Upset triggered by exercise. Anger at receiving the attention I asked for.

This morning I did four sets of push-ups. Reps were something like 15, 12, 13, 13. That is way more push-ups than I've been able to do since I started doing push-ups several months ago. A quantum leap. (Previously, my absolute max per set was 11 or 12, and often I could not squeeze out more than 5 or 6.) The last time I did push-ups, a few days ago, I did about 5 sets, whereas previously I'd do only 2 or sometimes 3 sets in a day. I wonder whether doing more sets is what increased my strength?

Thirteen years ago, I worked up to 22 reps in just a few weeks, and after a few more months, was up to 35. I imagine my much slower progress now is the result of aging. According to widely publicized ballpark statistics about age-related muscle loss, I have about 15-20% less baseline muscle mass than I did then.

Today, after each set, I noticed my emotions after the set. It was a powerful mix of emotions, tough to be present for and tough to tease apart. No wonder I hate exercise. (Maybe this is why many people dislike exercise.) There was anger, sadness, frustration, general upset. After each set, I sat on the bed with my torso supported by my large pillow and tried to be with myself. It felt gloomy and unsatisfying. It occurred to me to ask Eric to be with me. It was hard to ask, because I knew Eric was feeling urgent about getting out for a long run and scouting urban orienteering checkpoints. But he readily agreed. He said he was at a good stopping point.

However, it still took him several minutes to wrap up. I felt a familiar tumble of difficult emotion as I waited: anger, uncertainty, and, hardest of all to bear, a deep humiliation, as though I was allowing myself to be subjected to torture. These emotions were difficult to be with, but I felt new patience with them as I realized that I was not, in reality, being humiliated. Then, when Eric finally turned his attention toward me, an anger of a different flavor arose, also very familiar. Usually when I feel angry at finally getting someone's attention, I think, "Now is not the time to feel angry--now is the time to feel appreciative, because I got what I wanted." And I swallow my anger. But in recent weeks I've been allowing the anger. Yay! Yay! Yay! What an amazing and wonderful change. And Eric is OK with it.

Eric came with me into the attic and I did another set of push-ups, then expressed the resulting emotions to him. As usual, when I go to my edge in this work, I feel very uncertain and very uncomfortable with the uncertainty. Can this really be the right thing to do? I was crying and choking. After a few minutes, I talked to Eric about some things that had been on my mind: the resident at Mission Villa who looked so alone and in need of comfort, my desire to comfort her or other such people, my fear of not making enough money and the burden of feeling I need to make money because Eric isn't. I asked him if he would help support me if I wanted to do low-paying work and he said, "I would certainly try."

Eric spent about 35 minutes working with me. Then I fell back asleep for a couple hours. I felt quite depleted, but satisfied. I got into work quite late.