Physically strong, mentally awake

As WordPress continues to recycle old prompts, I pulled another prompt from The Coffee Monsterz Co to respond to today

In what period of your life have you been the healthiest both mentally and physically?

I figured I would include those words from the Boy Scout promise as my title as an homage to my time as a scout.

For the record, I never became an Eagle Scout. In fact, I didn’t make it far past my First Class badge. I earned a handful of merit badges and was inducted into the Order of the Arrow before my troop disbanded. I probably could have found another troop, but this was also about the time I discovered girls. Or, more specifically, girls started to discover me.

Physically strong

To answer today’s prompt, I was physically at my strongest few months removed from X 1 and I separating. I was back at my parent’s house, 5 states away from Kid 1. I had started walking as a way off letting out some stress.

When walking wasn’t enough, I got a gym membership. As I started to see some immediate results from the gym. I went more frequently. I got to a point where I was working out 6-7 every week, for about 90 minutes per day.

I was never a healthy eater, but i realized that there were foods that my body just refused to eat. I got to a point where I could finish a single soda per day.

I wish I could get myself to a point where I was that dedicated, that disciplined, that focused and had the amount of free time on my hands again.

Mentally awake

As for my mental health, I would say that today I have the best mental health of my entire life.

I grew up with an extremely anxious mother. That rubbed off more on me than I probably even realize. But things that then chalked up as me being a “worry wart” I now realize were my earliest struggles with anxiety.

I did t seek out professional Al for my anxiety until I was already married and living 800 miles from my entire support network. When one combines being in a new place, a job that’s not going well and an increasingly unsatisfactory marriage, something had to give.

Fast forward to today – 13 years after my divorce. I have another failed long term relationship under my belt, a job that I actually enjoy and having learned that romantic relationships do not define happiness and I am in a better place than I have ever been. it took me pro Bally too long to realize that a romantic relationship or a marriage does not define e personal happiness. At this point, I feel like I can handle just about anything my personal life throws at me. It’s a good place to be: but it has take me a long time to achieved this level of peace.

Post script

Here’s an interesting little post script to my experience in Boy Scouts. In the late 90s and early 2000s, I was in my early 20s myself, Boy Scouts of America decided to heavily lean into their more conservative practices. More specifically this amounted to a ban on both LGBTQ scouts and scout leaders.

This policy went over so well that by 2013 the organization decided to lift its ban on gay scouts. two years later, they decided to reverse their policy on openly gay scout leaders. play 2019, they decided to allow girls to join scouts for the first time In the organization’s history.

This sudden about-face by the organization that for decades called itself “Boy Scouts” couldn’t have anything to do with their enrollment numbers dropping, could it?

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