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  • Aging is for the weak, and everyone else
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  • Ok but ALSO:
  • Midlife POV
  • Influence and Dooce
  • Horse therapy
  • You can’t go home again
  • Obsolescence
  • Before and after
  • A cringe confession on friendship

Archives from 2002-2006

I have been diligent about getting to the gym lately which has been doing wonders for my brain chemistry but bad things to my personal appearance. I don’t bother showering if I know I’m going to a workout class and I don’t always have time to shower afterwards, so I’m sporting greasy pigtails and a scuffed baseball cap for all my errands and school pickups and it just seems kind of ironic that my effort, in part, to improve my hotness quotient has resulted in me looking like fried shit pretty much 24/7.

Hygiene levels aside, it is truly amazing the difference regular exercise makes in my mood. I’m just a happier person when I’m working out, and I wish it wasn’t such a massive ongoing effort for me to overcome the part of my brain that continually tries to convince me I’d be much more content sitting on the couch powering my way through a box of Triscuits instead of lacing up my shoes and breaking a sweat. The math seems so basic: one activity triggers short term pleasure but long term lethargy and eventual feelings of despair; the other requires maybe 45 minutes of discomfort followed by hours and hours of confidence, energy, and a positive outlook on life. Yet even knowing the respective payoffs of each choice doesn’t stop me from spending days weeks months in the Triscuit Zone.

I’ve been slowly cycling my way through a bunch of challenging classes at the gym and even though they all involve some level of ridiculousness, they also allow me to completely outsource that pesky issue of motivation. A class will always push me past what I would do on my own, and I’m also finding the group setting to be—well, I’m not sure if the word is enjoyable, but it feels good to be around people. Even if I don’t really talk to anyone, it still helps with the crazymaking isolation, you know?

Last week I was epically, tragically sore from head to toe, and had the depressing sensation that I was starting over from flabby out-of-shape square one for the eleventy bajillionth time, but after two or three days in a row of showing up and doing my thing I was infused with a general overall sense of fuck yeah. Fuck yeah, I feel good.

It shouldn’t be so hard to stay on track, but god, it just is. At least for me. I don’t suppose I’ll ever get to a place where I don’t have to do battle with myself over fitness. I just hope I’m always willing to pick myself back up and go after it again.

My friend Scott and I used to frequently commiserate over our miserable work commutes. We drove in opposite directions, but both of us had become all too intimately familiar with missed dinners, tense daycare pickup routines, and every square inch of the freeways between Seattle and the Eastside.

Then at around the same time last year we both took the heart-seizing leap of moving on from our office jobs. I went into freelancing, and he started his own business.

Scott’s company recently launched their first iOS game, called Tiny Tiger. Tiny Tiger is a $2.99 kid’s app for iPhone and iPad, and it’s freaking adorable. I bought it a couple days ago and both boys absolutely went nuts for it—I had predicted that it would be more appealing to Dylan, but they were both shrieking with laughter to the point where I had to turn off the game for a while because they were spitting all over my goddamned phone.

Kids can dress up a character (Tiger, Hippo, or Monkey), take photos of their creation, play a surprisingly-appealing-to-this-37-year-old game called “Poke-a-Nose,” or play hide and seek. The graphics are super cute, the games are silly and fun, and the whole thing is just wonderfully designed and awesome.

Actually, here, Scott’s daughter Sofia does a much better job of explaining Tiny Tiger:

(Could you die. I love Sofia.)

I wanted to tell you about Tiny Tiger because I truly think your kid will like it. I’m also just so thrilled about Scott’s new endeavor, and I wish him all the success in the world. If you love it, please share the word about Tiny Tiger, or leave a review on iTunes. Word of mouth is everything for small developers, and I know this game will be a big hit if enough people see it.

Thank you, friends.

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