The scale had become a bit of a totem in my household. Neither for good or bad, but it’s one way to track progress. The progress I have made, I thought was getting close to my body weight out of college, my wife thinks I was 30lbs lighter when we first met. The only number I strictly remember was my body weight going to freshman year of high school, and I swore I had been fairly static from senior year to college graduation. Somewhere between then and before we bought our house 8 years ago I discounted 30lbs of body weight gain as inconsequential.
The funny thing about how memory works, is we revise our own memories to match the narrative we believe about ourselves.
I’m ending week 3 of cut a little hopeful but also a little scared of the distance left to cover. 20 down 40 to go, the middle part of every endeavor is always the hardest for me. I start well and finish well, but the middle is always a struggle.
Oddly, the regimen is even affecting my interpersonal relationships. Some co-workers and I had been doing semi-regular food adventures around downtown for lunch and my meal pacing requires I eat before they are ever ready for lunch, and I’ve been packing food to have better control over the calories in a given meal. There have been some grumblings over my abandoning them without warning. I don’t have the heart to tell them my plan is to run cut for 12 weeks.
6ish hours, and lots of miles away from here.
Strange coincidence that it happens the day my wife takes an interest in checking the ovulation schedule, and starts reading about the Shettles method again. Whatever the controversy may be, we followed the protocol while trying for a girl and conceived a girl. Not terribly scientific with a sample size of one, but a long range double blind study on this would be really, really hard to organize.
I’ve been rejecting a lot of things lately and feel like something has to give. In this period of reducing, clearing out. I’m afraid I’m going to have to bet the thing that gives. The equilibrium of my relationships is off. In itself it’s not strange that those relationships are off balance, I always have had a hard time sustaining relationships. Few people are willing to match my intensity in the beginning, so I have to temper mine which leads to boredom and then my enthusiasm just dies. Then I’m off on some other adventure, with a string of half formed not interested in anymore relationships trailing in my dust.
My projects have a way of taking over all aspects of my mind for a few hours, then I meet a roadblock get discouraged and leave a trail of half done whatevers wherever I may roam. Lots of middles, not many endings, I feel like I need some periods and fewer commas.
The arrogance that put me on my back, also cost me a tool. I’m more sad for the damaged, destroyed discarded tool than I am for myself. I knew I had heated up the motor on my little rotary tool quite warm, and I knew it would suffer some performance loss from that for the duration of it’s useful life. I didn’t know that the useful life had actually expired.
I rotary tool and a flex hose wasted, and I’m no closer to done than I was when I started that night. Maybe some less material on the piece, but no closer to finished. In all likelihood I’m further from done for only having a single tool to work with. I cannot alternate like I was, I cannot push through a few minutes more when I’m feeling inspired. The rest mandates of the tool will guide my progress more than my interest or time. I think I’m starting to appreciate the $300-500 power carving tool’s I saw when I first started looking into this project, without meaning to I outgrew amateur class right out of the gate. Non-pine wood, with large working size and complicated 3d shape as opposed to relief carving in a softwood.
