Better Be Good

This first post should be awesome, monumental, magnifique. But it would be contrived if I tried hard to not disappoint. I'm going to just write. So, here goes.

Lara, here, the author of the now defunct Fit or Bust--a made-to-order blog for the Women's Health magazine Web site. I posted weekly missives for a year and a half, and was recently notified that I wouldn't be able to write them anymore.

I was kind of bummed at the news.

I got used to pouring my heart onto the page for anyone to read. And though I was hired to write about fitness, I found myself writing about life, instead. It just seemed more important to me. I mean, you can only be truly fit if you're living a matching lifestyle. But more than that, "life" was more representative of who I am and how I want to be. And I grew balls and did something I'd hope everyone will do--follow their dreams.

Sure, I sound sappier than a Vermont maple. OK. But I think I slipped into a lifestyle or 'groove' that many find themselves glued into--you know, the kind where you're stuck in a chair, stressed out and out of your head, your face dotted with pimples.

But there came a point where I couldn't take it anymore. I didn't even know myself anymore, and my mind was like this bouncing circus act, with no encore nor reprieve. I started to sprout gray hair and my ass got fat. Worse, I got a little bitchy, a tad too edgy, and so far from the happy-go-lucky gal I'd always been.

It kind of happened with the handcuffs.

In the midst of my mind's (and job's) chaos, I took a mini-break to Park City, UT, to hit the slopes and reconnect with some old friends. I still worked daily, called into conference calls, and sported my stress in all its non-glory.

One night, an ex-boyfriend picked me up to take me to dinner, and when I sat in his car he handed me a jewelry box. We'd broken up a million years prior, so I was mystified. When I opened the box, there lay these handcuffs I'd played with when I was 23.

"I just wanted to remind you of who you are," he said.

Somehow, the dude had kept the suckers in his closet for nearly ten years. And when I touched them, my heart ached for myself. It was like this revelation--this mini-time warp that sprung me back into my free-spirited truth.

In "growing up" and carving out a career for myself, I'd become boring. I lived by rote, and worked to live. Yet, I wasn't really living.

So a few months after reclaiming those handcuffs, I packed up and moved to Park City. I also quit my job and left a wonderful boyfriend. But I stepped back onto my path--the one I'd always taken where I followed my nose, and followed my heart.

We only have this one life, so we may as well live it.

Here goes...

--Lara