Don't think I've found a greater release than dancing freely to good music

Hopefully not the only weirdo that does this in my spare time

What's your outlet? And why?

— Emily Painter (@cosimia_) February 3, 2019

My outlet lately has become lifting heavy weights.

Why? Because the goal is to fail, and you’re only competing with yourself. No one can tell me what to do or even how to do it. It is a sport of one and I excel only on my own terms.

Or, as has been better said by Henry Rollins.

The Iron never lies to you. You can walk outside and listen to all kinds of talk, get told that you’re a god or a total bastard. The Iron will always kick you the real deal. The Iron is the great reference point, the all-knowing perspective giver. Always there like a beacon in the pitch black. I have found the Iron to be my greatest friend. It never freaks out on me, never runs. Friends may come and go. But two hundred pounds is always two hundred pounds.

I first read that essay in the 1990s sometime. I’d forgotten how good it is and not because I agree with all of it (the idiot’s definition of “good”) but because it succinctly and pithily articulates a worldview. As all good essays do, it unleashes someone’s mind inside yours.

This is also a favorite part because is resonates in a different realm.

I had done something and no one could ever take it away.

Diverging a little here, but that feeling for me didn’t come first from lifting. It came from graduating airborne school. I was grievously sick most of my time there and barely made it. But I fucking did and when I got those silver wings pinned to my chest that was the first time I felt like I’d earned something that no one could ever take from me. I pressed through on guts and sheer will and after that no one could tell me I was weak or unworthy. I knew the truth; those silver wings were still silver.