"A sad soul can kill you quicker than a germ." -John Steinbeck

I didn't consciously think about exercising until I was twenty-two. It's not because I have really good metabolism, because I don't. My life was just inherently active before that. I swam; I played soccer; I danced. But one month after starting my post-college desk job, I was already panicking about my stationary lifestyle. You could say that it was my delayed teenage-girl freak-out.

On my first visit to the gym, I hopped on a cardio machine and tried to decide between all the buttons. I finally pressed "Quickstart" and went for thirty minutes. You're supposed to do thirty minutes of cardio, right? It was the most boring thirty minutes of my life. How do 25-minute soccer halves fly by so quickly? And why didn't I sweat? I sweat after a five-minute dance routine! 

Once off the machine, I found a stack of yoga mats on a shelf in the corner. I rolled one out and got on my back. I wanted to do "ab work," of which I only knew sit-ups, really. Head back, lifting from my abs not my neck, I sat up then lowered myself back down. One. Repeat. I remembered once overhearing a conversation in college: "You look great!" one girl told another. "Thanks," the fit one replied. "I do 100 crunches a day."

I went for 100. 

30 minutes of cardio and 100 sit-ups complete, I left the gym feeling no different from when I entered. I told myself it would take time, but on the bright side, I could now say, "I worked out today!" I crossed healthy lifestyle off my mental list. 

Months later, despite regular gym visits and the same daily set, I didn't look or feel any different. I was not obese, but I was not happy with my body either (if you say you don't know this feeling, you are lying). It took time for me to figure it out, but with the help of Google, group classes, and well-informed peers, I started to understand why I wasn't seeing results.

I had a gym routine, I just didn't know how to effectively work out.

Among other activities, I now attend a biweekly Nike Training Class. Our instructor takes us through high-intensity athlete-inspired exercises like burpees (high school throwback) and split jumps. We spend no more than sixty seconds on a given exercise. "I don't care how many you do," our instructor will say, "you can do one, you can do one hundred. It doesn't matter. But do each one well." After each class, I'm at my personal best. This is the antithesis to my post-college routine from four years ago, when I was more concerned about arbitrary numbers. 

What I know now, that I didn't know then, is that effectiveness has nothing to do with the amount you do or the time you spend. It's about the effort you put in and the quality of each movement. 

A stationary lifestyle wasn't the only thing I panicked about when I first started working. The other thing was Monday. Monday was this dreadful day when everyone asked about your weekend and talked about his. It was an opportunity to demonstrate but a glimmer of your non-work personality. I felt pressure to prove myself with these reports, much like when giving a work-related presentation. Unlike college where everyone "studied and went out" for the entirety of the weekend, people at the office one-upped each other with beach barbecues, epic hikes, wine-tasting, concerts, and weekend getaways. Everyone's story sounded like a good one. Everyone's but mine, that is.

I feared the Monday Report because I didn't know how to describe my weekend for public appeal. Nobody knew how to respond; it was free small talk: 

"I wrote." 

"Oh...cool."

It took me many weekends experimenting with what sounded good versus what I really wanted to do to recognize that one person's enriched weekend is very well another's burnt daylight.

Last Sunday, I started my morning by doing yoga by our living room window, sun lightly roasting my back during vinyasa. I then cooked breakfast, one of my favorite activities. Later, I went to "writernoon" at a local coffee shop with two new writer-friends. I ended my day by making dinner with long-time friends at one of their beachside homes. Lying down to sleep, I smiled gratefully. I was productive. I was energized. I was lucky. I gave and received emotionally.

When asked about my weekend the next day, I would say nothing more than, "It was relaxing" and feel fine with my response. When you feel it in your bones, it is indescribable to others. Which is fine because it doesn't need to be.

Just a week before, one of those long-time friends and I had breakfast together. We talked about deep-rooted fears, career plans, (important gossip), and social observations. Drawn in by our conversation, I lost any notion of time. At some point, we talked about our non-work lives. "I'm trying to be more careful with my time," my friend mentioned. "Otherwise, you just lose yourself to back-to-back commitments without getting anything from them." 

Knowing that as I grow older, my life will only become more filled with undesired but necessary obligations, I'm training my emotional self now to be like my physical self. Less concerned about the the specific number of things I do during a period of time. Less bent out of shape when asked what I did. I'm focused on engaging deeply with activities from which I receive profound contentment. I'm weighing the value of what I give for what I get. Because I finally understand that it is impossible to be outwardly healthy without being inwardly happy.