So I guess with the world slowly going back to normal; it’s probably a good time to put fingers to keyboard and pen some thoughts on the whole covid-19 lockdown/iso/whatever you want to call it situation.
The big question is where does one actually start? I mean the obvious answer would be the beginning (well duh!) in order to tell a linear progression of start to know; but again that implies that the situation is some sort of linear progression- after all life is pretty fluid and so is this situation. For a better idea; I think it’s well worth taking a bigger picture view of the entire situation as a whole.
For me, it’s certainly been an “interesting” time. Initially it started off not too bad- I still went to work and I simply substituted the gym for walks. And it actually worked; I was disappointed by not going to the gym because I had finally found my “sweet” spot but that’s ok, it was a change of routine and logically speaking, that’s never such a bad thing is it? After all complacency is a killer when you exercise or at least in my view anyway.
Then I had my vertigo incident and things changed.
After a hospitalisation and a tentative result (which is still ongoing) I haven’t returned to my modified exercise program. Yes, it’s probably an excuse but I think it’s more than that. I had been feeling ambivalent towards the gym and exercise for a while and I think I’ve subsequently been using it as a crutch for not going.
That's the thing with the lockdown- I’m all for the lockdown by the way because people are certainly unique- it’s left me in a position where I’m ambivalent about most things these days. To be frank, people’s true colours tend to show in the worst of times and it’s certainly interesting to see who’s willing to make an effort to check in on me as opposed to me always checking in on others.
Could I be dramatising things? No doubt- after all negativity breeds negativity and there’s nothing logical about it; that’s why in my view depression is such a doozy of a thing. You can’t/don’t think logically and you tend to focus on the negativity instead of the positive of life.
At the end of the day I’m probably rambling right now.
But for me I’m at a point where I’m mostly happy but there’s still questions to be asked.
One of the bigger questions is do I continue my fitness journey? Before the lockdown I was already indifferent to being at the gym for various reasons; now it’s still there but the bigger questions are more philosophical than that. Which is ironic because while you think the dichotomy of physical exercise is incompatible with the philosophical aspects of life; they go strangely well together. It was a place that I could push myself to be a better person physically but mentally it was a place to be myself; I was allowed to have good days and bad days. But now the question is is it worth it? Sadly there were things that normally I was indifferent to, but by the time that lockdown and the gym closure happened, most things I was either indifferent to or I just wanted to walk away from.
It’s quite an effort to recognise toxicity in whatever form it takes; it’s much harder when things appear to be good but then slowly creep into toxicity.
The question, at the end of the day for me, is do I make a decision that I may later regret or do I take a step back, take a breath and realise that it’s my insecurities getting to me?