The arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward gainz
We took our kid to a therapist. It was hard at first because it felt like we were saying there was something wrong with our child, and because it seemed like a lot of hassle - looking for information, trying to figure out if our insurance will cover it, and having to deal with another human being. So far it’s all worked out great, so once again my impulses are basically wrong. Most things are less work than I think they are, and less unpleasant than I think they are. I remain convinced, however, that all things are too much work and are very unpleasant. This is, I am sure, part of why I am raising a child who benefits from therapy.
I benefited from therapy myself. I did a few years of it in my early 20s or so, in response to some baggage from an unpleasant childhood, and as a result went from someone who would likely be a lousy partner and parent to someone who is a good partner and great parent. This is an accomplishment I’m proud of, given my upbringing, weakness of character, and fundamentally annoying personality.
The issues that prompted the call to the therapist (and by ‘call’ I mean email, because, shudder! phones!) are essentially that my kid is like me - anxious, angry, easily unsettled, and difficult to re-settle - except I am nearly forty and almost socialized, while my kid is only six and so essentially a wild animal (all children are basically animals until they hit the age of about twenty five). With hard work and luck, I may end up the parent of a child who is emotionally normal and so hates all the music and art and books I like, and who thus ends up making a good deal of money and so makes the therapy turn out to be an investment because she supports me in my old age.
Speaking of old age, in pursuit of longer life I began exercising relatively seriously a few years ago. The thought of longer life is a mixed one. On the one hand the days and hours and minutes already feel interminable, so why add more of what is clearly already oversupplied? On the other hand, the weeks and months seem to be passing at an increasingly higher rate per blink, and more fundamentally I feel I am owed grandchildren - owed because of the great hassle and headache of parenting - and I intend to be around long enough to collect on this debt.
My exercise routine has transformed, from running to running plus bodyweight exercise to weighlifting almost exclusively. One benefit to weightlifting has been that I can make improvements without taking more time. I had hit the point with running that I didn’t have time to run longer, and I was too lazy and pain averse to try to run faster, and so felt sort of plateaued (relative to the small mountain range - let’s be real, they’re hills, probably former landfills covered over with a thin layer of dirt and grass - that is my life). Long life aside, the real benefit to exercise that I value most is a sense of progress. Much of life amounts to trudging through a ditch watching the horizon stay exactly where it is. But - but! - but each week I improve at something. I am five pounds or one rep or one set stronger. Clear, unambiguous betterment. The line on the graph points upward.
I don’t actually have a graph of my progress but come to think of it I should. It would be very satisfying. I could probably figure out how to get my spreadsheet to display one. My spreadsheet is another benefit to going to the gym. I type out workout plans weeks in advance. This is totally unnecessary because my main goal is bench press my body weight and my main method for progressions is to lift weights that are very heavy for me until I can do a set of three at that weight then do more, for a total of ten reps during that gym trip. If I can’t do that, then I stay at the weight I’m lifting. If I can, then I add five pounds. It’s not complex and doesn’t really require a spreadsheet. The spreadsheet is mostly recreational.
Yes, recreational spreadsheets. This is who I have become. I am not sorry! I mean, technically I am because apologetic is a beam bearing much of the load of my personality (and what a load it is), but I am not specifically especially sorry for enjoying my weightlifting spreadsheet as much as I do. It takes the line of progress that I trace each week and projects it forward into the future. I have improved since last time, and the time before, and the time before, and I plan to improve by next time, and the time after, and the time after. Sometimes I play around with alternative programs - less benchpress, more deadlifts, say, or lower weights and higher total volume. It’s all a matter of a believable future.
Most people at my gym are younger than me. Many of these youngs are in better shape than I am. I sometimes enjoy thinking to myself ‘I am the ghost of christmas future, children, an image of the entropy and decay that awaits you!’ I enjoy even more that some of the youngs are not in better shape than me, and that all of the olds there are in a condition equally decrepit or worse than mine. This is petty and mean-spirited on my part, I know. I don’t feel I am better than those people, but I do like being better than a few people at some gym things. I also am 100% sure, and unapologetically smug, that I have better musical taste than anyone else at my gym. I know this because I am the only person who reads a book about The Ramones between sets. (In addition to sounding great, The Ramones accept me, gabba gabba hey.)
Another benefit to weightlifting is that I eat a ton. I’ve gained weight and that is the plan, according to the weightlifting experts I read, which is fun. I enjoy counting protein grams, I don’t know why. It’s sort of like a game in that I’m accruing points (hit 100 grams! mission accomplished!), though I admit as games go this is one’s not exactly the sort of thing you’d watch someone play. This benefit has its downsides, in that I’m a bit fatter and so the recent weather where the heat index is approximately 9 vajillion degrees is hard to take plus my wife insists that if we can see our breath indoors then we’re using the air conditioner too much. Utter nonsense, the idea that it’s possible to over use air conditioning! My kid doesn’t help, having learned at the stupid zoo that the stupid polar bears suffer from climate change and prefer things that are not ecologically harmful to things that are, and so now my kid will tell me when things hurt the polar bears. Easy for those smug bears, they live where it’s already cold. It’s irritating enough that I almost don’t feel bad for inflicting upon my kid the traits of mine that led us to take her to the therapist.
My hope for my other kid is that she will want to emulate my weightlifting and as a result of starting young get swole, and then be my enforcer when I am old and living in a lovely retirement community funded by my by then well-adjusted and rich older child. If any of the other olds in Retirement Town cross me I will then have my younger child, who I have begun to think of as Bruiser, break their hips. Unfortunately Bruiser mostly likes to play with dolls and read books and as yet has no interest in weight lifting.
My hunch is that I can win her over if I start to make it seem like I don’t want her to lift weights. That’s how I get her to do lots of things - not pretend I don’t want her to lift, I mean, but rather pretend I don’t want her to do the thing I actually do want her to do. It works especially well if I pretend I want to do the thing myself and that we are competing and that I will be angry if she does it first. If this persists then I will be issuing commands by saying things like ‘Mr. O’Leary made a disparaging remark about Joey Ramone. I am going to break his hip for that and I will enjoy doing so. You better not break his hip, Bruiser, or I will be very angry that you did it before I could.’
It will happen, I am sure of it. The line on the graph points upward.