Much has been made about the benefits of keeping a journal—of writing down your thoughts and being mindful of your circumstances. It helps you with gratitude, being present in your experiences, and determining where you’re heading next. I do it for drafting new ideas but also as a way to reflect on the positives of each day.
But over the years, I’ve also had periods where I do it for exercise, and I’ve been thinking this week that it’s time to bring that back. I’m just better when I journal my exercise. It keeps me focused on what I’m doing and on track. As a writer trying to suck the marrow out of life, I wish I could always be Zen-like about being in the moment and exercising mindfully as some sort of enlightened physical state, but I can’t even remember what I had for dinner yesterday. I need to write this shit down. Time moves too quickly and if I don’t journal what I’ve been up to each day, I stop pushing myself and lose so much progress within just a few short days.
So, I’m returning to my exercise journal. It’s pretty dorky of me, but if dorking out works, then a dork I will be.
In a Past Life
In a past life, I knew a little bit of programming code. Nothing too fancy, but enough. I had to understand it because of some teams I managed at work—it’s pretty hard to manage people if you don’t know what they do. While I didn’t actually do the coding, understanding it helped me dive back into some of the simpler coding you can do in Microsoft Excel and Access. Employing my understanding of Visual Basic, I coded some stuff in Access to help me manage my work, and I coded an exercise journal in Excel to help me get physically stronger. Why did I ever stop using it?
It’s hard to maintain anything in our busy lives. One week you have a big week of exercise, and then the next you’re juggling so many administrative tasks at work and at home that you forget you have a body that needs taking care of. But in the past, my little exercise journal kept me on track because I could just look at it and know if I was slipping. You see, it was color-coded.
Dorking Out: There’s a lot going on here, but basically each day has a list of exercises, and I get points for working on different things.
Coding for Health, Coding for Fun
Over time, I tricked my exercise journal out with all sorts of metrics, complete with a scoring system to see if I was living up to the standards I wanted to meet each day. If I did a pitiful amount of exercise, I gave myself a rating of “Weak,” which I suppose I color-coded in red to shame myself. If I went bananas and had a monster day of exercise, I gave myself a “Beast” moniker. I had forgotten many of the classifications I entered over the years, and when I reacquainted myself with it this week, it gave me a chuckle to rediscover that I thought the level just below “Beast” should be called “NH Man.” Hell yeah, it should.
I’ve played with a bunch of different nickname levels over the years to make the journal a little more fun, and I’m not really sure what that says about me. I guess it shows my inner dork, but it works. Or at least it did in the past. After five months of not using it, I think it’s time to bring it back as I try to up my physical regimen. If you’re struggling to stick to an exercise routine, maybe this is something you want to try. Journaling works for me in every facet of my life: work, writing, gratitude, planning… why I stopped doing it for my health—the most important thing—is beyond me. I guess I’m journaling it here so I remember not to let it go again. Things seem to work out when I write them down.
Come on, that’s just funny.