Chronicles of a Late Bloomer

Writing this entry may or may not be against company policy, but it’s something I need to do.

Current internet procedures at work:

We would like to remind all staff that the internet is only to be used for TherapyCorp related business. Although light internet usage may be OK during your breaks or at lunch, certain things are not acceptable at any time because of the network stress and security risk they pose. These are:

• Instant Messaging
• On-Line dating
• On-Line music (audio streaming)
• Myspace and other blogging software
• Video that is not work related (video streaming)
• Chat rooms other than pre approved Work Related
• Private Business work
• Auctions (i.e. E-Bay, etc.)
• Your TherapyCorp E-Mail should be used for agency business only.

Does this qualify as “other blogging software?” I guess we’ll find out when the IT department knocks on my door. They’ll have to hurry, though. I only have 15 minutes before my next clients show up (and they will show up, reliable as geysers) but I feel like I have to take one step toward progress today. I need to make a placemarker — pound a stake into the ground and tie it with a note that says, “I’m here, and I’m still trying.”

I’ve been reading Half of Me for a while now, but only the new updates with a little dip now and again into the archives for something specific. Jennette has a (pardon the pun) task as gargantuan as mine — to lose roughly half of her body weight. The difference, though, is that she seems to have figured it out.

I don’t have it figured out. I just think about it a lot. I formulate theories. Sometimes I make half-hearted stabs at the weight-loss monster, sure, but more than anything I fool myself into thinking that I’m winning the battle by hiding. As I dart from tree to tree, ducking under rocks and into metaphysical caves, I lie¹ to myself. “Hey,” I reason, “As long as the dragon isn’t singeing my eyebrows, I’m safe. Right? Right?”

Meanwhile, the dragon is spending his lunch hours and every other Sunday pillaging the villages and eating all the commoners. (He also eats their leftover Ben and Jerry’s and Krispy Kreme, too.)

Today, though, I decided to go back and read Half of Me from the beginning and guess what? Jennette also had her share of fits and starts. She fell off the wagon. More than once. She made grand statements and declarations and kept starting over.

What’s interesting, is that if you look at her archives page, beginning around January, 2005 (which was 15 or so months after she first started blogging), things really started happening. Scrolling up from the bottom of the page, you can see a continuous pattern of loss. You can also see her diving deeper and deeper into the emotional, physical, and social realities of being morbidly obese.²

So, what was magical about January, 2005 that turned Jennette’s early essays on health problems, half-hearted goals, and frustrations into the early stages of success? I don’t know. I don’t know if she knows. The only thing I can figure, so far, is that she just kept on trying.

Reading things like Jennette’s blog really helps me at a time like this. On any given day, we are confronted with before-and-after pictures in magazines, quick fixes, easy answers, and magical pills. What we so often miss are the bumps and blockades in the road that came before the success. It’s easy to berate yourself with thoughts of being the only person in the world who can’t stay on track. It’s easy to compare yourself to others and to categorize thus:

1. People who don’t need to lose weight.
2. People who do need to lose weight, but don’t try.
3. People who need to lose weight, try, and succeed.
4. Me. The only person on the planet who needs to lose weight, actually tries and can’t do it.

It’s just not true, but fits and starts don’t sell magazines.

Anyway, thanks Jennette.

1. Lying and hiding. Nice strategies there, Therapist Lady. [↩]
2. I’ll spare you any more links to such entries, because this post is beginning to sound like a term paper on PastaQueen, but a quick browse through her writing will give you the idea. [↩]