subtraction does not made addition

I know you all have missed me over this weekend. I know like the three people that read this, one of which is my husband, are like “geez! post already, we are dying to know what your brain is thinking….”……

While at the gym on Saturday, I had a strange realization about exercise and debt. Now, I must walk you through my thought process, so bear with me. This might be slightly long-winded, but a very poignant point indeed, I assure. 

My husband and I have been kicking our asses at the gym since about February. We go religiously. I mean, as religiously as one can when one is not religious. We were going minimum 5 days a week, most often 6. Counting calories in and out daily. Cutting down our alcohol intake as well. Really trying to cut where we could. The obvious next step that you all must be thinking is “she is going to use cutting calories and saving as an analogy to saving and cutting carbs.” Wrong. Well, while typing that sentence  out I did think “shit that is a good analogy, I should be a personal speaker and professional motivator”. But that is not what started this tangent, so that will not be what finishes this post.

We would go to the gym and do cardio first to increase heart rate to burn fat and yucky stuff. Then, we started to get more in shape thus requiring more time on cardio and longer gym bouts to achieve desired heart rate status. So I have many a minutes now to sit and think about finances, debt, and my blog. Those are the three real thoughts that fill my head. Those, and finding a job so my husband doesn’t divorce me.

I was on the bicycle, contemplating my next cardio move- treadmill? Do I want to try and push my body into exhaustion? Elliptical? Dog walk later? Maybe pizza later instead.- when I then thought back to my eatings of the previous day.

We had pasta for dinner, accompanied by a sausage appetizer, delicious wine, and a sampler of deserts. We went out for our five year anniversary and ate like we were kings.

While finishing up my bike training, I thought- “shit, I need to do a lot more cardio to burn off yesterday’s dinner.” My glass of wine alone was probably 350 calories, the pasta was surely over 1000, and I can’t even begin to try and analyze dessert. My bike read in the calories burned section a meager “201 calories”. WHAT?? You mean to tell me I have sweated through the butt of my work out pants to burn off what is not even equivalent to the glass of wine I drank?? Oh the atrocities. The world must be out to get me. I mean, is this bike broken? Excuse me gym attendants, can you please re-calibrate this because there is no way in hell that’s all I burned. So then I panicked, thinking I was doomed to the gym for another hour minimum because I need to do more cardio! More cardio I say!

Then it hit me. This weird parallel between my two recent obsessions- working out and fixing my debt. Why does it matter what I did yesterday? Why does that become a factor in my decisions? In the case of exercising, that doesn’t make that food go away. It doesn’t all the sudden make the pounds freeze as they are forming and shrink away like drying water on some hot asphalt. It doesn’t make the little fat monsters reconsider their route of attack and go into hibernation until my next bad food choice. Each day is a clean slate whether or not you want it to be. If I really wanted to work off that, I should have pre-planned that day to go before I made the choice to eat the food.

The same goes with debt. I think so many of us look at money and finances and debt like a game of catch-up. Just because I didn’t spend that money yesterday does not mean that it is available today for me to spend. That is the mind set to be in in order to grasp debt by the horns and ride it like a bull- choose to start each day as a new clean and empty slate. Because I bypassed that cute top at Target for $40 doesn’t mean I can automatically roll that into my budget for the next day. Keep it separate, and than forget it like that money never existed in the first place. It doesn’t matter how good at saving and budgeting you were yesterday, all that matters are the choices you end up making today. 

I mean, make it bigger and spin it to life. Apply it to life. Your life. You wake up, you don’t want to go to work. You go to work, and you make the best. You come home, and go to bed. You wake up and repeat the same thing. Your days are sprinkled with new situations, scenarios, and scenes. Who says yesterday has to necessarily influence today? Who says it should? Are they wrong? What if yesterday never happened? You can’t predict that happenings of tomorrow, at least not all the way. Why bring the good and the bad to tomorrow? Doesn’t tomorrow deserve the benefit of the doubt, deserve to be allowed to be it’s own day? To be rad? To be another boring day? A rainy day, a cold day, a day of laughter, a day of remembrance, a day of anything that day wants to be.

Start each day with a clean slate and make the best decisions you can for you. Honor the day and let that day be the best day it can be. Let it make you into the best you you can be.