Sometimes when you start walking you do not know where you will end up until you arrive there. So, too, with writing. Sometimes. When you start.

6.10.2009: File this under Life is Good. Whatever ailed me yesterday has moved on to bother someone else. 24 strong laps in the pool this afternoon, and for the first time I broke it into 4-lap segments rather than 2-lap segments. Wind and strength are improving with each workout, it feels like. And Amazon shipped my Kindle DX today.

Originally posted to BMGS 1.0 - October 17, 2007

The last few days have revealed a slight dip in the usually relentless sugary cheeriness of the Big Man Getting Smaller. Surely this can’t be a result of the Sox being down 3 games to 1 in the ALCS, can it?

That may be a part of it, in a mix with being a little tired, working too hard, working out too hard, missing people who are close to me, listening to too many sad songs, and so forth. It’s always something.

So today I’ll get out of the house a little and take a walk, talk to my daughter Kippy and best friend, maybe even take a drive out to Waltham for my daughter Moriah’s cross-country meet this afternoon.

Tomorrow I’m heading down to Plainville for a GA meeting to celebrate the 2-year anniversaries of two very good friends. I’m bringing the cake, and it looks like it will be a good one, from the picture on the bakery website.

I’ve been basically on course with the regimen of BMGS, even though I have gained a pound and a half, so I am confident that my progress here will continue. No workout yesterday, which affects my day to day weight, no doubt.

Come to think of it, I haven’t been to a GA meeting in 12 days, which is the longest I have been without one in over a year. This is no accident. Ever notice how it is always the little things?

The point, I guess, is that the things that work in our lives don’t just work for what we intend them for. Often they work in all kinds of other ways.

I started going to GA 8 ½ years ago because I had to deal with an enormous problem I had with the stock market, with gambling, and with my life. GA was a great fix for that problem, but it also became, over time, a really important part of my ability to keep my life in general on an even keel, to keep moving forward, to be the man I want to be, the father I want to be, the friend I want to be.

So, another person might say, “Fine, you haven’t been to a meeting in 12 days, but you haven’t gambled, so no problemo, right?”

But I have a better vantage point. I’m the guy who is living inside this body (that is 10% smaller than it was 7 weeks ago), and I sense a more generalized cost to my failure to make a meeting in the past week.

My regular Plainville GA meeting is a kind of home to me, complete with a kind of family. I need to be there. Tomorrow night, I will be there. With the cake. (Of which, by the way, I absolutely intend to have a piece.)

Plus, it wouldn’t hurt if the effin Sox could step up and earn their considerable keep tomorrow evening while I am at the meeting!

Monday's sound track

Whoa.

Unfortunately I can't embed this one in the site the way I usually do, but this man just sings the hell out of this song. I stopped keeping up with the latest in country music around the time I left Texas in '78, so I don't know a thing about Josh Turner, but he knows how to cover this old George Jones song. It's enough to make a happy man sad or a sad man sing.

1 comments:

Colt Coeur said...

Poppa,
I am so proud of you!
You are so wise and I love how actively, and aggressively(!), you seek greater peace and wisdom. Thank you for sharing so much of yourself on your journey. The words and the music are great sources of strength and inspiration for many I am sure.

Sticky situations - Originally posted to BMGS 1.0 10.1.2009

5.28.2009: Maybe it was the big dinner, the good company, or the Dos Equis, but I slept like the most interesting man in the world last night and didn't open my eyes until after 7, well more than an hour later than usual. So instead of getting to the pool around 7:15 as I usually do I took advantage of the fact that there are 10 more days of mid-day swimming hours for adults, and I did my 20 laps at noon. All is well with my exercise, my calorie counts, and the scale, and I'll be back tomorrow. Until then:

Sticky Situations
Originally posted to BMGS 1.0 10.1.2007

Did you ever notice how we get ourselves into these situations? I mean, sticky situations? Did you? Or is it just me?

Quite often they begin with the best of intentions. Mine always do.

Sometimes, in my past, they became very, very sticky. I’m not going to write about that now. It is neither the time nor the place.

But this weekend, while the stakes were not nearly so high in the short run, was one of those sticky situations.

One of my several jobs – they all have to do with writing and/or publishing in way or another – involves copywriting, writing web content that is neatly balanced between helpful information and marketing copy, for a variety of business websites. It isn’t bad work, and I like the 5-second commute. It keeps the wolf from the door.

I get to choose my assignments on my employer’s intranet site. Sometimes they are fun. Sometimes they involve decades of research. Sometimes they are short. Sometimes they are way too long.

This weekend I got caught up in an assignment that was way too long, 50 pages all about a little college in San Diego that provides various types of computer training. 50 pages! By yesterday afternoon I never wanted to hear another word about Bioinformatics or an inverted “career first” curriculum. But I had to finish. I did, a little bit late but still in plenty of time for the assignment to be included in third-quarter revenue.

What does any of this have to do with the enduring themes of Big Man Getting Smaller? Plenty.

It’s great not to have a 9 to 5 job, except when I get myself into situations where I have to work 15-hour days. Those were fine when I was in my 20s, but now they stress my body a lot more and create imbalances as far as sleep and exercise are concerned.

I made up my mind that I would not allow this weekend’s work to create an imbalance for me eating-wise, and I stuck to it. My calorie intake was in the 1800-1900 range each day. Having this blog with its built in accountability made a big difference. When I finished last night I was hungry and exhausted and I felt some ill effects from not getting any real exercise the last couple of days. But I knew I would be fine today if I just kept to the basics of my plan. So I had a celebratory dinner of a huge salad and a 400-calorie sub, caught up on a few emails, and went to bed.

I got back to the gym for a nice workout this morning, my weight is right where it should be, and I feel terrific.

There’s plenty more to say, but it can wait until tomorrow.

Pheromones Redux: Adrienne Campbell-Holt

"Pheromones" is an occasional feature of this blog, in which I will share and share alike from among the reader creations and suggestions that flow back toward me. Feel free to send yours in to me either as comments on the blog or by sending me an email at hppress@gmail.com. In the next few days I will re-post a few past entries that may interest you:

Pheromones - December 8, 2007 - Adrienne Campbell-Holt

Turns out Stephen King's son is a novelist named Joe Hill. I dreamed I saw him. It's kind of funny, though, the things that any of us do to give our children a boost, or to give them distance, or to try not to seem to be giving them a boost.

I am so proud of my daughter Adrienne Campbell-Holt, mentioned here occasionally as Kippy. She is an actor, a writer, a director, a dancer, an artist, a blogger, a runner, a choreographer, a comedienne, a teacher, an arts administrator, a lefty, and a Sox fan. She is bo-coastal, not that there's anything wrong with that. She is at home in LA, Brooklyn, and Dorchester. As you can see above, she is a photographer too. But above all else, as she says on her blog, "you will never meet anyone else like me. I love, and also dance, harder than most people."

There are many other remarkable photographs on her blog, Adventures with Blue Car. And many powerful words well worth reading.

It is clear from her blog that we must see Into the Wild. And so I will.

(Update: Happily, I got to see Into the Wild with Adrienne, which doubled my enjoyment of a terrific movie. More recently, just this past weekend, I got to see the latest blossoming forth of Adrienne's amazing creativity -- she is assistant director of Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson at the Public -- and to celebrate her birthday with a lovely outdoor brunch at 5 Front Street under Walt's bridge).