About two months ago, when I started really working out again, I could manage one pushup at a time. Now I do closer to 50 on the days I work out. I’m proud of that, especially considering how many times I have started a workout routine and eventually abandoned it.

I have always been active, bouncing around town and spending a lot of time on my feet. By the time I got home, adding a workout to everything I had already done seemed like too much. Even when I enjoyed it, it felt like another obligation waiting at the end of the day.

Somewhere along the way this time, that changed. I started enjoying the chance to put everything else aside and focus on myself. Getting stronger is satisfying and I’m having fun doing the work that gets me there. I have fallen in love with the process enough that I look forward to doing it.

It has been seeping into the rest of my life, too. Starting a morning with something productive that I enjoy gives me a little momentum to carry into the day. I want to keep building on it and I am finding it easier to enjoy things even when everything else is not going particularly well.

In Greek mythology, Sisyphus was condemned by Zeus to push a boulder up a mountain every day, only for it to roll back down. Some, like me, may have become familiar with the myth through Albert Camus’ essay The Myth of Sisyphus, which ends with the line, “One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” Camus saw the possibility of happiness in the struggle itself, even when the work would never be finished. I recognize a little of that feeling every time one Wednesday’s newspaper gives way to the next.

A weekly newspaper will never be finished in the way a single project can be. There will always be another story to write, another call to make and another issue to assemble. If I save all my satisfaction for the day the work is done, I will have spent the vast majority of my life unsatisfied.

Each issue gives me a chance to look around at what the effort produced. People have shared their stories, readers have learned something about their neighbors and another week of this community’s life has made it into print. But truly one must imagine this publisher as happy too.

The weight will need lifting again and another newspaper will need to go to press. But man, nothing beats the view you get from the top of your mountain with your boulder by your side.