The pandemic is over, right? Not quite, but almost.

Even if the Delta variant is still playing havoc on our lives, we need to get ready for our so-called reentry. As for me, it’s time to think about how I can lose those pandemic pounds. It’s time to get my butt in shape. Yes, literally, my butt is dragging on the floor from inactivity.

I stopped looking in the mirror about 6 months ago.

I got tired of looking at those layers of ice cream and popcorn folds of fat around my midsection. So I rationalized ignoring them by telling myself — who cares? I’m not going out anyway.

But last night, my ugly voice of shame raised its little hand. I took notice. I knew it was better not to let the pandemic be the excuse for everything going wrong with my life because someday it will be over, and then what?

I had to look for inspiration somewhere, and I found it when I turned on the television. I saw blue sky peeking through my dark layers of self-pity. I felt a disturbing tingling inside me that I didn’t recognize.

It was the Olympics that gave me hope.

I saw athletes competing in stadiums completely void of cheering fans. They were pushing themselves to the limit, breaking world records, and no one was watching.

No fans, no problems, I thought to myself. If they can do it, I can do it. I need to start now if I want April Ross’s beach volleyball body before the summer is over.

Getting an Olympian’s body is hard, if not impossible, in my 5th decade of life. But I’m going to try for good measure.

I believe life is all about how we frame doing the hard things. It’s all about changing how we approach them. So, first, make a plan. Then, one step at a time.

This morning I got up out of bed with a plan — to create a backyard gym.

I gathered all the loose weights I’ve collected over the years, a bench press I bought a decade ago, and a dusty workout pad and set up my little gym. Finally, I was ready to give it a shot.

I was hyped and pumped just like the women’s gold medalist freestyle wrestler Tamyra Mensah-Stock’s biceps. I was bulging with excitement.

But like a disruption in a video feed, I froze as I stared at those weights. They seemed to be snarling back at me like a rabid dog. I was afraid. My amygdala was telling me to run. I wanted to run. But I didn’t. I needed to find a workaround. How do I start?

Watching the US women’s volleyball game last night broke my heart; there was absolutely no one in the stands of the indoor arena. At least the swimmers had all their teammates, coaches, doctors, and various random accredited people cheering them on. But the volleyball girls had not one soul watching — crickets, maybe not even crickets. So the Olympic organizers did something clever — they blasted happy pop music into the empty hall as the teams rotated service.

Happy music can make all the difference in your mood.

I got my iPhone out and set up a tiny speaker, and started blasting some summertime dance music into my makeshift workout space. That’s more like it. Let’s get this party started.

I sat down on the bench press, and the resistance sat down right next to me. I lifted the weights and heard the muscles in my arms screaming. Seriously! Don’t even think about it. Stop now before it’s too late!

My inner critic was alive and well. I let her take me to that dark place of — forgetaboutit land.

There was no one here to cheer me on.

The music wasn’t working its charm — it made me feel like dancing, not bench press my six-pound weights. Now what? I had to refocus.

I looked up through the limbs of my pepper tree and saw the sun. Then suddenly I heard a voice — You can do this. Go for it! The sun’s rays were like cheering fans quieting my inner negativity. I lifted the pair of six-pound weights up and down — One, two, three, four, five …I got this! I can do it. Yes! Yes! Yes! the sun screamed back at me.

It was a trick of mind over matter that got my middle-aged flabby pandemic body lifting those weights. Each time I lifted, I heard a roar of support that silenced my inner critic and my protesting muscles.

I felt like Karsten Warhold, the Norwegian 400-meter hurdler who broke a world record and won gold. I was thrilled. I wanted to tear off my jersey (an oversized t-shirt in my case) and run around my backyard waving up at my non-existence crowd of supporters. I did it! I did it! I did it!

Next, I moved on to the 5 lb kettlebell exercise — yes, only 5 lb, I’ve got to start somewhere. I lifted it and swung it into the air, then let it drop down as I bend my legs into a squat. “Ahh, that hurts!” my butt, back, and neck screamed. “Are you kidding me, sister?”

I kept going and stood up again. I looked across the back fence and saw the tips of the branches of my neighbor’s Cassia tree and a cluster of bright yellow blossoms. I let the kettlebell drop down and then stood up again. I looked up at the yellow flowers that were now smiling back at me. So down and up I went again.

My focus shifted away from the pain in my legs to the beauty of those flowers. And before I knew it, I was done. A set of 15.

I am convinced that the best way to do the hardest things, in my case, working my butt muscles, is by refocusing away from my pain and onto the positive things around me. It’s in paying attention to the small perfect things where magic actually happens.

It may take days, weeks, and months of this kind, refocusing my mind over matter to even get close to feeling good about my body again. But I know it’s time to get my butt in gear even if there is no one cheering you on, or maybe there is, and you just didn’t notice.

This post was originally published on Medium in the Middle-Pause publication.

My attention lifts off my morning newspaper like the steam rising from my coffee cup. It floats out of my living room window and onto my quiet neighborhood.

She stands about 4 1/2 feet tall. He towers over her, his thin, lanky frame covered in loose-fitting green coveralls. He must be at least 6 feet tall. A steady beat of a smooth R&B melody drifting out of the large green garbage truck’s open door like a cool breeze on a hot summer day. The beat is subtle and steady, like a metronome for the moment.

The scene was familiar. Every week he comes. Every week she waits. Every week she hands him a plastic bag filled with things growing in her backyard, from her trees, some persimmons, or oranges, or maybe lemons, and pomegranates. During the height of the Covid pandemic they would wear masks when they met in the middle of her driveway. Today they bump elbows, but the masks are now somewhere at the end of the line, piled high on a landfill, no longer part of the ritual of their weekly meeting.

Today they bump elbows…She understands him. He understands her.

My neighbor is a Japanese woman at least 80, maybe even 90, years old. He, is a garbage man, a working man, who takes a moment out of his busy schedule hauling our weekly refuse to connect with his friend, the elderly Asian lady. When she speaks to me, I can hardly understand her through the thick accented English that lingers even after a lifetime of being an American. But he understands her; his smile is bright as the day is sunny. She nods and bows while gesturing with her hands. He nods and bows back. He speaks her language. She understands him. He understands her.
I don’t hear the words. I don’t need to hear the words. I see their bond through the canopy of my wisteria as I watch the scene outside my front window. I begin to cry tears of joy. I am suddenly filled with an incredible sense of awe at being an invisible witness to such a perfect yet, improbable connection between these two people.

I look back down at the newspaper sitting on the table in front of me. Drought, war, Covid -19 still ravaging communities, and billionaires getting their kicks flying into outer space. The headlines disturb me. The bathtub rings around the reservoirs, like rings around a fallen tree. How can this planet survive? Fish are drowning in the puddles of toxic waste. When will our civilization cease to exist in this overheated place? Water is life. Water is evaporating. Water is gone.

The next page has a large picture of people wading in a pool to cool off in a place called “Drytown” somewhere in California, where the temperatures hit 107 in the shade. They look like human water lilies bobbing up and down in plastic inflatable lifesaving rings in chlorinated man-made ponds with concrete walls to keep in the little water we have left.

…no spectators for the Olympic Games in Tokyo because the pandemic can’t be stopped, but the games must go on.

I turn the page. I read no spectators for the Olympic Games in Tokyo because the pandemic can’t be stopped, but the games must go on. I flash back to memories of attending five Olympic Games as a volunteer, a journalist, and a spectator. The roar of the crowds still resonates deep inside me as if it were yesterday. The collective energy of a universal love connected the watching and the competitors and the collective breath-holding as the athletes put their entire blood, sweat, and sometimes tears into pushing their bodies to the limit.
I close the paper, but the front page screams out at me. Images of Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic spacecraft successfully flying 53 miles above the earth’s surface. NASA says that qualifies for outer space. Why do this? Because they can. Branson said it was 99.9% beyond his wildest dreams. What are those dreams? A life-changing experience? Is it the price tag or actually the experience that is life-changing? People will pay $250,000 to take a flight above it all in order to look back down at us. Just imagine how $250,000 could give decades and decades of food and shelter to millions of people down here on earth.

The small perfect moments that I witness daily down here on earth have a big impact on my well-being…

The small perfect moments that I witness daily, down here on earth, have a big impact on my well-being, and many of them are free. Do I really have to fly into space when I can see a flower growing through the crack on the concrete sidewalk? Or I see my two dogs licking each other’s muzzle and smiling? Or the joy when I see a hummingbird feeding from the sweat nectar inside the orange bird of paradise blooming outside my bedroom window? Or when I witness the smile on the face of a neighbor’s 4 year old riding her bike without training wheels for the first time. Or when my octogenarian Japanese American neighbor bumps elbows with a tall, smiling black man.

The man in the green coveralls rolls her two garbage bins back behind her large gate so she can fill them up again. She closes the gate behind him. He walks to his truck and jumps back inside the cab and onto the driver’s seat with a smile and his bag filled with small things. He drives away with his humanity, and I close my newspaper.