Today, thousands of people like me will be walking back to the gym, heads down, tails between our chubby legs.
Today I am a January re-joiner.
January joiners are those people who start a gym membership as part of a New Year's resolution to be a better person by sweating.
A re-joiner is someone who returns after months away and so many waistline inches ago, a shadowy blob of our former selves.
A year ago, I was one of those who stood tall on the elliptical machine and shook my sweaty head at the joiners trying to figure it out. They reminded me of myself when I joined two months earlier.
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How high and mighty I was. How hefty and miserable I've become.
My downfall wasn't sudden. After returning from a September tour of baseball stadiums (and sampling far too many hot dogs and beers), I allowed myself to rest for a week. Then two. Then I figured I would start anew in October. Then November. Then ... aw screw it, I needed a New Year's resolution anyway.
So I'm going back to the gym with modest and reasonable goals: Lose some weight. Get a little more energetic. Find out which liberal agenda is eating the concerned folks on "Fox and Friends."
When people find out I'm going to the gym, the overwhelming response is "You should run a marathon."
My overwhelming reaction is to laugh. I barely have the energy to run my mouth. Besides, marathons start too early in the morning and take up too much of the weekend.
I know a lot of people who run marathons. I admire their resolve to training, the joy they find in moving one foot in front of the other for 26 miles. I am not that dedicated to anything.
The one thing I don't like about a lot of runners is that all they want to talk about is running marathons.
I can see how runners can find the simple pleasure in moving, taking in the scenery and the serenity of it all. What I can't see is how they think I would be remotely interested in hearing about their splits. That sounds painful, so don't even start with your negative splits.
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These people usually update their Facebook statuses with lines like "Had a great run today" or "It was a brutal run, but I'm glad I did it" or "I am updating my status while running!"
These people are friends of mine and I know they have more interesting things to talk about. So why is it all they can talk about is what they did all by themselves? It would be like me saying, "I read 127 pages of 'Sound and the Fury,' today. Hit a wall around page 20, but powered through. Tomorrow, another 100 pages!"
Actually, reading a book sounds really good right now and this cold and snow is making the couch look awfully inviting. So maybe I'll just wait another day to get back to the gym. There are 30 more days to rejoin.
Readers can reach Forum columnist John Lamb at (701) 241-5533
