The Next Project

The Wreck Room: Site of Proposed Work Space

So the year is winding down. The year of losing weight, that is. The anniversary will be May 11th: that was the day in 2017 that I measured my waist, got 50 inches, and decided this really had to stop.

Am I embarrassed about throwing pretty much an entire year's allotment of oomph into losing weight, which is about as self-absorbed and self-centered a task as a person could undertake? Yes. I am. But tough. I needed to do this.

I'm not done yet. My initial goals were a 40 inch waist and 180 lbs: I hit those in January and February. My last one is to have a waist measurement that's 90% of my hip measurement. This one is a little harder to draw a bead on, since both measurements have been dwindling. I'm actually training now to build some butt muscle, which I felt silly about at first, but having read around some, I find that trainers of old people take this quite seriously, for good reasons, so that it's not just a matter of hacking the numbers. It's why the numbers were there in the first place. Glutes are a big deal in getting up and down, and lifting things off the floor, and generally not being feeble.

So. Right now the numbers are dead even: it's 36.5" for both of them. Holding the hip measurement steady, that would be a waist target of 33.0" -- three or four months away, at my regular loss-rates. I suspect the end-game will be harder and longer, though. We'll see. 

But in any case, the project should be winding up in a few months. Of course, maintaining it will in many ways be no different. I will still have to cook food and track everything. I have zero expectation that my appetite will magically repair itself -- that I will ever be able to eat ad libitum. But both the stress and the reward of change will diminish. I will gradually have -- I am already noticing that I begin to have -- more spare oomph to deploy. I will be able to to undertake a new project, and hopefully a less selfish one. Or anyway, to prepare for a new project.

As I write here -- this is not so far what I meant to write, I meant to brainstorm about the new project -- it has become clear. The next thing I have to do is make a work space at home. That's my next project.

My work space used to be the cafes I breakfasted in. Bright lights, large sturdy tables I could spread out books and spill coffee on, comfortable booth seats I could sit in for hours. I don't do the cafes any more, so I need to make that space here at home. Here, where I sit now, in the wreck room. I need: a bright light, a sturdy table I can spill coffee on, a chair I can sit in for hours. 

Well, that was easy. The theory was easy, anyway.

I have never really tried to make spaces in my own home, and I find it an oddly disquieting ambition. But no odder, no more disquieting, than being a skinny guy. I will do this thing.