My Weakness, My Worst Friend

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20 min­utes on the tread­mill, a sim­u­lat­ed 2 miles cov­ered in that time. Not great, but at least I’m get­ting in there and fight­ing the down­ward spi­ral back to but­ter­ball coun­try. I’ve been hold­ing at about 80 kilos for a while now, but that num­ber is deceiv­ing because I’ve been gain­ing fat and los­ing mus­cle pret­ty steadi­ly for about a year and a half now. I don’t have the strength or vital­i­ty I did even a year ago and I’m vis­i­bly fat­ter than I was six months ago.

Part of what’s going on with me is com­pla­cen­cy. I’ve had some atten­tion from the oppo­site sex on occa­sion in the last half year, and I’m also well-dis­abused of the notion that I need to be with a woman to be com­plete. So why not just let myself go to the dogs?

For one thing, it’s not just a mat­ter of van­i­ty. If I am going to con­tin­ue to con­sume the oxy­gen we all need and take the nutri­ents from oth­er liv­ing beings, I should be use­ful. To be use­ful, I need to be strong and dis­ci­plined – in the best sense of the word, not like a beat­en dog.

I guess I’m look­ing for integri­ty. There is a tremen­dous gap between my inten­tons and ideals and my actions and out­comes. I’m not good at mak­ing com­mit­ments and I often avoid mak­ing any to pre-empt any chance of flak­ing. The prob­lem is that I’m get­ting very skilled at not doing any­thing and I’m get­ting away with it. This is not a recip­ie for being the sort of per­son I’d like to believe I am or can be.

Published by splicer

3 Replies to “My Weakness, My Worst Friend”

  1. Hey! We met at Burn­ing Man.
    Hey! We met at Burn­ing Man. But you know this, I guess. You also now know what a neglect­ful email cor­re­spon­dent I am, too.

    I see we have at least one thing in com­mon — the flight from But­ter­ball Ter­ri­to­ry. I’ve been walk­ing, most­ly, home from work, regard­less of weath­er, a dis­tance of almost 3 miles, and my legs are cer­tain­ly stronger, but I need to work my upper body and mid­dle, too. I do not want to join a gym. I loathe gyms. And yet my apt is such a crum­my place to exercise.

    I’m glad you’re not just inter­est­ed in being fit for the sake of sex and van­i­ty. I am to some extent, of course, but main­ly I’d like to be able to move my fur­ni­ture again this sum­mer with­out injur­ing myself.

    Any­way, good to see you about. 🙂

  2. Haha! Yes, I fig­ured out who
    Haha! Yes, I fig­ured out who you are. I’m a per­ren­ni­al­ly bad cor­re­spon­dent myself, so no wor­ries. I seem to remem­ber promis­ing you a draw­ing of the Tem­ple of Joy that remains half-fin­ished, so please accept my apologies.

    I’d be a oh-so-lying to say that the sake of sex and van­i­ty don’t come into the pic­ture. I’ve been remind­ing myself again and again that if I’m going to run around naked at Burn­ing Man again that I’d pre­fer to be a bronzed Ado­nis or some­thing. Or at least not a sham­bling blob. 

    But I actu­al­ly like the gym. I like it so much I nev­er get there because I’m always doing the things I’m “sup­posed to” do instead of the things I want to do. I used to hate the gym, but then I had a pro­found psy­chic change when my ex dumped me a cou­ple years ago and I turned into a bit­ter misog­y­nist. It was a great place to tor­ture myself. Part of the prob­lem is that I don’t have the self-loathing that helped me lose 50 pounds in 2001.

    Of course any sen­tence that calls it a “prob­lem” to not have as much self-loathing is sus­pect, but no lie, when I was mis­er­able like that I got to the gym very reg­u­lar­ly. Been try­ing to find that moti­va­tion with­out the depres­sion and sui­ci­dal ideation, but some things are eas­i­er said than done =^)

    Any­how, good to see you too – don’t be a stranger!

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