Gym time today: 1 hour.
Total this week: 12 hours.

Since my crisis line shift today started at 10:45 am (it's 12:06 pm right now), and the class I wanted to take at the gym this morning was scheduled for 8:30 - 9:30 am, I thought I was only going to have time for like an hour and a half maximum, if I really rushed it. I was considering going there at 7:30 or 8 am so I'd have some time to do other stuff besides the class (If it was an intense class I might not bother, but it was only supposed to be Total Dance, which doesn't count as a workout in my mind). I didn't end up really trying to sleep until almost 1 am though, so I was really sleepy in the morning and didn't want to get up to go earlier... Ended up just going for the one class.

Speaking of that one class, it was supposed to be Total Dance, but the normal instructor (the one whom I'm familiar and comfortable with) wasn't there, and it was this other lady who was like "OKAY WHO'S READY FOR ZUMBA!"

This was pretty much how I was feeling on this inside when she said that:


Anyway, I tried my best to follow along for the first half hour, but I felt super awkward and didn't feel like I was really getting any exercise. I was pretty much doing like low-intensity flailing, honestly. It's hard to put energy into the moves when you don't know how to do them and you can't keep up. I decided to just leave the class and go run on the treadmill instead. I ran... a mile and a half at an 8:34 minute mile speed, then walked to round it out to two miles. It was easier to keep going at that speed, but also really, really boring. I never go on the treadmill long enough to feel like it would be worthwhile to try watching TV on there, so I'm not sure what to do, or if that would even actually help. A lot of the time I just end up staring at the seconds passing for the song I'm listening to. It's... not a great way to kill time.

---

I liked this from The Discovery of Being, which I've been making my way through at a crippled snail's pace:

If I alone am in despair, I may be upset by it but I can look around at others who are not in despair. That's some comfort. But if everyone is in despair, if society is in radical transition, then we are in despair en masse. Then it is a different thing; we have no north star to steer by. If our anxiety is not blocked by apathy, it tends to move into panic. This very apathy is a defense against the panic which would occur if one really did let oneself feel. We are then in a condition somewhat like Bosch's paintings of hell. Every mooring place is gone, and human beings in droves are herded into the fires. In such times the ontological use of psychological terms represents an endeavor to gain some new basis, some new foundation for our values.

("The ontological use of psychological terms" refers to the tendency by Existentialistists to talk about things like anxiety, despair, will, guilt, and loneliness not as things that we have, but things that we are.)

Obviously, in this passage, it's not a great situation if everyone is panicking, but I don't think it's any better to be apathetic. Maybe it's even worse to be apathetic?

The term will in Nietzsche also refers to a basic feature of our existence. It is potentially present at all times; without it we would not be human beings. The acorn becomes an oak regardless of any choice, but man cannot realize his being except as he wills it in his encounters. In animals and plants, nature and being are one, but in man, nature and being are never to be identified. Nietzsche heaps scorn on those who still suffer under this illusion and who want to live simply according to nature. In Beyond Good and Evil, he cries, "According to nature you want to live? Oh, you noble stoics. What deceptive words these are. Imagine a being like nature, wasteful beyond measure, indifferent beyond measure, without purpose and consideration, without mercy and justice, fertile and desolate and uncertain at the same time. Imagine indifference itself as a power. How could you live according to this indifference?" Human values are not given us by nature but are set for us as tasks to be achieved.

I find this sort of stuff motivating! I want to realize my being, and grow into what I can. I am working on achieving my tasks, as I have been for the past few years, but there's always plenty more to do. And I want to be a mooring place for other people. Someone they can steady themselves against when they feel overwhelmed. I don't want to be afraid to truly feel, and I don't want to slip into "self-satisfied placidity" (another phrase from the book I liked). I want to be happy with whom I am, but never to the point where I don't feel like I could be better. So far so good!

haha. I just wrote an entry about how much I love Zumba. It is hard to keep up, though. I used to run on the treadmill a lot, and eventually what I started doing was printing out poems I liked and trying to memorize them while I ran on the treadmill. Trying to recite the poem in my head (and all of the others, once I started accumulating them) really took my mind off of counting seconds and made the running go by faster.

I've always liked the idea of being completely placid. I've become more and more placid over time, to the point that if there is some kind of romantic disappointment I can intellectually come up with some dramatic thoughts about it, but on the interior I feel little more than a shrug.

I attached onto a line from the poem "If" by Kipling: "If neither foe nor loving friend can hurt you; if all men count with you, but none too much; If you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of distance run: yours is the world and all that's in it, and, what's more-- you'll be a man, my son!"
» Zanzibar on 2016-01-09 10:00:38

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