I quit

It's not unusual to see social media posts to the effect of, "I just joined a gym. Let's do this!"

Your infectious Gary V. type of enthusiasm has been duly noted. Get back to us in three months with an update.

If you really want to impress the world tell them, "I just quit a gym!!!"

That, my friend, is an achievement.
That's newsworthy.
Alert the media.
Light up the twittersphere and go viral with that shit.

Allow me to rack this 225lbs. bench and explain.

A few months ago I started slacking off in my daily swim routine. The pool water at LA Fitness was never the best. The lanes were crowded (when they were available.) And the experience, meant to be fitful and therapeutic, became an ugly mess of people soup and foul-tasting questionable water.

Besides, I had started a rigorous lifting routine at my home gym (my garage.) Swimming and weightlifting go together like Donald Trump goes together with reading and learning.

And so I decided to cancel my membership.

You might think that'd be as easy as picking up a phone and calling the gym operations manager. But you'd be wrong. Turns out you have to pay a visit to the gym you no longer have been visiting.

I sat in the lobby for 30 minutes waiting for Raul, the gym operations manager who is also a personal trainer. He couldn't attend to my cancellation activities because he was too busy at the pilates station demonstrating, quite intimately, the hip flexor exercise for a new member/waitress/model.

I don't blame Raul in the least.

And so I went home and tried again to stop my gym membership. I smartly called American Express to put a block on all charges. As you might expect this triggered a response from the gym, who wanted to know why they could no longer access my funds. This led to phone calls. Lots and lots of phone calls. And threats to go to a collection agency.

They simply will not cancel a gym membership over the phone or even via email. I was told I could quit the gym by filling out a form. But they couldn't send me the form. I had to get it via my LA Fitness online profile. Which of course I never had.

Long painful story cut mercifully short, I finally filled out the form, which had to be mailed back via snail mail, and I'm waiting for the good news. In other words, it's not officially done yet.

In still other words, the process of quitting LA Fitness has been more exhausting than any workout I've had at LA Fitness.