The Second Day

This is actually a cheat post.  I was supposed to post a 500 word writeup to this blog as part of my new morning regimen but as it is, I haven’t.  Then again, I am making up for it, aren’t I.  I will not make a habit out of it, I promise. 

The second day of forming a habit is always hard.  Yesterday I found it so tough to get up, put on my shoes and start my usual 30-minute run.  In any case I chose a destination: the nearby Rainforest Park, which turns out to be a 20-minute jog away, at a slow but steady pace.  I’m looking for a lap pool I can swim at—I enjoy the water way better than land.  Anyway, it turns out that the city-run Park is, pretty much your usual, badly-inspired theme park (e.g. the ubiquitous dinosaurs, all-too-colorful stone benches, etc) or low-end clubhouse.  Anyway, my comments might be harsh but the good thing is, most of the Park is under construction.  As our current mayor and his wife are both architects, here’s to hoping that the renovations turn out well. 

The swimming pools were these huge kidney-shaped pools made for kids, with towering slides; not really for laps.  The smell of chlorine was pungent, overpowering.  The water had clearly not been replaced for awhile (it had an milky-blue color to it) despite the rather steep fees they collected from patrons (P80 for Pasig residents; P100 for non-residents).  I could get a better deal from the Olympic sized pool at the Philippine Sports Complex, which is around P40+ pesos.  That pool is cleaned Tuesdays, weekly.

Second days are tough.  The romance of that new beginning, or the concept of creating a new habit for yourself is gone, and you’d have to face the rest of it one day at a time.  All the excuses surface: like, running should not be done daily but every other day.  What’s the point of keeping a blog that nobody will read.  And really, who will check up on you if you don’t follow through?  But how do I get to that target weight, or how do I sharpen my writing skills if I don’t push through?  So you keep going and going.

Anyway, at 1pm I attended this orientation seminar to become a volunteer for the Red Cross at the Rizal/Pasig/Pateros Chapter.  I figured the other day that while I have nothing to do during the bum months (with mostly a lot of “figuring out” to do) I ought to go through the list of things I’ve always wanted to do but couldn’t do because I was reviewing or working.  I’m taking the Basic Life Support Course, and if I pass that, the Water Safety and Rescue Course.  There are a couple of other free courses, like Disaster Management, Care for Mothers and Infants during a disaster, and other courses along those lines that I’m going to be looking into. 

It’s interesting to note that the Red Cross Founder’s first experience in setting up a group to give first aid (during a battle, in which he along with mothers, children and elderly cared for 30,000-40,000 wounded and dying) was an utter failure, as not one survived.  They ended up basically easing their patients way to the next life—handling their last will and testaments, possibly acting as de facto couriers, delivering letters to family and friends and lovers of the soon to be deceased.   That would have turned out to be a horrible second day for the founder, but after a couple of hundred years, the Red Cross is here, active and inspiring people like me to get moving and make a difference in the world.  I hope I do :)