It's all uphill from here

It's been a while. Well, a week. That's a long long while in the virtual world. It's not that I've not been inspired - I've just been busy. Does being busy limit inspirational opportunities or is it in fact one long inspirational experience? I suppose it depends on what you're doing. At this moment, I appear to be having a fancily named "opthalmic migraine", which shimmers prettily before my left eye and at least makes a change from my regular "brain crusher migraine". Did it appear because I was busy? Or because I went to Body Combat for the first time and my poor body is subtly complaining about all this strange exercise business that I'm suddenly forcing it to do?

I don't want your sympathy; I just want to find a way of linking all this to Things I've Noticed About the Gym.

1. Some people might go the gym for fitness and health. But most people go to be thin and/or muscled. My worst suspicions are true: young men really do stand in front of the mirror admiring their own biceps; women (young and not so young) really do think skinny looks good. It doesn't.
2. Another suspicion fulfilled: everyone compares themselves with everyone else. They pretend they don't. But they do. An example. Yesterday, a particularly scrawny elderly woman was chatting flirtatiously with the man beside me. He said something like, "You can't hurt me - you're the smallest person in this room." The woman glanced over at me. "She's smaller than me," she said. The man looked me up and down. "Well, she's shorter than you," he said.
3. Once people get past their obligatory 4 week induction programme, they just go on the cross-trainer or treadmill for half an hour and leave. They don't even do a hill setting. Why not just go for a jog in the fresh air if you're not going to use the more challenging (and interesting) equipment?
4. Mr B and I are the only adults in town without tattoos. Possibly the only adults in the country. Which seems strange, considering that tattoos are, without exception, horrifically ugly mutiliations of beautful natural skin. Several gym-peers (male and female) have fabulous figures that have been completely ruined by an indelible pattern that they inexplicably show off via skimpy clothing. In the words of Monkeyrina, why? Why? Why?
5. The personal trainers are a certain personality type. In my previous weekly visits, I'd thought them cliquey, judgemental, intimidating. My class instructor didn't speak to me at all for a year until I joined the gym and started going more often. Now she chats whenever we meet. But it takes one to know one and I know that people often think me judgemental and intimidating. There's another word for it: shy. You need to have something in common with people to avoid the sort of dorky conversations full of misunderstandings in which I excel. Knowledge is power - or, at least, confidence.
6. Breakfast TV subtitles are a rich source of amusing typos. In the past week, I've seen "Maria Callous", "Andrea Cor", and "performing with my banned" (I'm still mentally filling in the blank for that one).
7. There's nothing worth watching on the main channels at 9 o'clock in the morning - movie news on BBC1, CBeebies on BBC2 (I get enough of that at home) and Lorraine Kelly on ITV1. Unless she's interviewing Rufus Wainwright - then I extend my virtual hill climb.

It's all a strange artifical world that presumably wasn't required 200 years ago when our ancestors worked in the fields all day. It's not a world I'm comfortable in - physically or emotionally. I like reading books and complaining about how the BBC website has started hyphenating adverbs. But it's a world that builds strength - and inspiration - of a kind. Where does life leave you if you never leave your comfort zone?