Cutting back.

Wow. Well, first thing's first. I meant to write this shortly after the last one, but I just sort of kept on forgetting until it ended up right here. My summer has been very good so far, which might be part of the reason why it took so long. I keep feeling like I have nothing to say.

I've been trying to work as much as I can, at both of my jobs. Of course, I'm not getting very many hours in the first, and the second has been unluckily unprofitable for the first few weeks. However, things are starting to get back to running smoothly, so I'm feeling better about the whole situation. I've also been writing quite a bit, putting in an hour or two every day, and working out quite regularly. Of course, I've been behind on the reading I would like to do, but I had to suffer somewhere.

Writing has been moving along perfectly. I've gone back to writing my fantasy prequel / mildly philosophical coming-of-age tale, and at the rate that I'm working on it, I may even have it done before the end of the summer, which is massive for me. There would, of course, be tons of proofreading and all that to do before ever actually submitting it to be published, but this is still a huge step forward.

Writing used to be quite difficult for me. It wasn't fun, it was work, and I had to do it on my own time, which hurt me a lot. As such, of course I couldn't do it for very long, only in brief spurts and jumps. Worse, I would write something and then simply be out of the mood for a week or two, only delaying the process even more. But I put my mind to being a writer, and stuck through those odd bits. My vows of silence were the first and best step that I made to correct this. Focusing on nothing but writing for a month, I could truly make progress, and teach myself to begin to enjoy my writing. Now, this has begun to come to a head, and I can write for an hour or two without even realizing that time is passing. It's nowhere near the amount of time I'll have to be able to put in when I go professional, but of course that won't happen for another two years.

Speaking of another two years, it's something that I've been considering a lot lately.

My parents made some comment as usual, to the extent that I wasn't working enough, that I'm not going to be able to sustain myself on the amount of money that I'm making. I need more hours, and better jobs. Now, they're right. I've been thinking about it, and trying to realize where it is in my life that I can cut back. There's only one main place that I can do so, I realize, as much as it hurts: weightlifting.

Lifting weights requires a lot more energy than simply living your life. Not only do you need to consume the calories to do much more physical work than the usual human, you also need extra nutrients, proteins, and calories in order to properly build muscle and make the most of your exercise. When I go to France in a few months, I'm not going to have access to a gym attached to the school, meaning that I would have to arrange for a membership in a French gym. When you factor in the time spent weightlifting, of two hours or so every day or two, the amount of money needed to purchase a membership in a gym, and the amount of food I would need to consume, it becomes clear that I cannot sustain this sort of life when I go to France. Perhaps, even when I come back I won't continue.

I will continue to run and get in my cardio, as well as remaining stretched out. These are relatively low-demand types of exercise that are highly beneficial to my health, and they don't require any gym equipment. Looking at it now, I don't think I will ever go back to weightlifting.

I've made the claim before, to myself and others, that I don't ever think I will be addicted to anything in my life. It's true, because after my high school years and the terrible addiction that I suffered under back then, I've learned my lesson. Any time I grow too attached to something, I generally realize this, and let it go, generally overnight. This is the same thing I tried to do with my girlfriend, until I realized that I did truly love her, and my affection wasn't a bad thing. Often times, the things we become addicted to hardly are bad things, we've just made them so. Routine is the death of all meaning, and when something becomes so routine that it is unquestioned, so all meaning fades and it becomes nothing but mindless action. This is why a bit of alcohol is a good thing; it shakes up life and makes things interesting, and this is also why too much of it is a bad thing; when alcohol, or anything for that matter, becomes routine, it loses all meaning, and becomes more detrimental than beneficial.

Looking back, I've been addicted to many things, in the sense that I made them a routine part of my life without even meaning to, without even thinking about my decisions. I don't see this over-attachment as anything debilitating, because I've gotten over it. So the same is with myself and working out. I enjoyed it immensely, and I still do. There's nothing wrong with it, but it's simply begun to become too routine. It's beginning to lose meaning, and become an addiction. I can't have that. Now, it is time to say goodbye to it, even though it was half the reason I pulled myself out of depression and ever stayed alive in the first place. There was a time and a place in my life for it, and that time is passing. It's time to use the time that I spent honing my body, and hone other things. Perhaps I will return, but only when the time is right, and not until then. Now is not the time.

As such, I'm slowly moving myself off. I'm cutting down on my workouts, and focusing more on the aspects of exercise that I will be keeping. I'm moving towards the right balance, a sustainable balance, that I can use in the future.

Life is grand.