Starting New Stuff

Despite my eldest's magical insight - the reason you can't start writing that book MOM is that you don't want to write THAT book. Write something else - I started the book. I had every intention of abandoning the effort. Of telling my agent (I feel weird saying that - but that is what she is) that I just can't do it. Despite the request from a well regarded publisher, I'm laming out. Not gonna happen. Forgive me. I can't find my mojo.

And then I got on the stair master. Something I'm trying to do more of lately. The thing that has fallen by the wayside more than anything in the last 18 months is exercise. I suppose maybe I've exercised enough in my lifetime to not ever exercise again (though my expanding waistline and widening ass would disagree). Or that's what I tell myself anyway, when I don't feel like exercising. Which is always lately.

It actually started - this whole not exercising thing - before the last 18 months which shall be called "the extrication of a marriage". It started way before that if I'm truthful. It began to wane aggressively in late 2009. When I started the job I currently hold at Levi's. Job was hard. I sat in the chair and worked. Period. And then I had to have ankle surgery. A perfect excuse not to exercise! It took me a while to walk without pain (not that I couldn't have ridden a bike) and so I sat. And then I never got my ass back into the swing again.

The whole divorce thing didn't help. Rather than sweat my troubles away, I drank wine. And the kid schedule got complicated blah blah blah - it was just easier not to move my body. And then I just started to feel bad. Icky. Gross. Sloth-y.

The good news is that all those years of gym-ing means I get back in shape pretty darned fast. Faster than the everyday normal human. I suppose my baseline level of fitness is quite high from all the years of running, jumping, flinging and hand standing. Still it sucks to get started. Hauling your butt onto the treadmill when it has been so cozy on the couch or in an office chair for so long is no fun. Until you realize you feel better afterwards than you would have if you'd spent that same amount of time reclining. Funny how that works.

This time I'm being patient with myself. Lenient, if you will. If I can only go for 30 minutes to the gym, so be it. It's better than zero minutes. (In the past if I couldn't go whole hog, I just didn't go at all.) The new Jen is all about moderation (hah...if you know me AT ALL that will make you do a spit take.)

So I climbed on the stair master last night after a long day of work. And magically, as the sweat flowed, the words kind of came to me. Not too many. But at least a first chapter's worth. Hannah Gates is our heroine. At least for now. Names change so we'll see. I've never attempted to write fiction before. I'm shit at story and structure so this could be a total disaster. But now that I've begun, I've got some momentum. And I kind of like Hannah. And I want to see what happens to her.