I’M EMBARRASSED TO ADMIT this, but I’m a well-practised professional postponer. My life is littered with not-nows, do-it-laters, one-days, and it’ll-keeps. I put off going to dentists, paying bills, getting up in the morning, and writing stuff for Grapevine. I’m like: “Why do today what you can leave until tomorrow? And why do tomorrow what you can completely ignore?”
Honestly, if it wasn’t for the last minute, I’d never achieve a thing! Take getting in shape, for example …
I’ve been seriously considering starting to think about looking at the idea of perhaps getting fit for at least 40 years. Every month or three, driven by guilt or my wife, I’d get inspired to heights of wellness. “Tomorrow,” I would announce, “I’m gonna start skipping!” Or swimming. Or jogging. Or yoga. And to show that I really meant it, I’d psych myself up, jump on the scales, take my pulse, order the latest fitness fad, and even set the alarm.
But somehow … well … you know what it’s like. I’ve always been too cold in winter, too hot in summer, too late to bed, or too frantically busy. The outcome? I’ve never stuck at any of this. Not past the initial burst. And our home has been cluttered with unused gadgets that served to condemn me: the chest-expanders that went rusty on a nail under the house … the gym bag my daughter put horse-feed in … the skipping-rope that supports my wife’s climbing rose … the Nordic poles that glare at me from the back of our wardrobe … the fluro vests we wore on the bikes we sold six months later … and the Don Oliver barbells my boys loaned to they-can’t-remember-who back in 1989.
A doctor-friend once told me I should flag it. The guilt, he said, could prove fatal. So next time the urge to get fit overwhelms me, I’m going to lie down until it passes.
GRAPEVINE’S FOUNDER & ‘BIG CHEESE’ HAS A FAVOURITE FITNESS QUOTE: “‘I FEEL SO ALIVE AT THE END OF MY WORKOUT,’ SAID NO ONE EVER!”
