Last week, I did about 50 squats with a 40-pound barbell on my shoulders.  You’d think that would feel like progress.  (It did not.)

Especially given that just a few weeks previous, I couldn’t remember the difference between a squat and a lunge – or frankly, had more than a vague, passing intellectual interest in that distinction.  But…my intellect is not engaged when I’m sweating and grunting like a pig in a room full of muscle boys.  So, there is that.

Progress gets very confusing.  Which is why I have always started to struggle at this point in my Brand New Life comedy/drama.

I’m zipping along – all new and novel – and then I’m suddenly not feeling the forward motion.

Which reminds me of something I heard on CNBC the other day.  This old, white guy (Congressman?  Senator?  Whatever.) said that Washington progress looks mostly like a waterbug skittering across the surface of a lake.  Darting back and forth and zipping all around and seeming to go nowhere.  He was smiling when he said it.

Interesting metaphor in light of the shit that had just gone on for the past few weeks.

But I digress.

So, how do we remember Hey! I’m Making Progress! during those times when the new has worn off and we’re not feeling it?

We can’t always count on the bathroom scale to back us up, that’s for sure.  She will, on occasion, lie and smile about it.

My own self evaluation is notoriously faulty.  I pretty much wake up in a brand new world everyday…so trying to remember how BADLY out of shape I was two months ago is pretty much a wash.

The biggest help I’ve had recently…is external. Poul-the-Trainer is helping me to re-route old patterns.  Re-forming my thinking of what progress really looks like. He has much more objectivity.  More knowledge.  Pays less attention to The Whiner (who mostly keeps her mouth shut when he’s around anyway).  I get pushed beyond My Self.  I love it that I can go to the gym, disengage The Editor, and just work out until exactly 2.3 seconds before death.

The Yay Me! part is that I want to be pushed.  Not everyone does.

There seems to be some strange magic in the face-to-face contact.  I didn’t realize how much I gather (or lose) strength from the people around me.  I’ve wasted a lot of time and money trying to do this on my own.  Probably wasted even more trying to get help from the wrong people.

In my defense…it’s very hard to ask for help.  Even harder to pay money for it.  These are not the skills I learned growing up.  We’re German, for God’s sake.

Getting in better shape – like a lot of major Life Projects (marriage, parenting, budgeting, projects) – is a lot of working in the dark.  For me, anyway.  I want to stay on point and on task…but somehow I end up just feeling my way around.   Maybe the problem is that for these kinds of things there is no end point…which can make it pretty hard to identify real progress.  Progress can be all around me, and I’m still focused on all the crap that still needs to be done.

That’s why it’s a good thing sometimes to get a little help.   Help to focus the flashlight on the work. Some projects take two hands and you still need another one to hold the light for you.

Girlfriend, boyfriend, wife, husband, trainer, kid, puppy, online meno-blogger…whatever.  It matters less where the support comes than the quality and consistency of it.   And what really matters is that you start to believe that you’re worth the help.

Sometimes it really helps to let someone else hold the flashlight.

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