It was April 19th 2012 - just a few days ago - and what hurt most about the question I had just been asked, was that it touched a nerve I didn't even know I had. My sudden wave of emotion was completely unexpected.
It was a fairly harmless sort of thing that I had been asked via a message on Facebook:
what's your gymming looking like atm? still training like an animal?If anyone else had asked the question I would probably had brushed it off with some sort of generic reply. It's the sort of innocuous question that usually gets asked at social events as part of the general chit-chat and small talk, and usually a generic response of "it's going well, thanks" is more than adequate.
But not this time. This was different, for 2 reasons.
First of all it was different because of the person asking it. Ricky is heavily into weightlifting himself, and is consistently working on getting larger and leaner. Because of this I know that the question wasn't idle chit-chat, he was showing a genuine interest in my current routine, so the question deserved more than a generic response, and it made me think properly about my answer.
Secondly it was different because I haven't seen Ricky since before Christmas. Around this time I was considerably happier with my state of fitness than I am currently. Whereas the physical change in my appearance has been more gradual to people I see more regularly, to Ricky I would be an unrecognisably different shape to what I was back in December
Panic set in when I thought about how best to answer his surprisingly penetrating question. I felt oddly guilty, almost as though I was about to break the news that I had let down the side, by screwing up my fitness goals. For this reason I was shy to answer. It crossed my mind to respond with something generic after all, but instead I opted for honesty and went on to pour my heart out onto this Facebook wall post, telling all about my ups and downs, my victories and losses, my trials and tribulations, as if trying to justify it all to myself.
Afterwards I didn't feel guilty any more.
I felt euphoric.
It was like a weight had been taken from my shoulders.
The nerve that I didn't know I had was a guilty one. I had felt guilty for allowing myself to mess up my goals so badly and get so far off track, and the feeling had been residing in the back of my mind, where I had kept it well hidden so far.
Catharsis had felt great and left me feeling like, at last, I had finally been able to learn from my mistakes and move on. It was then that I decided to share my experiences of absolute dismal failure, in the hope that a negative lesson can be just as valuable to learn as a positive one.
This blog was born.
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