If I cold go back in time, I'd exercise

I left a little late for work today. Two moms were walking by in sneakers pushing strollers as I clipped down the driveway in heals pressing car keys. I asked myself, “Why didn’t I do that?”

I spent ten years working out of the home when my kids were younger. I didn’t exercise at all, unless you count swatting black flies while standing at the school bus stop. I told myself--and anyone else that got into a minivan with me--that I didn’t have time to exercise. I ran my own consulting agency. I had two little kids, a house, and husband. I had to be in my home office during the business day if a client called. I only had the hours between the morning and afternoon school buses to work anything done. There absolutely was no time to do it.

Exercise meant one thing to me—-an aerobics class. In my days before houses, children, and husbands that’s what I did. Not once in that decade of days did I realize I had to redefine how to get exercise into my daily life as a mother, wife, and indpendent contractor.

The 9 AM aerobics class wasn’t going to work, nor the one at 6:30 PM. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t walk around the neighborhood, bike, or do an aerobics tape in my basement.

This is how I get my exercise now. I do aerobics tapes at 5:30 AM. I had a basement in 1998. I could have descended those stairs before or after the morning school bus and moved my body. And if by chance a client called, I even had a phone in my basement.

It is one of my greatest regrets. The time in my life when I had the most flexibility in my schedule I had the least flexibility in my thinking. If I could go back in time, I’d kick myself in the behind.