How multitasking almost killed me

In this day and age it seems that to get anything done, you need to be doing several other things besides the one thing that you need to get done otherwise you'll fall farther behind in life. Okay, fine, it's status quo but guess what? There are limits. Real, terrible limits. For your sake and the sake of all mankind I will share these.

I recently started exercising again and while I'm doing this for health, longevity, able to put off buying new clothes, etc., I hate it. I hate it specifically because it's an elliptical machine in the basement that I cleverly put directly underneath a light. It's isolated and boring, just run-gliding around and around so I distract myself to not think about the TV watching and jelly bean eating that was going on upstairs. First I just listened to music and scrolled through twitter. That helped some but I still knew what I was doing. So this go round I added in some reading of this month's book club book and lo! I had found the perfect set up: get the exercise, feel virtuous and non-hatey AND keep up on my reading! Three things. Totally manageable. I AM A GOLDEN GOD.

Then last night happened. I should have not even attempted this but go big or go home, right? I was participating in a really interesting facebook discussion over direction of another website I contribute content for. A really cool opportunity with a lot of ideas flying back and forth which was incredibly energizing. Off I headed downstairs with kindle, phone and water bottle in hand to do battle with my nemesis. Got set up on the elliptical with the screen completely covered, punched in the gradual climb program and off we went. Music blaring in my ears, one eye on the facebook conversation and another on the Kindle, I noticed that suddenly the difficulty of the program went up. Huh. That's weird. May have just hit the 'increase resistance' button while adjusting the diversions. Huh, now it's getting easier. Oh well, no biggie, we've just gone on to science advancements and alternate character plot points and holy hell this is getting hard again. What the hell...?

Oh. Crap. I'm on the interval program. I don't like the interval program but we're 10 minutes into the workout now, no going back, let's power through, good god almighty, 16?! Aw hell no. Oh, here's another message: no, I'm not caught up with Uncanny X-Men, what's happening? God, I hate this song but my brain is melting so I can't skip it and no a giant rat did NOT just chew on that kid's face. Yay, Dyl's come to save me...wait, why is he carrying the phone? So now I'm reading on my kindle, listening to music I've come to regret downloading and catching up on X-Men while trying to not fall off the elliptical...18???! Gasps. 'Hi Mom, what's up?' 

"Why don't you just call me back?"

"Good idea.....should be done....in....about....10 minutes.....Gasp. Wheeze."

Now I've got a water bottle, my kindle, my phone and the house phone all in front of me with no place to hang onto because shit just went to 20 and dear flying spaghetti monster, make it stop.

The lesson here boys and girls? Exercise will try to kill you. The end.