You Do You

Though somebody recently told me, "Nobody starts a blog to not share it", and I guess that's probably true, the honest-to-God reason I started writing anything here was because things grind my gears and I don't like having gears that never stop grinding in my brain. I want to get them out so I can stop thinking about them, as was the case with my rant about vanity. Usually, this works very well, and I get to go on with my life.

This time though, an unfortunate alignment of the universe started those gears grinding back up again, because a few days later I stumbled onto a side-grind of that rant. So here we are. I'm paraphrasing, but tell me if this looks familiar.

You shouldn't do things for other people. That's empty. Work out for yourself. Take me - I don't care about what anybody else thinks, man. I work out for me.

Statements like this always strike me as so masturbatory that I can practically smell the sock this imaginary guy is ejaculating over himself into. There is a nugget of truth and value to be had here. But I find there's always an undercurrent of telling someone that their motivations are inherently wrong. There are definitely real people who genuinely don't train for anybody but themselves. Those people are almost never found posturing about it on the internet.

The Hodge Twins, in their prime, had a couple of catch phrases that ended up being memed into the stratosphere. One of them, which was always my favorite, was this:

Do whatever the FUCK you wanna do

From the bottom of my heart that's how I feel about peoples' motivations for working out, right down to the inflection he says "FUCK" with. You wanna go get some abs and shoulders because you think it'll help you clean up on Tinder? That's not what I'm about, but you do whatever the fuck you wanna do. It's okay. Fuck anybody who tells you you're wrong for wanting to look good to potential sexual partners so that you are more likely to bump uglies with them. Pick almost any other motivation and I'll say the same. Including if you actually do just work out completely for yourself and nobody else.

Many people need to be more real with themselves and realize that what they are doing, no matter how seriously they are taking it, is still just a hobby. They don't compete and have no intention to. They will never make a living based on their exercise or even receive any amount of payment. And that's okay! Do whatever the fuck you wanna do. But it is endlessly eye rolling to decide what is and is not a valid reason for participating in a fuckin' hobby. If some dude you'll never encounter again just wants to participate in your hobby for that Instagram mirror beach body, what is it to you? It's only lifting, hwhy you heff to be med?

It is insufferably pompous to be deriding someone because they do a thing for the attention or approval of other people. Mind you, there is wisdom in the advice that these statements started out as, before it was perverted into yet another way of bandying about one's own superiority - Living for the approval and attention of other people, when taken to extremes, can be an unhealthy way to go through life that will usually leave you feeling bad. But in the form I find often on the internet, it is nothing more than deriding the very nature of human beings as social creatures, as though it is somehow beneath you to enjoy attention and approval. This is one of the ways we form the social bonds that have been an important part of how humanity has survived and thrived, as well as how people as individuals survive and thrive. Imagine giving the finger to all of human evolution and progress.

Wanting attention and approval is so much a part of being a person that it's like making fun of somebody for having lungs. Like, can you believe this dick breathes air? How empty his life must be to fill his torso and subsist on such a massless substance as air.

But the most delicious irony of all is that in getting on the internet and sneering at somebody for liking attention and approval, these jerksocks with lips and fingers are just fishing for a different kind of approval from a different set of people and doing the same thing they're sneering at other people for.

And yes, obviously I like attention and approval. Just like you and anyone else does. Because I'm definitely a real human person. But I wasn't always okay with that. Growing up, I was brainwashed to cringe away from anything that smelled even a little like "showing off" or "being an attention whore" and I feel that did me a tremendous disservice - just as it does a disservice to somebody to be snidely told that working out "for anybody but yourself" is empty and vapid. I had to come to the conclusion that it wasn't actually bad on my own, and this is a bit of a rant at who I used to be - which is a person that some people currently are. Maybe it'll help somebody realize that the world is full of dicks and they should just do whatever the fuck they wanna do*.


*This post not to be taken as endorsement or permission to actually do literally anything the fuck you wanna do.