I remarked in my previous post that if blog posts posts stop flowing that means I have either "lost the will to live or no longer possess the critical mass of sadness needed to write quickly".  I clarify in this new post that indeed depression is no joke and can insidiously sap away all motivation for anything beyond the basic essentials - namely eating, sleeping, exercising, vocaloid music, and of course putting on an emotional mask in order to be a productive employee at work.  With this said, below my thoughts on exercise, as informed by the pain I have experienced due to pandemic racism, relationship struggles, and personal incompetence. This post is also dedicated to amber from IG - sorry I was lazy and took way longer than expected to write lol.

  1. Home gym is better than regular gym. Ever since the pandemic started I have been home gym-ing instead of going to regular gyms. Eventually I realized that, though having a dedicated exercise space and seeing other people exercising is motivating, I really only exercise these days to mask my emotional pain with physical pain…. and routinely so literally it is an "exercise routine". At my home gym I am am free to obnoxiously blast loud vocaloid music and take bathroom selfies, and am also free do as many hip thrust-based exercises as I want without experiencing judgement. Per Roxane Gay, many people have a tendency to project assumed narratives onto other people's bodies, and so I feel there is an exhilarating freedom that comes from escaping these harmful projections. Finally and perhaps most importantly, I never have to put my weights back - though I'm pretty sure no one at the regular gyms was doing this anyway.

  2. The best workout is one you will actually do and enjoy doing (or in my case suffer more from not doing). Some people enjoy crossfit, while others enjoy high intensity interval training (HIIT), 5x5, yoga, swimming, running on the streetz, or calisthenics. This diversity should be appreciated rather than seen as character defects. Moreover consistency is more important than efficiency anyway so even if one exercise is objectively healthier than the other this healthiness does not outweigh the risk of getting burned out and quitting. My only caveat to this is that "running on the streetz" has a possible risk of getting murdered if you are the type to take the same route every time - the reasoning being a murderer could just learn your route and catch you at the end, because at that point you are fatigued and may not have the energy to run for your life.

  3. Spend time warming up and cooling down to prevent injury. I personally enjoy doing arm circles (palm-in forward, palm-out backward), side stretches, and leg swings (left-right and forward-back) as my warm up and cool down. I like to believe the flexibility acquired from doing this has prevented me from accidentally pulling my muscles on several occasions.

  4. A self-inflating camping mat makes an amazing sit-up and yoga mat. I personally have the AmazonBasics one but any cheap one is probably equivalent or superior to the high end yoga mats. Nobody likes getting bone OR joint pain from lying on a hard floor too long so I highly recommend this if you want to home gym.

  5. A bandana makes a great sweat rag, plus you could even dampen it for extra cooling effect.