What’s Your Dorky Workout?
Dorkiest workout? Come on, we all have them. Those workouts where you seclude yourself in the house with the blinds shut and become a keener clapping when the host claps? Mine is Turbo Jam. So dorky. So fabulous.
A recent pole of Canadian women showed that 83% of women who work out use Turbo Jam.* I am one of these 83%. Chalene Johnson, the host is pretty much the perkiest woman I’ve ever met (cause you know…I pretend she’s my friend/personal trainer rather than a stranger on the TV), but worse than that is that despite the fact that I can be fairly cynical in everyday life, I become her assistant captain cheerleader. She says, “you can do it!” I pump my fist and say, “I can!” Sometimes, if I’m really into the workout and she says, “you can do it!”, I reply with, “Yeah! Come on everyone we can do it!” It must be noted that I am the only person in the room at the time. This means that my two cats look at me, blink, then look at each other. Thought bubble: crazy…
Ok, so far the story isn’t so bad. You’re thinking to yourself: “so what? I get into workouts too.” Do you watch the “After the workout (different than the ‘After the Rose’ bachelorette specials) special features” though? Didn’t think so. After every workout I sit around and watch either her “Jamm’d” episodes, (a terrible workout version of Punk’d. Why you would want to play a cruel joke on the naïve fitness trainer who just thinks they are here for a workout video gig is beyond me. It’s cruel. But according to my fiancé I’m prone to hyperbole.) or her mini biography. What I’ve gleaned from this biography is that Chalene has a perfect life, a perfect body, a perfect husband and a perfect body. I’m not really jealous of these things because I figure “ok, so what? I’ll attain all of that once I do a few of these Turbo Jams every week. Obviously. No big deal”. But there is one thing that she has that I feel is just too unfair. A waterslide. Yes, that’s right. Chalene has her very own waterslide in her very own pool. This enrages me. Is it not enough that Chalene has the perfect body and is a kazillionaire all because the majority of North Americans are so fat we have to buy her DVD? She has capitalized on my (almost previous) weight problem by buying a waterslide with what is practically MY money. I feel I deserve a ride or two. Maybe I’ll show up at her house, knock on her door, and towel in hand march pointedly towards the pool deck. There I shall climb the ladder, stand triumphantly at the top and then slide right down.
The moral of today’s tale: If you are fat, other people will buy waterslides with your money.
So…seriously…what’s your dorkiest workout?
*Fictional statistic.
Ahh…Chalene. Yes, if you too do Turbo Jam then not only will you own your very own waterslide, but you’ll be able to take flying leaps in the air too!
A Brief Sampling of My Writing…
Copyright © 2010 A.M. Carson
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Canada License
File 1
Fairytales have wrecked my life. There I’ve said it. And I know I’m not the only one who looks deep into the very essence of who they are and realizes that it’s Disney’s fault that their lives are f*cked. I mean honestly, let’s think about how many of us are wandering around out there waiting for our frog to turn into a prince, waiting to be woken from our slumber (literally and metaphorically) by our own personal gorgeous prince, waiting for the whole world to burst into song when that magical kiss happens. When we are constantly disappointed and faced with the awful fact that the only person we are guaranteed to spend the rest of our life with is ourselves, we get…well…depressed. Probably Prozac and Celexa have forged a deal with Disney. But it’s not the pharmaceutical companies I’m after, nor the animation corporations that cater to a ‘happy ever after’ sort of ending, it’s myself. Because, Ok here’s the thing…life is not a fairytale and neither is love. I know, it’s hard to digest but it’s the truth. And the sooner we learn that, the better. It took me a long time to realize that. Growing up with Disney as my main hero I was convinced that my prince was out there. That there was one singular human being who would sweep me into my happily ever after and that would be it. And so growing up from a very early age, I began looking for my prince in every (and I do mean every) male that crossed my path. I put myself in my own male-centered world, where what I should have been doing instead was putting myself first. If someone else is along for the ride, great, but it’s ok if it’s just me.
How did I realize all this? I got dumped. And not the fun kind of dumped where I skipped right into another man’s arms thereby making the original guy uber jealous. I got dumped in the mean gut wrenching ugly kind of way. How could I have been such a fool? How could I have let this happen to myself. But when I really sat down to think about it, I kind of realized that he wasn’t the first testosterone fuelled human to wreak havoc on my soul. Full well knowing that I couldn’t change the past I wondered how could I change my future. How could I prevent myself from repeating the vicious terrible boyfriend cycle. If we ignore our own history it’s simply bound to repeat itself; and that’s when I realized I had to go through my own personal stack of dating files. And man was that stack big.
Copyright © 2010 A.M. Carson
All rights reserved. No portion of this blog may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the author, except for reading and browsing via the World wide web.
This is the first draft of my novel. All 347 pages of it.
Artist on a Bookshelf
What is an artist? Are they a dreamer? Or are they someone who can push the boundaries of reality and infilitrate some upper fantasy that is in actual fact a very real world.
I am an artist. At least I think I am, at least I strive to be.
All my life I wanted two things: to write and to act. Acting took precedence at the time. I was one of those wanky teens who is consumed by their art: eating it, living, breathing it. In high school I was the proud owner of the title “Drama Society President”. I knew all about Stanislavsky and Uta Hagen without actually being able to throw their names out there. And I have to admit, I was good.
And then I went to University, and the very soul of me was crushed. Three years of acting school and Theatre school in which I no longer felt the joy or the passion. The very reasons I went into acting and theatre were…gone. And so the artist ceased to be.
I finished my Fine Arts degree, and went on to get a second degree in Education. And now, I feel that I am an artist as teacher. And yes, I teach core subjects such as humanities and math and science, but I feel that the spirit and the joy of the artist came alive in me again as an educator.
But now…
Now I feel the need to write again. Don’t get me wrong, I write frequently if not daily. I think I’m actually a good writer. But I lack a reader(s). It’s not for fame or fortune (though of course I would be gracious if these were in my life and would not scoff), but rather the pure joy of sharing one’s work. My goal as of recently is to become published. I’ve written a novel and it’s good. It’s funny and quickly and more importantly: sellable. It’s taking that bigger, bolder step and throwing it out to the world at large that once scared me. I think the fear has passed now though, and I’m ready. I’m ready to walk into a bookstore and see my name on a shelf.
This morning I arrived at work in somewhat of a daze. The problem with long weekends is that yes they are long, but they are not endless. Therefore, at some point you must wake up and become functional in society again.
I stopped at a Starbucks on my way to work so that I could get a caffeine jolt to the brain. Now I admit, I was out of it to start, and then the line was kind of long. You know how it is when you are standing in line, and you just gaze into the bakery counter in front of you. I must have been reading “buttercream” over and over and over again. When the barista asked what drink I would like this was my reply, “an Americano with a shot of buttercream”
She looked at me like I was insane.
And possibly I am, at least on a Tuesday morning after a long weekend.
Words
What has spurned my need to start an online journal? Several years ago when blogs first came on the scene, I thought that e-diaries were such a strange phenomenon. Weren’t the very point of diaries that they were secret? Yet, I too began a blog. I didn’t try very hard, I didn’t write very well but it certainly was an avenue of connection between myself and several friends I had moved away from. Then facebook came on the scene, and social networking took a new direction. The words were lost.
Recently a friend of mine died. We had lost touch over the years, but I certainly thought of her with fondness, because once we were very close. Though the actual friendship may be fleeting, the shadow of one may have a lasting impact. I know hers will. You see, this friend also had an online journal through which she chronicled the disease of CF (Cystic Fibrosis), the very disease which sadly took her life. But it was through this journal that her final expressions, her final thoughts, her final words and her final loves were communicated. And now, there on my computer screen is a rich legacy of the friend I never got back in touch with.
This got me thinking. The more I read through her journal to reflect on the girl I knew, and the parts of her I didn’t, I began to realize the appeal of an e-diary. An audience. For what is a writer without a reader? Maybe the difference between a diary and an e-diary is that you communicate your inner most thoughts to an external source, a living breathing pulse.
So to you, my reader, I give you my words. It doesn’t matter if you are a stranger, someone I know, someone I knew; I now know that somewhere out there is a reader, reading my words. So Thank you. This first entry is for you.
