Time to Evolve?

No this is not me. Yet.

While doing push-ups has become part of the routine, I still think every morning: 'Maybe not today...'

Soon enough I start feeling guilty and hit the floor.

But lately I've begun thinking: 'Maybe mix it up a bit...' This post might be a start.

Short month - didn't even have the extra day like last year - but cranked out enough in the last week to pass 10,000...almost comfortably.

Here we Go Again...

Maybe I missed it after doing next to nothing once I reached the 100,000 mark.

Maybe I needed a way to keep myself warm in my chilly house. (Why do people still heat with oil? Stuff's expensive.)

Maybe I'm bored. (Nope, not with a half dozen writing projects and three young kids to manage.)

Maybe I suddenly began feeling lazy. (Closer to the mark, methinks.)

Or maybe I have this deep-seated need to punish myself, to attempt to make up in some karmic way for certain things I've done.

Whatever the reason, on January 1st I started in with the pushups again. After a short two-week hiatus I could feel my strength had abated somewhat, instilling in me a mix of despondence and disconcertment.

After a month of few particularly high daily totals and even fewer days of doing nothing, I've hit 10,000. Who knows what the year will bring; maybe I need a bigger reason this time around than 'just to do it.'

Or maybe I should go see a shrink.

Looking Back, Looking Ahead

Well that's a wrap.

Totally slacked off once I reached my goal, and though I didn't miss it, something did seem to be missing.

I remember the day I committed to this. I remember that night even more clearly - because I could barely sleep. Part was excitement; I had just put myself out there and told the world (the tiny tiny portion that was listening) that I was going to do it. This was meant to motivate me to keep going, because I know more than a few people who would really let me have it if I gave up somewhere along the way. Part of it was also fear - stemming from the same source as my motivation. Honestly, I had no idea what I was in for.

For a while I went at it with a kind of purity. I'd do each pushup in good form; I'd do some with my feet elevated to make it a little tougher; every set would be a workout - no quick and easy sets of 20 just to get a few more out of the way. Time passed, as did that freak pain in my arm in March, and the adrenalin of excitement morphed into the mentality of duty. Further down the road the routine devolved into just that. It was just something I did in spare moments on most days.

I'd liken my pursuit of 100,000 pushups to many undertakings that extend over time. A job. A relationship. Writing a book. The excitement is there at the outset (well maybe not always with the job). After a while it gets comfortable; you know how to work it and what to expect. From there it becomes part of the daily routine, and this is where things get sketchy.

Breaking the Tape (without breaking my back).

An Inglorious Ending. But maybe not really the end.

Check out the unimpressive moment below.

Thank you to my kids for their wonderful assistance.

Progress, Regress, Progress

Outside in the grass on the morning of July 1st I cranked out 80 pushups without pausing. Progress! I thought, awash in adrenalin or some psychological imposter. I managed three more sets, of sixty each, before it was time to pack up and get in the car and make the long scenic drive back down through the finger lakes region and back to New Jersey. Unpacking, unwinding, domestic drudgery and frantic errands and we were packing up again, for a trip to Japan.

On July 5th, on a straw mat floor in my in-laws' house, I got back to it, laboring through a few sets of fifty. For a week I kept stopping there, or at sixty on occasion, shedding my jet lag and sweating through the pressing Fukushima humidity. I'd get used to the weather; I'd work around the weird sleep patterns until they subsided. But then on the 14th the biggest factor and the heaviest hindrance to my ongoing march toward my goal made itself brutally apparent.

I have my son to blame, and thank.

I thought they knew by now to not climb on top of me, but there was my second boy, throwing himself on my back in a fit of laughter and disrupted biorhythms. I've had a series of long talks with myself lately, about how to be a much better father than I have been, so instead of growling at him to go stick a rice ball in his ear I welcomed him aboard and gave him the best ride I could. 'All the way up!' I grunted - and felt my arms push the rest of me further from the floor than usual.

Since July 14th I've been struggling through sets of forty. My jet lag is gone. The meteorological gods have deemed fit to bless us with a cloudy, cool day here and there. Yet forty pushups has only become easier in very small increments. I'm not about to discount any of the effort of the last several months, but I'm stepping up the technique and the vigilance.

July 14th, incidentally, marked the passing of a milestone.

On July 14th, as I resolved to make things harder, and better, I passed 50,000 pushups for the year.

Doing It in Public

Passing 1,000 pushups sounds like reason to celebrate. Yeah baby!

Passing 1% of my goal, on the other hand, sounds like...a reason to be damn glad it's only Feb 20th.

420 completed today, 60 of them on the grass outside my nephew's school - he had a hoops game, and they were just into the 4th quarter when my boys decided they wanted to go outside and play with toy cars and pieces of trash. 'Are you kidding me?? They just cut the lead to six!' My boys didn't care, if they were even listening to me.

On the bright side, I didn't have to witness the final four minutes of the game, when my nephew's team got ripped apart like wrapping paper on Christmas.

And On The Seventh Day...

...push-up boy takes a break. That means the seventh day since I started keeping track last Saturday, though yesterday was my first big day so I guess I have to face myself and admit I'm wussing out on my second day. But doing this right is going to take discipline, not just a barbaric assault on my knuckles. That resumes tomorrow.

Did 400 yesterday - 240 in the morning and the rest in the evening, when my shoulder started barking at me about hard labor and cruel and unusual punishment and someone not having a very good grip on his anger management skills.

I considered cranking out a few reps later on but saving it till morning, I've convinced myself, is the better call. Like I said: discipline.

So for today, in the words of the wise Homer Simpson, the agenda speaks for itself: 'Beer me!'

I'll have my knuckles back on the floor tomorrow.