OP-ED: Action Items? Deliverables? What Happened to Hip Mobility?

I made it to Pottruck in just the nick of time. It’s a wonder to finally be in a place where everyone wears their headphones because now it’s not my fault if I can’t understand what anyone is saying. I have Ariana Grande 8D audio excavating a new lane through my cochlea. 

How many more sets do you have left? I don’t know, a few. I fantasize about what people are really doing, coming into the second floor weights room with a small moleskine and a Pilot G2. Stop recording your PRs. You could write the next Great American Novel instead. Or just draw a pretty picture. Remember when you’d go to school and scribble onto a piece of construction paper and ascribe meaning to the form only after you completed the action? 

It’s a roller coaster!

It’s a flower!

It’s the crushing weight of modernity. 

In a world full of rusticated warehouses, be the Reliance Building. Slim (metaphorically), understated, harmonious, dignified. Relish in your blooming periods. You anguished for nine months over something stupid. Now you can be normal. Off the bridal market. Placated. Digestible. You wear flannels now. 

Right, hip mobility. Tomorrow the receptionist will make small talk with me as I fumble through the pockets of the jacket I’m wearing underneath my other jacket, fishing for the small piece of plastic that contains the RFID strip that assures my number in the system matches my face. There’s a certain pageantry to all of this. On the most perfect of days, I’ll remember to finish eating a little protein bar – or banana or otherwise fits-in-your-hand morsel – before I pass the Sweetgreen. By the time I pass the Sweetgreen, of course, I need to start fishing for my wallet so as to retrieve the important piece of plastic with the RFID strip on it before I make my way up the stairs of the David Pottruck Student Fitness Center, narrowly avoiding the clunky process of doing all these actions right in front of the receptionist, clogging the line and forever marking myself as careless and inefficient. Say hi, but don’t hover. Scan. Thank you. Stay warm. 

I donated so many quips to a nameless Sidechat competitor. Lest we forget “There should be a Pottruck but without straight men.” 900 upvotes. I fear the pageantry. Why do you slam the barbell into the ground? Why do you grunt after every set, disturbing all the smaller, endemic flora and fauna of this delicate ecosystem? All catharsis and no pigeon stretch makes Daniel a dull boy. All that creatine and no hip mobility. Attendance is low in the multipurpose room. If you don’t want to sleep in the bed, at least take a nap on the couch. 

Do those hip flexor exercises and remember what it feels like to be the only child sleeping on the couch at the end of a grown-up party, illuminated by nothing but the love emanating through the room, forgetting where you end and begin. Invite your first few minutes of morning into the room and you will start noticing things. Engage the pelvic floor, rejuvenate the ligaments. Sift through the sea of immeasurable decay until you realize that no one is watching you. Horror, pain, decay and hip mobility all exist in affirmation of love. Pass it on.