Practicalmadness

One or two of you fine readers may be curious to know how my Global War on David is going. And the rest of you are probably all like, “global what on who, now?” Well, to recap:

• On August 6, I bought a bathroom scale and discovered that in my fear of studying my body and love of fast-food breakfasts, I had bloated to an unsexy 295 pounds (133 kg). Which, given my height and big, linebacker-esque build, while not ideal is actually not as overweight as you might think. And some of those pounds are the muscular legs of someone who rides a bike daily. Still, as some jackass once said, less is more.

• On August 7, I came to the sudden realization that one can lose weight by working out(!!!) and acquired a gym membership as well as the services of a personal trainer.

• By September 2, I had felt that burn and pumped that area, and had gotten myself down to just over 289 lbs. Which, for four weeks of work, was not bad.

But a couple of weeks ago, my Global War on my own body suffered a mild setback, as my trainer was offered a job that didn’t involve helping sweaty nerds get back into their skinny jeans, leaving me trainerless and alone for about two weeks. During that time I fell into a deep hole, and decided the only way out of that hole was to eat more stuff. Though magically, the damage from enjoying hot dogs for lunch instead of salad on certain days was offset by the fact that my body is now used to actually using its food energy from time to time.

Last Friday I started with a new trainer, we took a bunch of new measurements and metrics, and I am pleased to say the weight had stayed at an entirely reasonable 280 lbs (127 kg).

I mention all of that to say this: yesterday my new trainer suggested that whenever I come in to do cardio, I should also use the adductor and abductor machines in order to strengthen my gimpy legs and gimpier knees. “Some guys are like, ‘aw, but those are girlie machines!’” he said. “An’ I tell ‘em, ‘just do it.’”

Coincidentally, I am also in the process of writing/designing a couple of talk proposals for next year’s RailsConf, and New Trainer mentioning that some men have trouble overcoming their masculine identity in order to work those thighs reminded me of this slide from one of my Keynote slideshows:

To my mind, no one kicks more ass than Bruce Lee, and if he says (or rather, if we assume he’s saying) not to be weighed down by orthodoxy, habit or male ego in the pursuit of the best solutions, then dammit, that’s what we’re gonna do.

So I have no problem using the girlie machines to fix my gimpy legs, and what’s more, I have no problem using various other proverbial girlie machines in other aspects of my life and work.

You say real men use Windows or Linux? I say my Mac and its candy-ass eye candy help me do my job better.

You say my iPhone isn’t a real smartphone? I say you’re an idiot, then excuse myself to reply to an e-mail using my “fake” smartphone.

You say my double soy latté is a girlie drink? Dude, I ordered it for the protein.

There’s no shame in sticking to what you know, but there’s no virtue in it either if it puts you in a position where you’re wasting time and effort just because you totally ought to be able to do this one awesome thing with a fresh-baked Ruby library instead of a PHP function.

Of course, I’m not saying you should always sprint past your comfort zone in pursuit of the best, fastest tool for the job, or else I’d have some explaining to do next time someone catches me using GarageBand to add a crossfade to an MP3 file. Just be open to the idea that if the tools you’ve got on you aren’t working, maybe a better tool can be found somewhere outside your hidey-hole.