The
Other Side of Fitness (2nd set)
One
discipline needed the other. Fate put me in that location along
Excelsior Blvd., each day, so I'd have easy access to the club. It
became a co-dependency. I went to my job each morning to work, to
keep it, to earn a paycheck, but also to work out afterwards. At my
job in medical records I got no respect, no recognition, no
acknowledgment of a job well done—or even well. Zero. Bupkis. A
daily indifference to the job I performed by which one could set a
clock. One or two comments—besides the one routine, mandatory job
review—a month, even a year, would have brought me a wealth of
self-actualization. I'd have worn that badge of approval across the
street feeling less plain.
“Go
ahead, we know you,” the woman at the desk said. Rarely did I need
to dig my membership card from my gym bag. I was a V.I.P. I guessed.
I walked into the club after work and I was on an opposite plane. I
got respect. Younger members, those there to get fit, toned, or even
step on a bodybuilding stage in time, asked my advice. My
advice—me—the person who twenty minutes ago was never asked
anything, never trusted to train anyone and second-guessed every step
of the way. They asked and before I answered, gave my humble advice
they obviously thought was worth something, I looked a bit in shock.
I appreciated being asked, being considered to be someone who knew
what he was doing.
“Mike
seems to know what he's doing,” rather than he knows
what he's doing. My boss and the technical support people said this
when our company was adjusting to using a new computer program. Other
employees, many of whom had been recognized for their work and
trained people, were not processing the records correctly and, as a
result of not navigating the new program's glitches, were wasting
reams of paper. I seemed to be doing it right. I seemed
to have found my way around the nuances of the program. Me—the
diligent, work-ethiced employee who no one ever asked anything. They
still did not ask, wasted forests of paper, and probably still are.
I
was on a pendulum. For more than a decade I was visited upon daily by
each end of an esteem-ridden spectrum. After 8 hours of solitary
existence, drone-like utility, Dickensian confluence, I was ready to
enter a place where someone actually valued my opinion. At h health
club job in New Hope I had opened the club! I covered many mornings
for irresponsible high school kids. I picked up in the locker rooms
that looked like a super bowl party had gone on the night before.
Without me the club would not have opened on time, and we catered to
yuppies and ogres who had very rigid schedules. At Park Nicollet I
did not even have security clearance. No fair level of trust was
established in 14 years. Either I looked shifty or the head of the
tidy obscure records pool within the clinic did not think I was smart
enough to remember door codes.
I
did my job, anyways, with few words. For a while I kept a small
refrigerator in my cubical. I stored my whey protein. It was probably
unauthorized and I knew it pissed off the director of HIM (health
information management). It was convenient and appeased the real
estate maxim location, location, location. Park Nicollet was close
enough to bike to in the summer. The rides were beautiful. I miss
them. Waking up before the birds own their songs, watching the bakery
trucks rattle through the cusp of dawn with their deliveries made,
seeing the beads of dew on car windows in our condo's lot. I set out
east on the Cedar Lake trail. I looked to the right and found my way
in the fog lifting from the wheat fields. Then I turned to round
Cedar Lake and a small orange ball baited the lake, rising to hours
for hooky players while I was at work.
The
logistics went my way accidentally. I was on a bus line. The 604,
down Louisiana, through Methodist Hospital and up Excelsior. But at
the height of my fitness/bodybuilding insanity (2001-3), having the
club so close sure was nice. It became something that I took for
granted and, in about 2009, when LA fitness bought out Balleys,
working out was no longer so convenient. Buses did not sync up, and
it was—my god—a three to four block walk! How badly did I want to
work out? How badly did I need to work out? And after my
life-ordered job, my disposable career, how much more time did I want
to invest getting there, working out and getting home? Convenience
had also left me time to write.
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