Cowardice

I worked out this morning for the first time in 8 years (about.)  What a fool I am to have skipped such a vital part of a healthy lifestyle for so long.  I hope I will keep it up, but I really doubt it since I can never keep p any good habit.

I missed lunch today but more than made up for it eating nuts throughout the day.  At one point I though that if I worked out I could eat like I wanted.  I put in all the correct numbers into the elliptical trainer and discovered that in my workout this morning I had burned enough calories to cover the Hershey's chocolate bar I had for breakfast yesterday.  Didn't cover all the X-mas cookies someone brought into work that I have been snacking on voraciously.

I feel like this is hopeless, but I've given up for so long, I just need to pick myself up off the floor and try again, as hopeless as it seems.  If there were a neat (and destructive) alternative that at least promised some small happiness, I would probably jump at the chance.  That never seems to happen though, and when it does, I screw it up.

It has always been a long held but totally distant dream (similar to dreaming of winning the lottery big) that I would sit beside a pretty female on a plane trip and strike up a conversation that turns into something.  When I would travel during college and early years of professional life I would think about it nearly every time I boarded a plane.  The one or two times that someone pretty was seated in easy conversation range, I didn't know what to say and ended up ignoring her (didn't want her to know how incompetent I was.)

So about 5 years ago, long after I had quit thinking about it, it finally happened.  The gal was very pretty but not "high maintenance" pretty.  I started by saying hello and noticed a positive and engaging "hello" in return.  "Good sign" I thought.   Normally I would freeze up but it was still early and I hadn't yet gauged that she was in-fact very cute and slim, both characteristics I really like.  So I was lucid enough to ask if she was headed home or headed out (I know it was a dumb, pathetic line.)  She was headed home as was I (something in common.)  We chatted about where we each lived in the metro area and then where we were from and then a little bit about family and occupation.  We had actually engaged in conversation before the normal freeze up took place.

Then something truly amazing happened, as the discussion on one topic petered out, she took the initiative to bring up some additional topics.  (I know this sounds normal to most guys but this almost never happened to me before.)  With a few brief, and not uncomfortable pauses in the conversation we literally talked from Oakland to DC.  But then, as always happens, I screwed up.  Being so inexperienced, I hadn't asked for her full name.  I knew this as we got close but couldn't think of/bring myself to ask before we landed and parted ways.  I really thing she would have given me her digits.  What a freaking idiot I am.

I actually searched for her on the basis of her employment (USG, urban search & rescue), hobby (singing with a piano player in clubs) and location Arlington, but I never found her again.  I didn't deserve to. The only solace was that I know it would have been one of the worst things I could have done to keep being a good Christian.  That was good, but I certainly felt really bad about it.  I still look back on that whole episode as an example of extreme cowardice on my part.  I am very ashamed of that episode in my life (as I am of so many others.)