. I take the lower count
and continue. If I don’t know if I should be saying thirty or forty, I say
thirty and keep going. If I don’t know if I’ve done twenty or forty pushups I call
it twenty and go from there. (Sometimes I have a real hard time pounding out
fifty and have to suspect I’ve actually done seventy but into the books goes
another set of fifty.
If I keep punishing myself this way maybe I’ll eventually
start paying more attention.
Maybe I should just count by ones.
