When I left my home it was -1 degrees.
There’s nothing I own that is appropriate for negative temperatures. If I dug deep into my closet I could find a pair of long underwear. But then what? Put them on under my suit pants? I’d get to work where the temperature is a 72. Then I’d be hot for the day.
Yesterday I moved this blog to a new hosting provider.
The site had been lagging and it was time for an upgrade. Not that anybody formally complained but I noticed the speed issue and it bothered me. The transition was almost hiccup-free. Somehow a few comments slipped through the cracks. I apologize to those readers.
I weighed in this afternoon at a meaty 223.8 lbs.
This is quite an accomplishment for a man that could eat whatever he wanted up until two years ago. Hell, five years ago I was at 175. I’m just shy of 6’3″ and should clock in between 190-200lbs. That’s ideal for me.
Originally posted at StarvingWriterAtLarge
I’ll warn you right now. You may not like the tone of this post. You may think I”m talking down or being condescending. I promise you, that’s not it at all. I’m just wanting to help people understand what having a mental illness is about. I hope it helps, at least, to make me seem a little more human, a little less scary, and that you’ll be willing to give me a chance.
That said I just want you to know that I am not-
Now I’m just #1 on Google for “dick stories.”
My blog certainly isn’t the most hilarious on the web (well, nobody tells a story about seeing my dad’s penis like me), but it’s decently funny. Sure I use too many adverbs, but, you know what? I goddamn well like adverbs. It’s me and since I don’t know how to write with better grammatical sense, I let it slide. A big-deal professor recently told me I write well. So there, inner critic D.J.!
On yesterday’s podcast I dove deep into self-indulgence.
Normally my intros go a few minutes tops. Just for the shit of it I decided to try some longform improv to see if anything interesting came out. The result was thirteen minutes of nested stories that layered on top of each other. By the end I had closed all the loops, but it didn’t really work. I was trying to be like Marc Maron, but, hey, I’m not.
Turns out my mom was wrong.
Sure, there are moments when my condo resembles a dishelved hobo riding the rails, but mostly it’s close to tidy. Note I said “tidy” and not “clean.” I never dust and rarely sweep. If I’m having someone over I run the Swiffer. It’s not really supposed to double as a vacuum, but, hey, close enough.
Okay, I just figured something out. When I cut some calories to try to lose a few pounds and also hit the gym every day, I just wind up exhausted. The funny drains out of my pores around mile three on the treadmill.
I’m at that stage of a new exercise and nutrition cycle where the food deficit plus the hard running is almost to difficult to maintain in my body or mind. But it’s time. Even though I biked my ass off this year I ate whatever the hell I wanted. I haven’t moved much since the cold set in. So now I’m in the process of breaking sine bad habits.
Self-soothing.
This is something I am just learning. The past three years has been a journey into the feelings I avoided over my life. Since I had associated tough feelings (anger, fear, sadness) with shame, I ran fast and away each time any of them surfaced. I thought if I felt any of those it must have been my fault and I didn’t do something “right.” And sometimes, of course, that’s true. But 90% of the time it’s just natural pain we all experienced as children. Therefore, shame resulted.
I'll never give this child another cigarette, pinky swears!
