About two months ago I started going to the gym regularly again. I had tried to work out before in the past, but for whatever reason the exercise would stop. Whether I was telling myself that I had no time for exercise, convincing myself that because I was tired today, I could always have a workout another day, or even a global pandemic coming along destroying my UH gym schedule, there was never any real consistency, so the results I would see, if any, would be very minor. Having been inspired by a friend who goes to the gym almost every day, I had decided to myself that I would start going to the gym again. Since COVID-19 had shut it down almost a year ago, the Warrior Recreational Center was open again and the safety precautions they were taking to combat COVID-19 seemed effective and convinced me that I wouldn’t be putting myself at risk by going. In that time I also got my driver’s license meaning that I was no longer restricted by bus schedules, in my eyes the stars had aligned.
I told myself that this time would be different from all the other times that I tried establishing my own workout regime. I had one goal in mind, consistency. The first day back in the gym was pretty hellish, but I was in the gym and that’s all that mattered to me. The adrenaline rushes and the almost barbaric satisfaction that I got from simply lifting a heavy object were something that I had missed about the gym and a feeling that I wanted to keep in my life. From there on out, I made it a goal to go to the gym at least once every week to establish consistency. Sometimes I’d go two times a week, sometimes it would be three, and maybe even four, but always the baseline of once a week. As the summer progressed, I was able to push myself harder than ever before, and I was seeing consistent improvement in my physical and mental health, which set me up to begin the school year with a bang.
Now you may be asking yourself, “it’s two paragraphs deep, and he hasn’t talked about JavaScript once and has only talked about going to the gym” and you would be right, but the gym and JavaScript have much more in common than one would think at a first glance. Whenever you do something new, whether it be learning a new programming language, or going to the gym, consistency is key. This is something that I hope was apparent in the first two paragraphs of talking about the gym and is something that I want to make even more apparent now. In the past when learning other programming languages I honestly did the bare minimum, which was enough to pass (barely) through my classes, but fundamentally I was lacking and there were a lot of holes in my programming knowledge. During this first week, I have learned more through JavaScript than I had ever done through C and C++. Now, part of it was due to the existing programming knowledge that I established in C and C++, as well as JavaScript’s inherent benefits in object-oriented programming, but the biggest part of it was due to the new word of the day, consistency. Doing all 111 basic courses plus the 31 ES6 courses in FreeCodeCamp, while tedious, aided in creating a consistent mental workout routine. This consistency is something that I have lacked in the past and is something I hope to carry on throughout the semester and the rest of my time here at UH Manoa.
If there’s anything that you should take away from this essay, is that consistency is key. This is something that can be applied in all aspects of your life. Having even just a little consistency in your life can go a long way, even if it comes from something small like going to the gym once a week.