Self Control

There are a lot of things that require self control. Getting up around 6 a.m. to go running or work out, for example. Refraining from eating sugar and sweets—Herculean self control. Not eating too much food in general, going to work instead of hanging out at home watching TV, not screaming (much) at people who irritate you—all require some amount of self control.

And here's another one. Not reading all the blogs in my Google reader as soon as they pop up. Instead, saving them to read while on the excrutiatingly (well, somewhat, at least) boring elliptical at the Y. I like reading blogs on my BlackBerry to add to the time-passing quality of watching TV at the Y.

So I hoard each list of posts till my next Y session, either weekday evenings or mornings. Oh, I am excited when the list piles up! (Because just a couple of blog entries don't pass much time.) On weekends, when I don't to the the Y, I allow myself to read freely. (Because I don't want to get so far behind that I'm reading about last month's half marathon this week.)

But even on Y days, the BlackBerry is heavy in my hand as I obsessively open the Google reader to see what's in it. Whenever I have a little time on my hands, after I've checked my email and Facebook, I want to click into the new entry from The Marathon Mama or Half-Fast or Discovering the Meaning of Stonehenge or Middle-of-the-Pack Girl, or one of the many other blogs I have lined up (mostly, but not exclusively, running blogs, many of which I haven't bothered to add to my Blog Roll so are accessible to me only through Google Reader*).

Today I am not going to the Y, because I have things to do at home this evening.** That means I won't be "allowed" to read the new entries until tomorrow morning. The only thing that's preventing me from saying "what the hell" and reading them anyway is the idea of being on the elliptical for an hour with nothing new to read. So I'm reluctantly exercising self control. Almost as hard as not eating a piece of the cake in the refrigerator at work!


*Because I can't always remember the names, so an internet search would not work.

**I did run this morning, 6.31 miles at 9:30 average pace.