The Gym...

Was super bleary eyed this morning. Still getting the exercises done too late in the day which is not helping sleep much. The key is to exercise straight after work, which for us means going to the gym. However after years of gym dodging, it's become second nature to say "fck it!" and go home, which is what we did again last night. We did all the stuff when we got home, but it was easily 10pm by the time we finished, which for early birds is bed time already...

Why do I hate the gym so much? I suppose I've built up an impression in my mind that the gym is the saddest place on earth where human gerbils, trapped by an oppressive society, too lacking in imagination to go outside and do something worthwhile miserably grind away on machines in some sort of Orwellian effort to conform with the suffocating values of that society. On the adverts for Pure Fitnesss, they don't paint quite such a grey picture, but I'm sure five minutes in the hands of Terry Gilliam, and that's what we'd get.

Competitive sport seems to me a much more acceptable activity, where in my case, a friend and I will chase a little ball around a small room attempting to hit it as hard as possible. It is utterly pointless as well, but at least it retains a social element and the all important competitiveness that's missing from individual training - you get no points or no recognition for doing that last extra rep, so why bother? I will quite happily run after a ball like a happy labrador until I fall over with exhaustion without thinking about the pain once...

Where am I going with this ramble? Well I suppose my point is really that I'm sitting at my desk glued to a computer and when I go home, I often spend more time glued to a computer (as I can't deal with any personal communication in the office much) and there is no physical component to what has become an otherwise entirely sedentary existence. So in order to the redress the balance, I have to visit the gerbil cage once a day which feels as if had properly organised my life in the first place, it should be completely unnecessary. Working out at the gym seems to expend vast amounts of human effort singularly for our own personal physical betterment...surely there is a yet higher purpose to which we can commit so much of our energies?

Or why not just get new occupation where exercise is at least included as part of the job description? Mountain guide? hod carrier? Fitness instructor? But if you work in a gym, are you the teacher, helping people achieve their personal goals or are you the evil master, exploiting a blinkered populous? Maybe Animal Farm was an allegory for the local yoga studio?? Patrick???

Ok, just kidding... he'll be cutting my bananas next....oh...he's done it already.....apparently I can keep the apple as long as I say that yoga studios have nothing whatever to do with totalitarianism...