I’m going to do this. It started on Monday, but I didn’t hear about it until Tuesday while I was making dinner – and by the time I’m done digesting dinner, it’s almost raid time, so starting on Tuesday was out. So today it is. A day late, a dollar short, but I want to go to the party, so I’m putting on my fancy clothes. Well, my yoga pants, at least.

My body is frustrating lately.  It hurts in funny places, and the chest cold that settled in my system  before Thanksgiving is still thriving – third trip to the doctor in three months, and a second round of prednisone is on the case, working, but making me weird and hungry all the time. I want a break from the mess – the wanting*, the scatterbrain, the lack of focus.

Years ago I was doing hours of yoga every day. I fell in love with it and kept at it, and I felt great – really really great. Bendy and loose and comfy. I understood something new about my body – it was the first time I found an athletic outlet I liked. But then something terrible happened –  after about a year and  half, things got busy, and I lost my practice piece by piece.  What it’s come down to in the last four years is occasional bursts of dedication to the mat that don’t last, a back that hurts, and a general dissatisfaction that I can’t seem to shake.

I don’t know how it happens, this lack of motivation that pulls me down into a funk for big chunks of time. I’ll think Wouldn’t it be good to do that every day? or Man, I’d sure like some of that, and then I never actually get there. And the torpor  has a gravity all of its own, too – once I start noticing that I’m not actually doing what I could be doing, I end up with a gross disbelief that I actually can do it at all. And a royal case of the Fuck-its.

But you know what? It’s time to shake that business loose. I’m forty now – I’m a big girl with big girl responsibilities. Isn’t it time to pay attention to the body that houses this soul, in a respectful and kind manner?  Years ago I loved doing a regular yoga practice – I deserve to have that back on a reliable basis.

I’m going to do this.

*Food, cigarettes – it’s a constant distraction, a head-muddier. Plainly put, it’s icky.