A Better Life

I just saw an ad pop up for Dunkin' Turbo, which led me to think about how much I enjoy the taste of coffee, sweetened and with cream, or "half and half," which is what my grandmother always had, and moreover how much I like the idea of coffee, which then reminded me of a thought that has been popping into my head a great deal the past few years, at least.

I look at where I am now, and I look at the decisions I have made along the way, and I realize, or maybe I should say I conclude, that many of those decisions were a waste given where I have ended up.  I don't drink, and for the most part I have been a nondrinker all of my adult life.  I don't smoke, I may average a cigar a year for the past twenty years, although last year may have brought the average up a bit.  I have stayed away from red meat to a large extent and dairy products as well.  I have, until the last couple of years, been a consistent runner, some would say obsessive runner, not that I was a "runner," but I did run consistently 5 or 6 times a week no matter where I was, and what I was doing.  I would run in Central Park at 9:30 at night because it was near the hotel and that was the only time I had.  I would run up and down the hallway of hotels and through the stairwells if the weather was too bad to run outside.  I have always had water with me and stayed hydrated.  I have tried to "graze" in order to keep my body happy and my materialism where it should be.

I have spent the majority of my adult life trying to live a "better" or "cleaner" life.  I have also spent the better part of my adult life trying to be there for others, and yet somehow I look at where I am now, and where my body is now and I have to ask why??!!

I can't say that I wish I had done all the things I stayed away from, or that I was a totally different person, but it does seem that I have done a lot of these things because I thought them the "right" thing to do, or the healthy way to be, or in some cases because I do not view the alternative as an "acceptable" way to be, but I have to ask "where has it gotten me?"

It has been forty four years of trying to stay on the right path, and two years of allowing myself to slide, at least slide by my standards, no running because of a knee, and more junk food in two years than the twenty before, and all of why I had been making those "life choices" is gone, some never happened.  Fitness level is gone.  Health is not good.  Relationship, or relationships, gone.  It just has to make one ask why?  Or at least it does me.

I look in the mirror now and I am old and fat and out of shape and I start to wonder if I didn't miss something along the way.  Maybe I should have had more "fun" and worried less about trying to be "perfect."  I don't even know right now what I actually believe the answer to be, although I do know that I change my mind a lot.  The reality is that I just felt like rambling.

Thank you again for getting this far with me.