The Byproducts of a Revelation

So I guess when I talk about how I realized I needed to change everything in my life, it wasn't just the sexual orientation and coming out thing. My life was/is a big tangled ball of irrational choices and bad habits that were all supporting each other.

Smoking
So yeah... I was a casual smoker since college, and I would frequently smoke socially. I've made half-assed attempts at quitting, but as a lot of my friends smoke and it's a pretty ubiquitous nasty habit here in New York, it was easy to fall back into the pattern. Anyway, as part of the package revelation, I decided to just completely cut that ridiculous, irrational habit out of my life entirely; I've been pretty successful since the new year started*.

* I did have one moment of weakness and I bummed a smoke outside of G Lounge on Friday, mostly because I was just a gigantic bundle of nerves that whole night. Also, the guy smoking was cute. And had a thick latin accent. This is probably going to be my biggest hurdle to quitting smoking: smoking-hot** guys outside clubs that make me nervous already.

** You see what I did there?

Working Out
So I've always been a pretty athletic guy. I swam for my high school's swim team a few years, and it's been pretty easy to stay active in New York City (most non-New Yorkers are surprised to learn that our city is actually incredibly Bike-friendly if you know where to go).

All of this was well and fine until I ran the marathon two years ago. Now, you'll notice I mention swimming and biking up above, but not running. This is because I'm not a runner. I just find nothing interesting about running. However, I basically was drunk one night and got into a kind of bar bet? And somehow that resulted in three of us signing up for the marathon the next day. Training for the marathon was actually fantastic; I got in probably the best shape of my life since I was 18, and I could basically eat whatever the fuck I wanted and not gain any weight because I was running 5 days a week.

The thing is, after the marathon I got ridiculously complacent. For the first month my feet still hurt from the marathon and I felt a false sense of entitlement still, then after that it had already gotten brutally cold in New York so I had trouble psyching myself into going to the gym. Eventually it had been about 4 months without much physical activity at all, and I realized when I went on vacation last year that for the first time in a long while, I was being self-conscious about my body.

So just around revelation time at the beginning of this new year, I cancelled my old unused gym membership and signed up to a slightly more expensive gym, but one RIGHT near my house. It's literally like 2 blocks away- even if there's a monster snowstorm on the Eastern Seaboard, I still have no excuse not to go. Also, it was an unexpected bonus, but the guys at my new gym are way hotter. Ah, Chelsea.

Eating Well
I guess I blame this one on the marathon too, because once you get used to the ridiculously high calorie and high carb diets you need to train for a marathon, it's difficult to go back to a normal human diet. I've always been good about eating pretty low calorie, high fiber stuff, but I'm also a total foodie, so I value a really good meal and don't mind splurging and working off a big meal the next day.

Anyway, this bullet point is less directed than the other two, but I'm trying to cook more, eat healthier, eat less fried food, find a decent salad place near work, all that stuff.

The Drinking Thing
Hmmm, this is a tough one for me. I'm pretty sure that my bouts of "courage" noted in other posts like my visit to G Lounge were primarily enabled by the miracle drug called alcohol. Not only do I appreciate alcohol as a social enabler, but I also have a taste for fine wines and liquors, particularly in social scenes and with food. Particularly living in New York with the high-class restaurants we have here, there are some culinary experiences that are tailored to go with specific wines and spirits, and I value those experiences highly.

While I'm not planning on cutting alcohol out of my life, I am probably just putting this down here to acknowledge that I can't keep drinking like I'm still in college, it's going to start having more noticeable effects on my body. Anyway, I guess it will be a challenge for me to stay social and try to drink less, but is that really less demanding than any of the other things I'm going through right now? I guess not.