Tight Clothes, Or, What I'm Doing to My Body

Ughhh I'm trying to get dressed to go eat thanksgiving dinner at someone's house and all my clothes are so tight. I won three pairs of Dockers Alpha pants (which I like a good deal). Two of them are now missing buttons because they are so tight and the third pair is so tight I don't think I can wear them. I've got some jeans on and an old favorite shirt and a cardigan and they are all sooooo tight.

I've never experienced such tightness before.

They are tight because over the last six months I've made several changes to my life. I've joined a gym and I regularly lift as much weight as I possibly can. I've increased my caloric intake to a level that I never knew before. I've put on 20 pounds. Plenty of muscle, some fat.

I was a child the last time I encountered this issue of outgrowing my clothes. I didn't even care then.

This feels like a new experience, given that now I buy my own clothes and that this growth is of my own doing.

I mostly have half-baked and undeveloped ideas about what I'm doing to my body or why I'm doing it. I've been reflecting on it some, but I haven't yet really grasped my behavior. Why exactly am I doing this? What exactly is it that I've been doing? Why did I start and why do I continue?

It touches on a variety of issues that I like to think about: the question of the relation between the mind and the body, the question of strength (both mental and physical), the question of strength and vulnerability.

All of this has occurred to me as I've been working to change my body. It's occurred to me to write about. But I've not yet felt the urge or the need. I had some free time just know after putting on my clothes and felt like jotting this down.

I'll give a closer look at these issues at some point. In the meantime, I'll continue to wonder why I'm lifting big weights as I lift big weights.

Blogging

I don't blog as much as I used to and I'm troubled by it.

I've often wondered, 'What if I reach a certain age, say 30 or 40 years old, and I look back at this blog and marvel at all this writing I've done'. In other words, I fear what I'll become in the future, and that my relationship with reading and writing will be a mere fluke in the story of my life.

Why is that such a problem? Why do I have this idea that reading and writing is an integral part of a good life?

Lately I've found that my desire to write is being subsumed by my desire to reflect.

My desire to write was previously wrapped up with a need to be accepted, a need to be praised, a need to fit in. Homelessness has been a problem for me. I've not felt like I've belonged anywhere in quite a long time. Though I wasn't conscious of this when I applied to graduate school, I really wanted that to be a home for me. A place where I would be greeted and protected in a certain way. I don't know if it could have served that function for me, but I assumed it would. I'm not sure why.

Now that that world is less of a priority (or possibility) for me I no longer think of my writing in the same way.

My real business is reflection. My real business is taking care of myself and keep tracking of myself. My business is paying attention.

Is blogging a way for me to pay attention? Does it aid me in my goal of being reflective?

I think so.

I am currently working on an essay that I'm really enjoying. It's been a lot of fun. Same authors (Clausewitz, Collingwood, MacIntyre, etc.), but lots of new thoughts, new ideas. It feels great. It pushes me in my day to day life, it keeps me sharp, it provides me with 'aha' moments in which I feel like I've made a break through.

I feel pained sometimes because I think that my serious thinking will just be a fad or temporary obsession in my life. I have had (I confess) many obsessive hobbies in my past: model building, hackey sack, flat land biking, video games. I've seriously pursued a variety of hobbies throughout my relatively short life.

Will serious thinking and reflecting be yet another one of these obsessive hobbies? I suspect not. Yet I fear the answer is a yes. I fear this is just an episode in my life where I try to think seriously and where it doesn't all amount to much.

Ha.

The fear! I quote two songs for you: "Motherfuck, the fear is back. The fear is back, the fear is back. No place to hide my shamefulness, no place to hide my discontent." A lovely song by John Maus. Another song: "This fear, that lives inside of me, subsides far too infrequently."

In the last two years I've managed to identify the way that fear has dominated my life. It's been a governing emotion. How strange to acknowledge and to understand that I've been ruled by fear. Some say CREAM, cash rules everything around me. I, on the other hand, say FREAM, fear rules everything around me. I've been working hard to minimize the role of fear in my life.

I, much like Kevin McAllister, am not afraid anymore. I am ready to confront my life, whatever that means, whatever it will take.

And I know, I hope, that reflection will be a central part of it. All I can ask for is to be able to step outside myself on occassion, to maintain some perspective on myself, and to laugh and cry often.