February 22nd, 2012: Southbound down, loaded-up and truckin… minus 1 pound to 308. I like gun caliber weights. Not a bad way to start the day. Especially on the day when I have my annual performance review for work. Jeez, when am I going to win the lottery? Well, I don’t care because the only thing that matters is dropping this fat suit. I wouldn’t want to be rich and fat anyway. I don’t want to be anything and fat. I’m over a quarter of the way to goal weight! 26% to be exact!
I’ve been to rock bottom a few times, all of which I’m pretty sure led to my state of being overweight. Almost all my trips to rock bottom involved the consumption of something I should have left alone. I need to examine them from time to time to make sure I don’t make that left turn again.
One of the Beginnings of One of My Trips to One of My Rock Bottoms Donuts (a topic which seems to come up often in my blogs): There I was, in line at register #3, Tidyman’s grocery store, Moscow, ID. Wintertime. Flat-ass broke, but I didn’t care. I had been living off day-old deli items from the convenience store where my buddy worked. I hate college. Anyhow, I had no money in my checking account, but I was so hungry I planned on writing a check and I hoped to find some money to deposit later. What I wasn’t aware of was that I had already bounced a check at Tidyman’s. I filled my grocery cart to overflowing with the best-tasting/worst-for-you food there was (that’s usually how it goes, right?). On top was a box of a dozen chocolate-covered donuts. I couldn’t wait until they were paid for, so I began to eat them right there in line. Then in line behind me came about 6 girls I recognized from one of the sororities on campus. “Hey baby . . .” Well, that’s not really what I said, but you know, I’m trying to act all cool. They kept looking at each other and giggling. Groceries scanned. Time to pay. “Umm, we can’t accept your check . . .” Red and hot face. Sweat beads up on my forehead. “Oh yeah, I meant to use my other checkbook, it’s out it my truck . . .” I ran away. I got in my truck, started it up, then looked at my face in the rearview mirror. Chocolate from the donuts in the corners of my mouth. No wonder they were giggling. What a stooge. How embarrassing. So dead-broke I can’t even afford groceries.
When you’re big and you’re loud, lots of things like this happen. More later on my trip to Rock Bottom.
I have heard that where there is chaos, there is opportunity; where great problems exist, so do great opportunities. I agree, let’s get to work.
February 22nd, 2020: I’ve spent most of my life financially behind the 8-ball. My past financial nuisances have created a life of debt. Oh well, whaddaya do – it’s my debt, I’ll pay it. I won’t ever say I didn’t have fun getting there. Although I don’t have many tangible items to show for it, I have had more fun than 10 guys in 10 lifetimes, and along the way I have accumulated a savings- account of colorful and mostly magnificent memories that no amount of money could buy.
You’ll have to pay for everything at some point, though, there are no free rides, and living like that was really fun, until it wasn’t. There comes a time when you have to grow up, at least a little bit. You have to start keeping tabs on what’s going in and what’s going out, or you’re gonna be fucked.
There’s a metaphor or an analogy or something in all this money-business to apply to weight loss. Weight loss is about diet and exercise, correct? Becoming financially rich, or at least dollar-healthy, is about making money and saving money right? Well, there you have it. I’ve had no problem making money since I started working, it’s the saving-it part that I’ve discovered to be the real bitch. I’ve never had a problem exercising, it’s the diet part that I’ve discovered to be the real bitch. I can make it and work it; I just have that conservation difficulty.
The program told me I had to deal with calories like they were money, though things are kinda reversed as compared to money. I work as hard as anybody in any gym, anywhere, but when I realized one day that all my grinding and calorie burning over the course of a 2-hour workout can be matched and beat down by several chocolate-chip cookies after 2 or 3 handfuls of almonds, I had to re-evaluate. I make as much money as the average upper middle class person in any town, anywhere, but when I realized one day that, in addition to the regular bills of life, I can kill all the revenue from that work with a couple clicks on Amazon, I had to re-evaluate.
I knew these things long ago; this is no grand revelation from the program. The program just made me begin internalizing these facts, and rather than be sad that things work this way, I learned that things just work this way. It’s not something to dramatize, it’s just another one of those is’s (pronounced izzes). It just fuckin is, deal with it. The scale and the mobile check-my-bank-account app are not there to tell me what a douchebag I am on any particular day. They’re just there as navigational beacons.
To be continued…
