I’m not keen on starting something in January because it always gets interpreted as a New Year’s Resolution.  However, this seems the perfect time to get much more serious about a regular diet and workout.  Ugh, just writing those two sentences makes me cringe–what cliche!  Well, I’m not going to let a ridiculous cliche stop me from going forth and losing the 40ish pounds I’ve put on since 2004.   After spending the last three weeks eating everything in sight, I saw myself in the mirror.  I’m getting so fat.  And my well-meaning friends can tell me as much as they want that I’m “curvy” and “have a nice figure,” but the truth stares back at me with no kindness.  My tummy is especially beginning to get out of hand.  My arms are WAY flabbier than they’ve ever been, and I’m afraid I might even be getting a double chin. 

Tomorrow I will eat healthy, and I will walk for an hour. 

Blogged with Flock

So, I realized today that I feel compelled to make sure everyone is happy. I can’t stand the thought of leaving someone out, of not inviting a person to join in on the fun. And as a result, I mix people who don’t necessarily wish to mix. I’m not really really sure why I feel responsible for everyone else, but it’s a bit Catcher in The Rye-ish: I want people to be protected from being left out. For some reason I feel like I am the world’s champion. If there is any hesitation in the room when a volunteer is needed, it is I who will gladly jump in and shoulder the burden. I can remember as a high school teacher in Nebraska how oblivious I was to my students’ relationships outside of my classroom. I tried so hard to convince them that we were all friends and all of us should care deeply about each other. It’s all dreamy-eyed bull to some, this rosy optimism. But to me, well, I really mean it. I know how foolish it sounds when I saw it out loud. I’m even slightly embarrassed at the cheese factor I force on the world. Nonetheless, I will not be stopped. I will continue to pressure people into joining the party, I will attempt to force-forge friendships were only frictions exists, and I will organize the social events of as many lives as possible. I will not bend at those scoffers who sneer at my naive wide-eyed hope.

Three months ago I was nervously sitting in my parents’ house, sorting through my possessions, trying to decide what was worth hauling half-way ‘cross the States and into Canada.  Now, as I sit in my little room on the corner of East 18th Avenue, I can see piles of things I needn’t bother bringing along to Vancouver.   It seems my clutter has followed me to Canada, literally and figuratively.  Besides the piles of unopened mail, unread books and not-quite fitting clothes, I have brought my piles of bad habits and unopened issues. Correction: some of those issues have been peeked into, but not dealt with, thus they may as well be ‘unopened.’  As a criminal always returns to the crime scene, I always return to my habits, no matter how far away I move. It is comforting in a way, to know that when I come home at night my procrastination, self-doubt, poor self-image are still there, right next to the pile of jeans that I was only able to fit into for two months.

Someday, I think I will fit into those jeans. And someday, I’ll open the mail.  And when those miracles meet, I will surely have at least tidied my messy emotional matters.

…Of course, by the time I get around to it, the mail will be beyond dealing with and the jeans will be out of fashion…