The life-changing magic of giving up

Quitting is an important productivity skill.

Many months ago now, I hurt my knee pretty badly at my first and last Zumba class. Knee injuries are common with Zumba, apparently. I had no idea! It’s such a bummer, because I was having a great time until I suddenly ruined the next six months of my life.

I was reasonably fit before my Accident — the one in which I had the audacity to turn my body to the side without also turning my foot to the side. (I’m a maniac, maniac, etc.) But the injury erased every habit I had for staying in shape.

I canceled the remote personal trainer who would normally be messaging me daily about my Apple Watch activity. My fancypants indoor bike sat abandoned in the corner. I did try to ride it a few times (with my doctor’s blessing), but each time set me back so badly that I became scared of it.

Besides, I had never really loved-loved the bike, though I often enjoyed it enough to use it. I did it because it was both a convenient home option and also virtuous, the kind of exercise where you’re hitting your target heart rate and setting personal records. But I didn’t miss it enough to endure the difficulty of starting over.

So instead of getting back on the bike, I signed up for Planet Fitness as an interim solution, and used random equipment there while my knee continued to heal, and while I figured out what to do next.

I unabashedly love Planet Fitness, not because they will care if you die in their tanning bed (they will not, Google it), but because absolutely anything goes at Planet Fitness. As a lifelong lazy athlete who has always participated in sports but who has also never taken sports seriously, I wholeheartedly believe in keeping the bar of athletic achievement on the ground where it belongs. And the bar does not get lower than at Planet Fitness, where it’s completely acceptable to use an elliptical machine in a sundress, or routinely just wander around the gym with your dog who is clearly not a service animal.

My support here sounds sarcastic, but it absolutely is not. Fitness should be radically inclusive, and any escape from the couch is worth celebrating. You can get like 90% of the benefit of exercise by doing anything at all. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, they’re just trying to sell you stuff.

Anyway, it was at Planet Fitness that I finally found the path forward that I had been seeking.

One night, while walking on the treadmill, I glanced to my left and witnessed a woman several treadmills down who was living her absolute best life. She was snuggled into in a giant hoodie, sipping from a Starbucks cup and reading an honest-to-God paperback novel at about 1.5 miles per hour on a Planet Fitness treadmill at 9:30 PM at night.

I felt as though I had been hit by lightning. That, I thought. That is what I want. I wanted to experience the laziest, coziest exercise possible, and I wanted to do it all the time. I wanted to stroll along at 10 PM on a Saturday night, just vibing. I wanted to eat a huge burrito, take my pants off, and then amble into the treadmill’s welcoming embrace.

I was ready to find out whether the snifter I use for my biweekly Friday-night margarita would fit into the cupholder. I was ready to come home.

So I sold my bike for a very reasonable price on Facebook Marketplace to a hardcore cycling enthusiast who could not believe his luck, a heartwarming experience that took the sting out of saying goodbye to a much more ambitious era of my life. Then I got rid of furniture until I had room for a treadmill (the burly in-your-face kind, not the portable kind you slide under your bed and then never muster the willpower to retrieve … I’ve already given one of those away because I’d clearly rather die of heart disease than navigate any inconvenience at all).

I clipped a couple of fans to the treadmill, and put a laptop desk on it that can just stay there all the time without getting in the way, thanks to the aforementioned giganticness of the machine. The rest is history, and my pants fit much better now.

I’m not going to lie and tell you that I love getting on the treadmill every day. But it’s an extremely doable activity, and I usually sincerely enjoy it once the dopamine has kicked in, and that’s enough. I don’t press the Start button because I actually want to, I do it because the bar cannot get any lower than a treadmill four feet away from my desk that takes 30 seconds to climb onto in whatever I’m already wearing, and I am acutely aware that this strategy is my last exit off The Highway of Intense Future Regrets.

Anyway, consider this PSA that you can in fact get in okay shape just by bopping along to music on your treadmill at 2.5 mph, if you do it regularly. Treadmills are a dime a dozen on Facebook Marketplace, and once you have wrestled it into your home, you can do all kinds of weird stuff on it, like turning the speed down, putting one hand on the rail, closing your eyes, and cruising like that for long enough that someone would consider calling the police if you were doing it in public.

Obviously, strength training is necessary too, which is why I invented a workout plan called If I Can’t Do It In My Kitchen While I Poach My Egg, I’m Not Doing It At All. In this house, counter pushups are not a gateway to something more impressive. They’re just pushups, period.

I think a lot about how the art of aging well is really about continually evolving just to break even. There are plenty of people out there who live life in a pretty functional way in their twenties and thirties, then are unpleasantly surprised by how not-okay that exact same lifestyle gradually becomes.

If you’re smart and you need a job when you’re 28, somebody will probably eventually give your cute little babyfaced self a job. If you’re smart and you need a job when you’re 50, you better have a legendary resume by now, because you no longer remind the hiring manager of themselves when they were younger. If you have crappy friendship skills at 30, you can still have a good number of friends, just by social osmosis and because everyone still has the boatloads of energy required to offer you the benefit of the doubt on a weekly basis. If you have crappy friendship skills at 50, no one has time to bother with your well-meaning but ultimately selfish oblivion.

You don’t have to change to ruin your lovely life. Staying the same will ruin it easily enough, in time.

Some of these shifts, I anticipated and navigated deftly. Others have humbled me to an extent I had not known was even possible, and I’ve simply had to step it up. But for me, the secret to this evolution is actually about stepping it down — about continually finding new ways to get over my lofty ideals for myself and just get shit done, dignity be damned.

Do you know how I blow-dry my hair these days, when I blow-dry it at all? In a bonnet, which is attached to a blow dryer, which is permanently attached to my desk with a gooseneck clip that was designed for grooming dogs, so I can message my friends and ask them how their day went.

If your spouse isn’t laughing at you on a daily basis, are you really staying far enough ahead of the ravages of time?

Especially in this interesting era, I hope you too are finding ways to lower the bar. Stash it on a shelf in the basement if you need to, or maybe just wander out into the fields and throw it down a well, like a javelin aimed at the devil himself.

Whatever works!

… Or whatever mostly works.

… Or … whatever. You know?