By Shawn Coyne
Published: February 3, 2012
So I’m at the health club the other day. And like most health clubs, there is a ceaseless barrage of aural and visual input.
Rob Gronkowski of the New England Patriots. Is it "pain" or injury?
Grunts reminiscent of a maternity ward come from a beer bellied guy who wants everyone to know that he’s just bench pressed 112.5 pounds. A personal trainer checking his cell phone, halfheartedly beseeches for “just one more” Russian tea kettle swing from an elderly lady wearing a leotard circa 1973. The screams and strained cheerfulness all awash in the pulse pounding club music pouring out of the gym’s suspended speaker pods.
But what really catch my attention—despite the fact that I have my own pre-programmed playlist streaming into my cerebral cortex from my own personal listening device—are two 42 inch plasma televisions above my head. One is ten feet to the right of me and the other about three feet to the left. The one directly in front of me is running a new daytime show called The Daily Chew, which from what I can tell is an hour long of carefully orchestrated food pornography. Lots of sizzling meats and sugar coated confections, followed by ecstatic expressions from the show’s five hosts as they sample the in studio prepared fare.
I’m not a foodie, so it is ESPN2 to the left and CNN to the right that distracts me from the horrors of maintaining an elevated aerobic heart rate for forty five minutes. ESPN2 is running a story about the condition of the New England Patriots star tight end, Rob Gronkowski. “Gronk” is the perfectly sculpted protoplasmic beast who broke a number of NFL receiving records this season. But in the AFC Championship game against the Baltimore Ravens, he “sprained” his ankle and had to be helped off the field.
While I pant, the network keeps running the slow motion injury footage. It’s gruesome. Not on the level of Lawrence Taylor’s tackle of Joe Theismann on Monday Night football in January 2008, but at least on a par with Pittsburgh Steeler quarterback Ben Roethlisberger’s experience in Cleveland this season, which effectively knocked the black and gold out of the Super Bowl hunt. Calling the collapse of Gronk’s lower tibia and at least a rubber band stretch of his posterior tibial tendon an “ankle sprain” is like saying Donald Trump has a slightly receding hairline. After three replays and three winces—one view never seems to be enough, two is too voyeuristic and three somewhat shameful—I shift my eyes to the CNN portal.
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Exactly!
Thanks Steven. I have a well-thumbed copy of The War of Art on the shelf above my desk as I type this, so I’m delighted my piece struck a chord for you.
Just do it – I do it by taking tiny baby steps every day – step by step I move into the “Just DONE It” camp.
Thanks, Steven as always.
That’s definitely my 2010 goal! I got a (friendly? haha not really) reminder of that this morning when I was driving to work and saw this vanity plate: DO OR DIE
Harsh, yes, but in a way, I was glad to see it. Because if I’m not really going to work towards my dreams, then I’m not really living.
Get back on that keyboard – another day in paradise !!
Thanks for the push. Wishy-washy is SO 2009.
Mr. Pressfield, I’ve just finished reading “Killing Rommel”, a book that brought tears to my eyes in one or two places, especially the epilogue.
I want to say that I really enjoy your writing style; in particular your excellent use of present and past tense to immediately clue the reader as to who/what/when. Your use of present tense gives an immediacy to the book, and your use of first person gives the reader intimacy with the story.
I used present tense in my own last novel and was somewhat gratified to find my present tense/first person narrative similar in many ways to yours. I’m the editor of Andrew Mowatt’s excellent novel about the Great War, “Severed Branch” and I love the genre you write in.
I’m certainly going to buy and read your other novels now.
More power to your elbow, sir!
Thank you for this … great quote from McGuinness. “Just Think About It” is a really manipulative bugger. I’m going to call it out for what it is … Resistance!
It is really very helpful information for me and this region has been difficult to accept especially since we tend to favour centralization and governing from the centre.
I did a Just Do It email course for my clients a couple of years ago – This year I’m swallowing my own medicine – So simple and yet sometimes so hard…… Thanks for your inspiration always…..