Turn Back From Decadence: Try Embracing Hardship

I found myself listening to the Art of Manliness podcast (episode # 604), searching for a subject to “type” about. I had started the day sour and lacking in creative thoughts. I became what I never wanted to become: a Monday creature. (I hate the kind of people that hate their return back to the workplace on Monday. Never mind, the vast majority of people I work and live around don’t have desk jockey 9-5 M-Fr jobs). I hated the reference from Office Space and I hate hearing it from folks on the weekend. The podcast tied in with this boredom of thought mentioning that we are on repeat as a culture. We don’t seem to be moving forward. We aren’t being creative and we seem to be “just consuming”. The irony is that I have been forced to turn back to what I had been doing correctly in my personal past.

Before my crippling injury; I had been steadily going to the gym, practicing cold showers, and undertaking intermittent fasting. I had a level of success using it and I felt like the hardship was keeping me on the straight and narrow. It was a start in changing my mindset. I ended up getting thrown off my pace when I got hurt/underwent surgery. I have been consistently trying to get back into the flow of things. (My diet has been shit and due to “Tha’ Rona” I have been out of the gym struggling to get my exercise in).

Yesterday, after interacting with a “brother”, I decided to undertake the cold showers again. Today was also day one for fasting. I have a laundry list of exercises I need to be doing. This isn’t easy stuff. It is easier to eat crap, sit on your ass, and enjoy the dopamine/idiot cycle. I am choosing to use this small element of hardship to help me weather the harder times, at least until we get back to our opportunity for forward progress.

I need this shock to send me back where I was. I’m not advocating playing the nostalgia roulette. I am advocating getting back into better habits. I have every reason we can be back on our way. As said in AoM’s podcasts, we don’t have to have a dark age before we have another Renaissance, we may have to trudge through the low points (pandemics, cultural bankruptcy, etc.) but we have the ability to get back into better times.

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