These things actually happen to me. Part 2

So today, I dragged myself out of my lovely warm bed to be at the gym for 7.15 for my first induction. I managed to be there for 7.30 which considering I had been up till midnight the night before watching “The Only Way is Essex” was a real achievement. I don’t like gyms, the instructors irritate me; I mean to say… jumping up and down for a living? What gasping chasms of low self esteem does that reveal? To want to do professionally what toddlers do on their lunch break? What sort of work stories you would have- “Oh, I did a really interesting exercise today…oh you should have been there, my knees bent and everything”.


Why are they so smug about being so fit, shouldn’t they be embarrassed about having obviously so little else to do with their time? I don’t wander into libraries, lean over someone reading a book I’ve already finished and smugly ask if they need help understanding the author’s subtext. I understand that getting excited about the finer points of Douglas Adams is probably something better kept to myself, yet in a gym we’re supposed to crumble in respectful awe at somebody who has probably spent a similar amount of time moving contracting and retracting stomach muscles. Why all the aggression; the stomach crunches, the blitzing of buts, the feeling the burn? We’re just doing a bit of exercise not trying to over throw Gadaffi.


I just can’t help thinking that dedicating their lives to such a monotonous and time draining pursuit is poor exchange for just being slightly firmer. Yes, you could spend an hour every day at the gym to fit into your clothes better or you could just wear something slightly baggier. No one notices or cares. But I wasn’t thinking about that yesterday when I joined up. Drugged by intoxicating aroma of chlorine and dazzled by the protein bars on sale in reception, I was too distracted thinking about the glamorous, organised, taut grown up I was suddenly going to become.

Anyway, to save time, I came up with the cunning plan of sleeping in my oldest tracksuit bottoms and taking a change of clothes for work. It was only later when I went to get changed. I realised that my sleep fuddled brain had managed to pack tights, change of shoes and even some body moisturiser; which just shows how ambitious about my new life my semi conscious brain was being, but no actual work clothes. I am now at my desk hoping no one notices I am basically wearing my pyjama bottoms. The elastic in the waist has gone and I’ve had to secure it with some staples and a paper clip. On my lunch break they kept slipping down and I looked like a really really really low rent prostitute. So I have seen what my new grown up self looks like and to be honest, she looks exactly like the mad homeless person I always suspected she would be.