Tales from the Hamster Wheel…

Working out comes with hidden dangers. You may think the array of TV’s is a convenience, but it is secretly sucking you into watching daytime programming you might otherwise have avoided. Soap Operas, News, cheesy remakes of an older shows. It can happen to anyone. It happened to me.

I find myself strategically choosing which elliptical or which treadmill I board based on which TV channel it has the best view of. I don’t listen to the dialogue, I’m listening to music on my phone. Yet, I know that the bank of televisions in the middle plays Bones, CNN and General Hospital pretty much all at the same time.

I catch myself attempting to follow along with the melodrama spelled out in closed captions, frankly I’m amazed General Hospital is still on the air. That show never dies!

ut this is what I mean. It’s mind numbing mental images. At times I imagine I’m Alex, subjected to the Ludovico Technique, and all these images are going to find their way into my subconscious in some malevolent fashion. If I get a strange urge to run the next time I glance at CNN, I’ll let you know.

If I have noted anything off about all this exposure is my desire to watch TV in my free time has decreased. But that can hardly be seen as a bad thing.

I enjoy working out at the gym versus on my own. I go to Planet Fitness and I like it because I don’t feel preyed upon, get leered at, or conversely, judged for not being in the best shape (round is a shape).

I’ve been to “those” gyms before. If you’ve ever seen “Perfect” with Jamie Lee Curtis, you know what I mean. I just want to work out, to be specific I just want to sweat. A good workout isn’t going to look pretty. I’m going to look like I tried to climb Mt Everest and lost.

I’m not going to pay good money to feel even more inadequate or self-conscious about my less than ideal shape. I have to wonder, though, what the real reason is people join the other kinds of gyms for, and what keeps them going back.