Today’s site prompt is, “What part of your routine do you always try to skip if you can?” and that fits pretty well with what I was thinking about right now.

First of all, what does “if you can” mean? It is my routine, I decided it was important, and made it a practice. Now, if this means work, in general, or specific tasks at work, I misunderstand the assignment. I could skip them, but it probably also means I am skipping employment, and that seems like a different question. But if it’s my routine, I can skip it if I want. No one is making me live the way I do, I am mostly free to do or not do.

The right answer to the prompt is Leg Day. I lift weights, separating days into Push (chest, shoulders, triceps), Pull (back, biceps), and Legs. This morning was Leg Day, and now my legs, back, buns, feet and toes hurt, my neck and head are heavy and tired. I know tonight I’ll have to go to bed, and that means I might have to crawl up the stairs. Maybe I’ll sleep on the couch down here. Sleeping next to the Angel is wonderful, but my legs.

My routine is made up of items like feeding the many pets in this house, working out, showering, eating breakfast, brushing my teeth, reading the Bible, lunch, dishes, writing, picking my boy up from school, and lots of other things I don’t remember now. But the number of things or even what they are aren’t the point. The point is that I created this routine.

We decide what’s important, what we value, and then we (hopefully) implement them. We brush our teeth because clean teeth matters to us. We eat breakfast, or we don’t, because we’ve given assigned a heavy weight to either one. None of them are necessarily convenient, but they are the blocks we use to intentionally build our lives.

I sat in my chair this morning with precisely this situation in my lap. Of course, I didn’t want to. I know what Leg Day is, and I no longer love it like I did even a few years ago. But I wouldn’t skip it, any more than I’d skip getting dressed. I am a man who lifts legs. I like that I am that man, it means something, it says things about me. It says I’m consistent, reliable, that I do hard things. Legs aren’t really the point, those characteristics are, and legs are how I remind me of them, and the man I want to be. I’m not always reliable, don’t always do the hard things, but getting up early on Wednesdays to lift legs without choosing the easy excuses moves me further along the path towards who I will be.

I can skip Leg Day, but why would I compromise on future me. We too often settle. I too often settle. And I guess I think part of reclaiming our worth as human beings is not settling for the crumbs that fall from the plate on the way to the trash, when we belong at the table.

I could be consistent most of the time, when it fits the schedule or the company. I could do hard things, unless it’s too hard. And I can do leg day, except for those days I don’t feel like it. But I’ve settled for a very long time. I am already well aware of the boy “when I feel like it” makes. I can’t wait to see what happens, to find out who I become, if I stop settling for so much less.