I've finally gotten back into going to the gym on a regular
basis, and
as I did some rollerblading around campus today, I noticed
more girls
looking at me. Now, I don't work out solely for that
reason, but it
is a nice bonus. What I finally realized is that people in
general
give more respect to someone who has some muscles. It's
usually a
fairly subtle effect, but it is extremely pervasive.
My dad convinced me to go the YMCA with him one day, and after I
stepped outside again, tired and sore, I felt a lot better.
That
feeling has kept me going back pretty much every other day
for the
last three years. Before that, I used to think that
bodybuilders and
the like were just egotistic and stupid, and while that's
true of a
few, most people think of a toned body as a mark of
self-respect.
Your body reflects the state of your mind in many ways.
Some people,
when they're nervous, chew their fingernails. Shy people will
probably tend to hunch over a bit. So when you take the time to
excercise, it shows that you care about your body,
and you're
not going to let it go unmaintained. It shows that you have
confidence and self-respect.
How much time do you spend doing system administration on your
GNU/Linux or BSD machine? How long did it take you to set
up RAID 5,
upgrade your kernel, or to install the latest version of
GNOME 2?
Don't you think you should spend at least a fraction of that
time (e.g. an hour every few days) doing "system
administration" on
your body, which keeps you alive? So stop reading this, and
go apply
for a membership at your local gym. You'll be glad you did.