Biting It

Last night, I finished off a spectacular workout by falling down the gym stairs. It is an embarrassing thing to do in itself, but it’s even more embarrassing that it happened because I was being impressed with myself and trying to change my heart rate monitor to show how many calories Her Royal Awesomeness here had burned.

I don’t tend to be clumsy, but there’s a sick fantasy reel that plays in my head of me knocking my teeth out every time I nearly miss a stair (or miss many in a very busy gym) or have any close call with tripping. This whole teeth phobia was exacerbated right before my wedding when the wedding coordinator said, “Honey, be careful. I had a bride trip and knock her front teeth out while walking down the aisle.” Oh.

The teeth phobia probably signifies something bigger and more indicative of my psychological state. A methodologically unsound random selection of Google search results gives us these possibilities:

1. I’m anxious about my appearance and how others perceive me (I’m female and within 2 years of turning 30, this should be obvious)
2. I have a fear of rejection, sexual impotence, and getting old (Who doesn’t?)
3. I’m going to get money (Now we’re talking)

I think tripping on the gym stairs was less a realization of my deep-seeded psychological anxieties and more about thinking I can do multiple things at once. Perhaps, for the sake of my teeth—forget my throbbing ankle and shin—it’s time to slow my roll and do one thing at a time. We get so caught up these days in trying to be efficient and able to multitask that we tend to forget about concentrating on the task at hand. Like walking down stairs. Eric was horrified that after he peeled me off the floor, I went right back to messing with my heart rate monitor while hobbling down the rest of the stairs. This was important because doing this while stationary in the locker room would waste valuable time. Well, now I’m wasting valuable time dragging myself around this morning like I have a peg leg.

Productive Members of Society

I’m finding my twenties to be a dynamic, transitional, and often confusing time. You see, we’re floating along in a social purgatory between being “the kid” and “the adult” in a situation, the distinction usually being determined by whom we’re dealing with and our relative level of laziness. To those in college, we’re too old to be doing just about everything fun. To “adults,” we’re inexperienced, too unwrinkled for our own good, and not on their level in work or, really, life.

So, what’s a twenty-something to do? My friend Jess and I have boiled it down to needing to be a Productive Member of Society, meaning that you make your own money, show up when you should within five minutes of when you said you would, treat others with respect, stop partying with the college kids and interns, and take responsibility for your actions. It’s pretty much the nicer way of saying that you can have fun, but you need to act like a “grown-a** woman.”

Maybe our twenties are a blessing. We have license to shift between life stages at will, but while using the knowledge and skills we’ve learning by getting to this age (alive).

The Bag of Diabetes

This year, Eric and I went overboard on each other's Easter baskets. Way overboard. The result was an entire Trader Joe's paper grocery bag of candy that weighs 8 pounds as of this morning, named the Bag of Diabetes (BoD). We like to think we're reasonably healthy, fit people, so you can imagine when one of us drags the BoD out after dinner, we're overcome with guilt for even having it.

By the second Cadbury Egg, the guilt usually turns into self loathing. You know that feeling you get when you're fully aware that something is bad for you, and you'll be paying for it later, but you don't care at all because it's SO GOOD.

Most of us have a Bag of Diabetes or two in our lives, and despite advice, warnings, and common sense, we keep dragging that BoD out. It might be an 8-pound bag of candy, a certain wrong type of person you keeping dating, or even a bad habit like procrastination. Having some sort of BoD in your life isn't the real matter. It's being okay with how you deal with your BoD. Some people thrive on self loathing and guilt, so if you're that type, then by all means, proudly hook the BoD to your ears like a feed bag and go to town. If not, put that BoD out for trash day, wipe the chocolate off your face (and out of your hair), and get to changing what you don't like instead of whining about it. It's within your power to get rid of the bad stuff in your life, so make it happen.