Of Freewriting, Gym, and the Sky of Greens

This is my Skywatch Friday picture. Snapped yesterday inside a cab on my way to work, this image should depict a gloomy Thursday Ortigas Sky. Instead, it is an image of a gloomy and obscured-by-branches-and-electrical-wires Thursday Ortigas Sky. What a nice way to start my Skywatch Friday series!

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Today I wanted to give freewriting a try. I wanted to just write down the things that cross my mind without the worry of completing an entire entry that I know, for sure, would not make any sense. I guess there is no better way to start my freewriting activity than to know the exact definition of freewriting. A quick Google search gave me these answers, which I have randomly, if not lazily, selected.

a) Freewriting is a popular technique used by writers to practice writing in general, or to collect their initial thoughts and ideas on a writing topic. It is often used as a preliminary to more formal writing.

b) Freewriting resembles the warm up you might do before exercising.

I can't exactly relate to the second definition because I don't exercise and the gym is a weird place to me. When I hear people talk about the number of times they pump irons in the gym as if it were a medal of honor, I find that I don't have anything to add to their discussion. I've never visited a gym since birth; I don't even know how it looks like.  All I know is that the place is filled with exercise machines (is that how they're called?) that people use to rip their muscles, hoping that they will eventually gain a body like that of Arnold Schwarzenegger or of the men from UFC. But that is my exaggerated tenet about gym-goers. The most appropriate thing to say is those who frequent the gym are people who wanted to lead a healthy lifestyle free from high calories, high carbohydrates, high cholesterol, and other unhealthy words you can think of that begin with the letter C. 

I'm not exactly the healthiest person in the planet, and I know that I've already mentioned in this blog several entries ago that my waist has started to act as an actual piece of luggage that can hold all the gym equipment in the market, plus Schwarzenegger, plus the two burly guys from UFC. As a matter of fact, I've always been bombarded by friends and family members with facts and some completely useless information about the health benefits of going to the gym. I've been ignoring them the first few months they did this to me, but they prove to be annoying and implacable more recently, telling me that I'm the only person in the planet who has not visited a gym.

This makes me feel like I'm an alien or Wall-E.

But they argued that even aliens from Mars go to the gym, so now I'm feeling like a plankton being swallowed by a blue whale. I was trying to think of a more insignificant organism, to give that dramatic self-pity effect, but myself reasoned that I'm not insignificant -- I'm just useless. 

So to gym or not to gym? It's the question that has been bothering me the way kids who sell sampaguita garlands bother Quezon City motorists. With a tight working schedule and an even more tight budget, I don't think you'll be seeing me in the gym one of these days, nor the Terminator turned governor, nor Wall-E. Unless, the universe conspires and wishes to see my to-die-for body. I definitely need to have a healthier lifestyle before it's too late or, perhaps,  before I get too old to lift a dumbbell. It takes wheedling and some sort of bribery to force the universe to conspire.

Maybe, writing a completely trashy post will do the trick.