Every* Muscle in My Body 2021

*A lot of the important ones

It’s December, which means it’s time to take stock of my body. For the internet to continue tracking my personal growth it’s important that I provide data that can be empirically judged: on its own, against someone else, against next year’s data, or against data from past years (the 2020 and 2019 reports are available here on medium).

Whereas last year I decided to replicate 2019’s introduction as a stylistic choice, this year my brain does not seem to work as well as it once did and I am absolutely leaning on any free words I can get.

Since our last report my relationship with my body has not improved. There’s been no heel turn, no insistence that now is the time to preserve this decaying, godless temple. The apathy I’ve garnered towards my own physique has only grown stronger in my body’s stead. Perhaps it’s even grown into the negative, into a space where I not only avoid physical strength, but resent all suggestions that I possess any. That negativity is limited to the darker days; on an average day it’s pure lack of interest in gaining muscle mass, not a stubborn stand I take on a dumb hill — a stand requiring regular pauses to sit and rest, my feeble legs unable to support me for more than minutes at a time.

Apathy yes, misplaced bitterness sometimes, but as I touched on last year there is still a relationship between who I feel I am and how I wish to be seen that muscles just do not play a part in (on first write of this sentence I included no…