Hear me out: Although I don’t do it, I like working out.

I did yoga a lot when school was online but it was always at night so I wouldn’t be interrupted but it just felt kind of…pointless. Who works out at night just to sleep right afterwards?

I mean, I did, but you get it.

I just was never consistent and the thing is, I go too hard. I push myself for the post-workout pain like I’m not this blob of unexercised mass literally because I like to, like the smallest exercise won’t hurt. I’ve learnt to be nicer to my body because of this class but I think I’m really not ready to consciously exercise and learn my limits. I also refuse to calorie count or weigh myself because I’ll get obsessive.

And my body goals are not…casual.

I also wanted to play a sport but I feel like it’s just because I like being dedicated to something. I ran track in middle school for a little bit but that wasn’t really my sport and our coaches sucked. I wanted to cheer in high school, but as a senior when I decided I wanted to, I felt like it was too late. I forgot to go to the tryouts or interest meetings here. My best choice now is making myself work out on my own, with the only thing driving me being me.

I want to start weightlifting. Muscles and flexibility (not losing weight, even though I think that’s inevitable?) are my fixation right now so remember those unconventional body goals? Women gymnasts, figure skaters, bodybuilders, and men that play superheroes.

Yeah.

Yeah, I know.

I love those videos of when actors talk about their routines to get however for a certain role like I’ll ever be in the gym doing whatever actually superhuman shit they did but it’s nice to imagine. Figure skating (or just ice skating in general) just looks really fun and I think it’s the idea of working out and then taking it to better a talent that sounds so fun, same thing with gymnastics.

I just don’t have it in me and that’s okay. I’ll get to it when I have it in me.

I think my obsession with muscle comes with me being nonbinary, in a way. Women are seen as “soft” so I use it to distance myself because I see how women who aren’t your conventional “soft” are sidelined, no matter how unfair it is to those women. It’s hell to be told “Women aren’t supposed to look like that!” from…well, everyone, when all you have is muscle and work out.

I know if I ever start working out, I’ll be hit in two different ways from my family, specifically the women in my family. They’ll either a. try to start with me because no adventure is my own or b. judge the hell out of me because I’m going further than they expected. I’m excited for either because I’m just gonna keep going.

With all that being said, if you see me in the gym next semester or just running around (you probably won’t but it’s the thought that counts), hiiii.

I know, I know, another late blog post. Will you hear me out as to why?

Having soft deadlines is the best humane invention. I’m learning to not feel like I’m taking advantage of it because it’s not like professors doesn’t know what a soft deadline entails, right?

Teachers being hardasses about deadlines just stuck with me terribly. The fear of a zero looms behind me like skyscrapers coming to block the sun. I procrastinate but, this semester, 3/4 of my professors have big red signs floating above them that’s screaming at me, “No late work!”

So, I take my wins where I can. And I get it, hard deadlines are preparing us for the “real world” but nobody’s real world is deadlines so hard that you’ll lose your job over something being a day late, until it is. I’m wrong sometimes but I’m hoping for the sake of all of us that no one’s job is like that. Some people like pressure but no one should deal with that amount of pressure.

College are incredibly outdated and anybody else on whether a hard deadline has helped them or humbled them or whatever else they’ve convinced themselves.

Soft deadlines are easy. They’re lax, as all things should be, and I’m a firm believer in easiness. That’s why my blog posts are usually late, coupled with the fact that I’m running out of things to write about. I feel like I spilled my entire heart into my first post and now I’m just picking out any remaining chunks about myself. Being late is a little bit of my thing but, also, did you know that (apparently, so, don’t take my word for this because every piece of evidence is from an academic journal behind a paywall) Black people perceive time differently from other races?

So, maybe I’m not late.

This post will be funny to look at when you realize I don’t have any dedications to anything. I get to the beginner level of anything I’m not naturally good at and then I stop doing it. You see a lot if you go back through my life history. Knitting was fun (I made it to two small, small rows), drawing got tiring (I learnt faces and very detailed eyes), astrology is an baby interest that won’t go away (did you know having three planets in one house is called a stellium and that cusps mathematically aren’t real because the sun can’t be in two places at once so it’s really determined on the specifics of when you were born? Fun!)

Also, did you know I just changed my major to English?

My decisions are usually influenced by what I’m doing at the moment, so, over the summer, I worked at a movie theater so guess what that means? I wanted to be a filmmaker. I told literally anyone who would listen that I would change my major to something in Film and be so happy creating because creating is what I want to do so badly.

But my mind always floats back to writing.

I’ve been a psychology fan for so long. I’ve gone through all the motions of wanting to help people (children, specifically, because I felt, and still feel, like people don’t care too much about children’s mental health and then are left confused when told most problems in adulthood stem from childhood), then wanting to know about mental illness, then wanting to do my own research. My underlying problem is that I always want to stand out and I feel like, per my last parenthesis, it stems from my last blog post about never feeling like nothing more than a shadow of my mother. I’m nothing if not a circle backer.

But another way that I make my deciding decisions is if I come back to it, that means I really want to do it. I wanted to be a journalist in the 10th grade and wrote for the newspaper in the 11th grade, although nothing got posted because our advisor was sick and never in school, which also made it hard for the poor kids who were in his class. Writing for this blog and then the amount of nice comments from everyone, including Dr. Kate, made me a lot happier than anything has in a while. I like when people like my writing because this feels like such a natural talent and I really do blame it on learning to read early in Kindergarten. I think that reading so much and writing so much is such a fun way to spend my time, but I was always scared of a career in writing because I’ve never wanted to monetize my writing. I think now I know there’s a difference in writing for fun and writing for my job. I don’t think I’ll ever write something like this for fun unless I start another blog of my own. Every self blog never works out though, seeing as they get deleted after some months of inactivity.

Really, I’ve never stuck to a plan. I just run around in circles that get smaller and smaller while I pick up trinkets along the way like those coin machines in museums that really are only to get your precious coins and captivate the distractible minds of children. However, I have faith in this one because look! I came back to it.

So, here’s to sticking to this one.

Short answer–I don’t know.

The long answer would extensive and it would be dark. I don’t want this to be dark. Maybe I’ll add some exclamation points (“I don’t want this to be dark!”) as a goofy, offsetting mood changer, like all exclamation points are.

But, let’s get back on track! (See?)