3 posts tagged “me”
UPDATE: The people have spoken -- as of 8:55 on Sunday evening, my chin is once again nude.
Without quite realizing what I was doing when I started typing, it appears that I've just closed the book on my regular blog of nearly six years, Do You Feel Loved?
For a while now, I haven't quite known what to do with that space. It was obvious that my zeal for blogging in the way that I used to (when I was in college, and was much more -- less? Let's settle for "differently" -- self-aware, and had a lot more free time, and far fewer personal and professional entanglements) had pretty much died out. I'd been toying with ideas for turning DYFL into more of an informational, aggregational site, for my own edification more than for an audience's. I like people to know what I'm up to -- I'm not a private person, really -- but I was tired of having to frame that information in a written, performative way. Or perhaps not "tired" of it; maybe I just ran out of the time, energy, and inspiration. I would like to be a person who can write large amounts of entertaining text, but the way I've been living my life these days, it just hasn't been in me. Something's got to give, and it appears that the blog is what went, not the lifestyle.
What is that "lifestyle"? Well, that's a post for another time, really, since I suspect it could get seriously mopey and I've got laundry to do and a haircut to get today. But this momentous event seemed to need to be remarked upon here. More later, perhaps.
So my doctor, unsurprisingly, chastised me for two things when I went in for a check-up last Friday: my posture and my diet. Neither one is particularly easy to correct. The posture thing stems from two primary factors. One is that, quite simply, I'm tall, and the world just isn't quite big enough for me. For example, I've learned (now that I'm taking the opportunity to really pay attention) that my slouching-height is just right for easily going through subway car doors, whereas if I stand up straight, I viciously bang my forehead. Once you start to really think about these things, examples pop up everywhere. The second factor in my perenially wretched posture is that, as an adolescent, I was mercilessly teased by my friends (who, semi-coincidentally, are all people I don't really talk to anymore) for having bitch-tits. Slouching minimized them, and so I slouched whenever possible. I only truly feel that they've started to fade in the last year, since I started to exercise more regularly -- I'm starting to develop what could actually be referred to as pecs, which is a boost in self-esteem, if not an automatic corrective to my horrible posture (though my innate narcissism is helping -- whenever I look at myself in a window or mirror reflection, which I admit is often, I now see that I need to throw my shoulders back and hold my neck up straight). But if I don't straighten my spine out soon, I'm going to be a very, very unhappy forty-year-old.
As for my diet... where to begin. Obviously I eat crap. I eat very few vegetables, I eat tons of fat, and the food I do eat is generally cheap and low-quality (Taco Bell, anyone?). Vegetables have crept into my diet around the edges in the last couple of years -- if something sounds particularly tasty, and has vegetables in the preparation, I'll eat them, but I'll never cook them for myself or order them as a side dish or anything of that sort. One problem is that I've truly cooked a meal for myself maybe five times in the last six months. Honestly. That's both uneconomical (in some ways -- obviously ordered food is expensive, but so is buying groceries that you don't use efficiently, which seems to be the only way that I buy groceries) and unhealthy, and unfortunately the kitchen in my new apartment is very small, so it'll be a challenge to change that particular behavior. I am making a conscious effort to take the slightly healthier option when I eat out (a grilled chicken sandwich with tomato today, instead of pizza), and at my doctor's urging I'm trying my hardest to switch over to Coke Zero when possible. It certainly doesn't taste like real Coke -- there's a hint of that nasty sweetener taste that makes Diet Coke one of the most noxious beverages on Earth -- but it's close enough that I can fool myself if I really try, and the fact that it contains no sugar (WTF?) has got to be making my dentist happy (That is, when I can afford to see him again -- getting my wisdom teeth yanked used up my insurance for the year, which is problematic since I know I've got cavities that need filling). The simple fact is that while I'm extremely thin at the moment (I'd actually like to put on about ten pounds), my body still has enough fat content to prevent me from ever having a true six-pack -- there's a ring of pudge that stubbornly clings to my lower abs -- and if I'm going to be an underwear model by next summer (the original goal was this summer, but y'know, that's another post entirely), it's going to have to go. And no amount of sit-ups can get rid of that; it's gotta be a shift in my diet and metabolism. So: Hello, Coke Zero; goodbye, more than one McDonald's meal a week.
