quitter

I've got a bad habit of throwing in the towel as soon as something seems too difficult. Moderate difficulty -- OK, I can handle that, as long as the given task allows me to be what I inherently desire to be at least part of the time, which is passive and lazy. Even though being passive and lazy annoys me.

So anyway. Probably 10 minutes into the first kickboxing class I'd taken in maybe 10 years, I'd decided I was never coming back. The reasons for this were numerous and include: 1) I can't breathe. 2) I might vomit. 3) I might pass out. 4) The music is too loud. 5) It smells like feet in here. 6) There are too many people in here. 7) There is a 9-months-pregnant woman to my right who is doing this better than I am. I mean, everyone is doing this better than I am, including the woman two rows up who's probably 50 pounds heavier than me, but being shamed by a hugely pregnant woman is probably more than my fragile ego can handle.

At some point my vision began getting smaller and I couldn't catch my breath, so I stepped outside. Which is when I knew, for certain, this wasn't for me and I could never come back. A woman attending the next hour's class -- called "POWER," whatever that is -- eyed me with concern and told me to take it easy. I acted as though I wasn't certain I'd be having a heart attack in the next few minutes, and trudged back inside to take my place on the mat.

Life is full of little meaningful sayings that people enjoy reminding you of, including one that goes something like: Nothing worth doing is ever easy. This is one that I'm afraid is true. Which sucks because my life motto is something like: This is harder than I thought it would be. Some folks are workers; they can't sit still, they can't turn off their brains, they enjoy the constant push. I've always envisioned my ideal job as professional beach bum, if only there were such a thing. Kept woman, on the beach, perhaps? Sipping mai tais and reading novels.

So it's with a deep, mournful regret that I accept the fact that my desire to be thin and successful conflicts quite horribly with my desire to lie on the beach, drinking mai tais. It appears that I cannot, in fact, quit the horrendous kickboxing class, and that I will, in fact, need to put more effort into every single area of my life in order for my life to begin resembling a life I desire.