the tiger reemerges
I'm coming off of my birthday week, which I spent having good food, drinks, and hangs with family and a friend (just one, lol), and I am feeling the hangover that comes with good times and overindulgence. My sluggishness also probably has to do with me skipping two days of gym, getting blackout drunk during a call with my best friend (also drunk) last Wednesday, and falling off the wonderfully regular sleeping habits I'd built up over the previous two-ish weeks. But I'm trying to move back into the routine I was building and not to be too mad at myself about the break, which was enjoyable while it lasted.
I'm still recovering, it seems, because today I couldn't deadlift a weight I was able to surpass two weeks before. It was my first failure to lift since I started this program!!! Fuck my stupid baka life.
Just kidding – again, I'm trying to be more gracious with myself. But I am noticing my competitive side reemerge now that I'm doing a sport I like enough to want to improve at. I'm half-gleeful, half-apprehensive: It's nice that I want things again, but I don't love the scorching, all-encompassing stress that I know accompanies my drive to best myself (or worse, other people).
I've always been an intense person. My family thinks it's fitting I was born in the year of the tiger. I'm a Cancer sun, but an Aries moon, which always gets me an "ohhhh that explains it" from the astrology girlies. I've had to learn to tamp down my competitiveness because of how hard I feel it. My rage is a full-body experience: I start shaking, my face warms, my head feels light, and I'm out of commission immediately after. And okay, yes, I guess competitiveness doesn't always have to equal rage, but I don't know any other form.
Anyway, I hope it's something that the weightlifting itself vents naturally, or is a healthy outlet for.
This is what I am hoping will happen.
After the gym today I continued the book I bought last week and then surprised myself by deciding, definitively, to not finish it. I usually try to read books to the end no matter how uninvested I am in them1, but after binging two short ones over the weekend, coming back to such a slow book where I had no interest in any of the characters or happenings was disheartening.2
I should really remember that I have never gotten along with the frontmost shelves of the bookstore or any other widely recommended books, and though it's good to challenge myself every now and then, I should at least stop spending money on things I know I won't love as if my taste will magically change. I don't pretend to have "good" taste – whatever that is – but I know exactly what I like and should trust my instincts more.
Tomorrow morning I have the unique privilege of tutoring an older cousin and her friend in Korean, and then I'm meeting a new friend for lunch. I'm nervous about both things, unsure about how to prepare because I don't know either person well enough to know what to expect. But this Sunday I have another session of Oops, All Draculas with my friends, so I suppose any improv practice is welcome.
If it takes me too long, I'll put it back on the shelf and try again later, but I never put a hard no on them unless they've been on my shelf for like, a decade. I bought this book last week!↩
It was The Idiot by Elif Batuman, if you want to know. Cute cover, interesting premise, and probably very good to someone who is not me.↩