I've never been particularly big on exercise. I wasn't the sort of kid, growing up, who joined sports teams by choice. I was clumsy and slow, so I preferred to curl up with a book on the couch. Mom felt that forced athletics was necessary for child development, so over the years I was made to participate in Little League T-Ball and soccer, which I hated, and later sent to summer basketball and soccer camps, which were even worse. The basketball camp was especially humiliating; a skinny, short half-Asian kid, twelve, attempting to play basketball with high school students? Eventually I got bumped down to the eight-to-ten age group, which only produced moderate improvement and decimated what little self-confidence I still had. Thanks, Mom. I'll always bear the emotional scars of that particular summer. I'll also never touch a basketball again.

(I often wonder what my Mom was thinking when she signed my brother and I up for that. I mean, we were not athletic kids and we came from two non-athletic parents. If she had to stick us somewhere because she had to work, why couldn't she have sent us to Space Camp or something else fun? Or why not just us stay home by ourselves? I'm still a little bitter.)

Thanks to experiences like that, I'm horribly uncomfortable exercising in public. When I got to college and was able to pick what sports I'd do, I opted for Pilates and Yoga because they seemed the least strenuous. If nothing else, I wouldn't have to do anything where I'd *gasp* have to interact with other students in the class.

But now I'm getting old, and I'm getting flabby, and I don't know how to exercise. The idea of working machines at the gym is just depressing to me. It sounds like a punishment! But I don't know how to play any team sports. Volleyball, soccer, tennis, softball...I don't know the rules, and I'm too chicken-shit to play as an absolute noob.

Just about all I can do is hike. That's cool, though. I like hiking quite a bit. It's just putting one foot in front of the other and eventually ending up somewhere beautiful. But I don't think that's going to get me those ripped abs I daydream about. Le sigh.

I need to shake of my laziness and get moving! But getting motivated to do so is just so hard!