Excuses, excuses, excuses

When it comes to making excuses, I may well be a goddess in the art. Oftentimes, in my own mind at least, I feel I'm simply trying to explain things to the people outside of my head. No, there aren't people inside of it but I'm not exactly normal when it comes to the hows and whys of doing things. I believe that this bad habit of excuses, since that's really what they are, goes back to my childhood. There was always some reason why I couldn't do something and I usually came up with a story to explain it. People listened to my stories and I think that simply encouraged me. I don't need to be encouraged.

A couple of weeks ago was my first time skating since June 7th. I know that I'm not the only one in my league to put of skating. It's sometimes hard to be motivated when there's no one there to remind you (usually through yelling) that you need to be skating more often. My excuse? I got really sick twice and was busy with work and travel. Add into this the weird and wet weather Minnesota has been having and there was always an excuse to not be skating.

True, there are times where I physically couldn't breathe, let alone skate but often I just decided that I'd simply use an excuse. So while out skating with a derby friend, she noticed that I was skating knock kneed. Again. As always. As I tried to correct it, it came out that I didn't have the additional arch supports in them. I started to explain (short version: there was an exploding cucumber) and realized that it was just another excuse. I believe I came to this realization as my friend was most likely rolling her eyes at me. Or telling me to stop making excuses. I honestly don't remember that detail anymore. What I do remember is that I make a lot of excuses. Some are valid (I can't skate today because I am working/on my death bed/made other commitments) but most of them are absolute crap (I can't do this because I suck/aren't athletic/clumsy/better at falling). I make excuses so I don't have to try as hard. It's yet another mental block that I'm working on conquering.

So far, I've stopped making excuses about dry land. I've never been good at running or push ups (I'm still not convinced that I do them *right*) and have always made excuses why. Blame it on middle school and high school (probably even back to elementary school) where the only way to be "good" was to overachieve and rock at sports which I never did. Hello Lack of Confidence. Glad to see you go.

What am I doing then that isn't an excuse? I own a jump rope now and have taken to jumping rope when I find myself standing around waiting for someone and in a place with a high (or no) ceiling. If I know I'm not going to just be standing around and I'm at work, I use part of my lunch break to spend a few minutes jumping rope. It's a lot harder than I remember and I can't quite do it for a minute yet but I am working up to it. I've also downloaded some apps onto my phone to work on push ups, sit ups and squats as well as having other ab workouts at my finger tips. I've done the second day of the push ups and the first day of the sit ups. Tomorrow I do the first day of the squats.

Now if I can just go to one of those trust camps with my body and teach myself that I can trust myself, I think this season of Debs will be awesome.