One thing I’ve been trying to do more of is to get outside. I’ve already had this nervousness around being outside, especially around nature. After all, nature is where gravity lives and we all know gravity is trying to kill us all every time we get near any edge.

Growing up, I was trained to hate the outside. I wasn’t taken outside much, and when I did go out into nature I had some freak-out moments. Instead of trying to figure out what my fears were and helping me overcome them, my mother’s response was to laugh at me for freaking out and them reminding me how dangerous the outside was in her normal course of “you can’t do (insert thing here) or you’ll (action to happen) and die” which certainly wasn’t a help, as surprising as that might be.

I haven’t been doing it enough, but I’m trying to take more walks. My goal is to ramp up to a daily walk during the workweek at lunch time each day. I’m trying to commit at least 45 minutes of my lunch break to walking in nature. Next week I’m upping those walks some more with the hope that in a couple of weeks the *habit* has been formed and going for a walk is second nature.

So I’m trying to get out and do not just walking as well, but looking for ways to start being active outside. Small steps. In May I will be in nature for 5 days at Camp @nerd_fitness so I’m prepping myself for this. When I went in 2016 I almost had an absolute panic attack on Day 1 of Camp but by Day 3 I was feelings really comfortable. Since then, I wanted to do more outside and just haven’t; now I’m taking the opportunity to break down my comfort zones in preparation for Camp this summer.

I’ll be documenting and journaling my progress as I change a lot of behaviors in 2022. In some ways, I feel like I’m starting from scratch. While I am no where near as bad as I was in 2015/2016, I am not ‘conditioned’. In some ways I’ve been working towards this for the last couple of years, and in some ways I feel like I’ve always been cutting corners here and there and not committing to this lifestyle; it’s what I want, but at the same time my mind sabotages me.

No more. It’s time for change. It’s time to buckle up because shits getting real. Initial progress pics are taken, logs are set up, nutrition tracking is becoming more consistent. It’s time to become the athlete I’ve always wanted to be, and changing more than just gym habits, but life habits, is core to this.