Alphanumerical ideas on 2020.01.20

My affinity for language and diction, wordplay and other inventive combinations of our lexicon, is likely obvious to anyone who has stumbled upon my writing here or elsewhere.  Ever the poet, I'm also fond of numbers, their patterns and peculiarities a pleasing adventure for my brain.  I'm particularly fond of prime numbers, and my birth-date consists exclusively of primes, so I suppose it was destiny.

Today's date seems auspicious, as it is the twentieth day of the twentieth year since the turn of the century.  As such, there have been nearly three weeks since the New Year celebration with its related concepts and customs.  Of these twenty days, how do you feel about your behaviors and efforts toward your wellbeing?

Image credit:  https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxE4tqaLKHgCe57G_aCbGuqMfPEFnM4BaLVoZRfc2EeipQAuzw-46DQVo74RcfMR6hXe2Waao0ZM5AW3bY4bPCq_nGpcKR-ugGDrgSE7Ei8vrcpjlhgjjBNlNzmllx3XvAZ2d75tuFfpg/s1600/CALENDAR.jpg
On Leap Year, such as 2020 is, draw a line in the "Y" of February and add its 29th day.

I determined that, for at least twenty days each month of 2020, I'd perform twenty pushups (modified) and twenty situps.  I've used an inventive little page I found on the web to mark those days, keeping myself accountable and celebrating that accountability simultaneously as I fill in the day's block with a colored pen.  One night, I was disinclined to perform my little ritual, and that was acceptable because I only need perform it 2/3 of the month anyway to keep the promise I made myself.  In this way, I built in a bit of cushion for rest/recovery and engineered a way to keep the numbers from toying with my emotions.

Thus the topic of the day:

numbers can be motivating or menacing, 

especially those related to our health; 

and the feelings attached are fickle,

sometimes even destructive.

I own a scale - a nice one - but the number displayed on its read-out isn't always, well, nice.  Oddly, when the number marking the impact of gravity on my body that day is deemed in a positive light, I'm apt to stand a bit taller.  Conversely, when it seems gravity's pull is more like a personal orbit, even if I felt pleased with myself before stepping upon the device, I feel shamed and sad afterward.  I have not stood upon the judgmental square in quite some time - a cursory look at the app to which it syncs revealed that it was Halloween last year.  I honestly haven't missed the measurement, so I didn't realize I had gone through the holiday season without so much as a nod to it except when I was cleaning beneath it.

Tracking one's weight, measurements, and other such data can be helpful - even possibly necessary for someone whose health is precarious; but I have obviously survived months without a visit to the digital abacus which had been my albatross.  I've always thought the better measure of one's corpulence could easily be assessed in one's clothes closet.  To be honest, I've had more than one rueful encounter with my (old school, spandex-free) jeans generate a bit of repentant action (or abstinence) over the years.

Public Service Announcement:  leggings, glorious though their embrace may be, will lie to you.

I abdicated a throne of sorts within a community of people who bowed to the idol of weight-wariness (and weariness) more than a year ago now, and it has been more freeing than I can articulate.  The fear and manipulation and mind-games inherent in those weekly weigh-ins (and in my case, I was only required a monthly weigh-in for most of the decade-plus I participated) makes me sad now.  The number, even though it was met with praise most of the time, wasn't always reached via healthy means.  Overexercising, dehydration, and obsession with food's (arbitrary) numerical data took up more of my life than I am willing to confess.  And this is the case for every other "member" with whom I have had the intimacy to inquire.  So, I walked away from a community-culture in which I had obtained rock-star status; and it was not easy, but I kept stepping forward into the unknown... 

In so doing, I walked into a wonderland of self-evaluation and discovery afforded to me with the return of the energy and attention I once paid to the god of that "lifestyle."  I refuse to permit my worth to be summed up by any number; and the attempt to express how healthy that has been for me cannot be summed up in even our vast possibilities of elocution.

Jotting with Johnna:

• How do the numbers on the scale, measuring tape, or clothing size tags impact your outlook?
• Do you find yourself feeling rebellious or defiant (why even try, I deserved better) when you've "been good" only to perceive the weight or other measurement as "bad?"
• Ever been so disappointed by the digits that you literally thought, "no fair?"
• Alternately, have you ever dreaded weighing, only to find the number more favorable than you thought?
• Is there some other way you might find to observe your body's relative strength, flexibility, stamina, and function?  
• Hint:  yes, there are several.  
• List a few you will try.

Remember:
Scrabble and Sudoku are swell games to play with alphanumeric icons; but numbers that hurt your spirit are entirely optional sources of pain.  You are worthy of a more appropriate assessment of your value than any calipers could determine for you.

Stay tuned.  Stay focused.  Stay well.