Looking for routine

I need to feel stuck in a rut.
My whole life, I have managed to avoid routines.
My work day always has been flexible, which can be a good thing or a bad thing.
On days I have night meetings, I can get some stuff done around the house or run errands during normal business hours and still put in my eight hours. Fridays I can work a 9-5 and kick back for an evening with my favorite redhead.
But it has also been difficult to commit to church classes, committee work or even kids’ sports schedules.
The two times in my life when I was in the best shape, physically, I was able to develop fitness routines.
When my daughters were young, they were enrolled in Oil City (Venango County) YMCA preschool gym and swim classes three mornings a week. I normally started later, so when I took them to class, I had my 45 minutes on the indoor track or on my personal street route and then time to shower and change for work.
Even after they started school, I could keep the routine because it was just that – routine. In fact, I was able to continue it after I dropped the YMCA membership. I was younger and healthier and didn’t mind jogging in the snow, so it seemed pretty silly to pay all that money, basically for a shower that I had at home.
I was able to continue that until just about my 40th birthday, when I started to develop intermittent chest pains. I stopped running, but didn’t do what I should have done– see a doctor – for four months.  Even though I knew better. My dad was a doctor and was still alive then. Fortunately, when I finally saw the doc, he figured out I had developed an allergy, maybe to the parakeet my daughter and budding zoologist Erica had to have. It was creating chronic post-nasal drip that was collecting in my lungs and causing pain when it reached a certain point before I coughed it out, I guess. (sorry if you were reading this with a meal).
So I never regained that routine and I never returned to the nearly ideal weight I was able to maintain between 170 and 180 pounds.
Almost a decade later, my wife (and favorite redhead), Becky, and I got into a routine of getting up at the ungodly hour of 8 a.m. to go to Windber HealthStyles.
That lasted about six months, but helped me get down from my all-time peak of about 232 pounds to my current 205-210 range. Summer broke the routine because I felt like I was exercising more regularly with lawn work and weekend recreation. But then we never got back into it. Her work schedule changed and my motivation went into hibernation the next winter, I guess.
As I said before, we continue to pay for the HealthStyles membership because to drop it would be saying: We are not going to work out any more.
But planned, directed physical workouts have been sporadic at best. Even after starting this blog, you can see, my physical activity has been haphazard. After tipping the scales yesterday at the same 211 it read on Feb. 1, I vowed to do better.
I did better at the eating stuff, but yesterday’s exercise was limited to my usual two-thirds mile hike to and from The Tribune-Democrat office from my parking place. A morning start for work and two evening church events filled the rest of the day – or at least created my best excuse.
Today, I was down to last week’s low of 209. I was to start with a 9 a.m. interview. By the time that was pushed back to afternoon, it was too late for an early workout. Instead I dove into this Sunday’s stories about emergency response to heart attack patients.
When I left the house for the office, I picked up my gym bag and packed it for this evening.
Hey, all routines start somewhere.