How My Attention Training Took a Side Quest

I was in Movement II in college. A theater requirement. Movement isn’t dance, but it isn’t walking either. It’s acting through the body. Weight shifts, control, awareness. That’s where I met Lorraine. Not her real name, but close enough.

She was shorter than me, maybe five-five, auburn hair that always seemed to catch the light, a heart-shaped face, and the kind of athletic build you get from actually using your body, not sculpting it in a mirror. She moved like someone who understood mechanics — balanced, efficient, completely at home in motion. Even standing still, she had that coiled-energy presence some people carry without trying.

We weren’t close. Just classmates who talked sometimes.

A few months later, my friends and I were at Applebee’s for late appy hour. After 9 PM everything was half price. College economics at work. She was waitressing there and recognized me. Asked if we could talk for a minute.

Lorraine had changed majors. Kinesiology now. Final project coming up. She’d pitched an idea to her professor: take someone of average fitness and turn them into something noticeably better. Controlled training, measurable progress.

She wanted me as the subject.

Now, I wasn’t out of shape. I’d just done seven years in the Army. I could run across campus without dying. But mentally, I was done with structured workouts. I’d paid that bill already. Existing felt like enough exercise.

Then she tilted the deal.

“You always thought I was cute, right?”

Well… yeah.

She smiled in a way that told me this was about to become less academic.

“There will be goals. When you hit them, there will be rewards. I have normal workout clothes… and progressively less normal workout clothes.”

That was the moment my brain locked in.

It wasn’t romance. It wasn’t a promise of anything beyond the gym. It was something simpler and more dangerous: motivation engineered directly into my attention system.

And it worked.

She worked me hard. Brutally hard.

By the end of a month I was doing 100 push-ups. The Army never required that many. 100 sit-ups. A mile in about 5½ minutes. Pull-ups. Squats. Lunges. Circuits that made my vision go static.

I never kissed her. That was never part of the deal. But I showed up. Every time. Because my brain finally had a reason it found impossible to ignore.

I wasn’t chasing her.

I was chasing the version of me that earned the next level.

At the time, I thought this was just a funny, slightly ridiculous chapter of college life. Years later, I realized something else.

This was me, once again, building scaffolding for my attention.

Left to my own devices, I’d drift. Ideas would replace effort. Intentions would dissolve.

But give my brain a hook? A game? A visible reward tied to progress?

Suddenly I could endure almost anything.

She got an A on her project.

I got proof that my body could go further than I believed, if my mind had the right incentive structure.

It didn’t fix me long term. That kind of motivation burns hot and fades. But in that moment, it was the most focused I had ever been.

And I didn’t even know I was studying my own brain.