I heaped abuse on my body this weekend. Eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat. Every fucking thing in sight. Correct that--I looked at everything in sight, then added bacon, then ate it.
My appetite is a money changer in the temple that is my body. I need a savior to chase out the defilers, quick, before the walls come tumbling down.
I eat out of boredom. I eat out of anxiety. I eat to soothe pain. I eat to celebrate good fortune. I eat to numb existential terror. I eat because, well, bacon tastes goooood.
I suppose it's better to lose a weekend to food than to heroin or alcohol, given my responsibilities at this moment in my life, but that's pretty cold comfort when it comes down to it. At a certain point "at least I'm not a drug addict!" becomes a less than satisfying excuse. Especially when, in truth, I am absolutely an addict and it's probably only an accident of circumstance and maybe biology that I tend to choose deep fried drugs rather than opiates.
Man up, Huntington. Put down the peanut butter pretzels, right fucking now. Just walk away.
Monday, June 8, 2009
Friday, June 5, 2009
Fat Suit
I don't have much left in the tank right now, but I promised myself I'd write something here every day so I'm going to give a quick shot before I wade into Friday evening traffic.
I have a weird kind of social anxiety that is based largely (pardon the pun) on my weight issues and it always tend to manifest itself in surprising ways. I'm a social person, at my core, I enjoy meeting new people, I thrive off the energy of others. But I've carved out a very specific identity for myself in social settings that is, in many ways, insincere, and I'd like to get past that. I think it's the same for everyone, to some extent: I am always, quite self-consciously, the Other, to borrow the parlance of my old literary theory classes. I have to do a tangled kind of dance with myself to get past that feeling in every new situation, and what I usually do is try to use my own anxiety and insecurity to invent a persona in each new conversation. It's starting to exhaust me, my own self-pity and self-consciousness, the way I nurture my own discomfort and turn it into a fat clown suit. If I met myself at a dinner party I think I'd pretty quickly find a way to migrate to the other side of the room. That may not be entirely true, actually, but I do find it very hard to get out of my own head and interact honestly and sincerely with new people. My friend Peter, who I haven't spoken to in years, unfortunately, was one of the most intense and most sincere people I've ever known. He used to get very upset when I'd turn on my self-deprecating fat loser schtick and he always used to call me on it. He would tell me it hurt him to hear me make those jokes, he would tell me I needed to give myself permission to love myself the way he and others did, he would tell me that the way I see myself is not the way the world sees me and I should stop assuming it was and stop trying to punish everyone for my own insecurity. And fuck...he was right. I was too cool for school back then, and I liked to pretend that he meant well but just didn't get it, didn't really get me, didn't understand the sophistication of my oh-so-meta verbal somersaults. But in truth he nailed me, and it was not much for to process at the time. So thank you, Peter, wherever you are. I love you too. And I'm working on it.
I have a weird kind of social anxiety that is based largely (pardon the pun) on my weight issues and it always tend to manifest itself in surprising ways. I'm a social person, at my core, I enjoy meeting new people, I thrive off the energy of others. But I've carved out a very specific identity for myself in social settings that is, in many ways, insincere, and I'd like to get past that. I think it's the same for everyone, to some extent: I am always, quite self-consciously, the Other, to borrow the parlance of my old literary theory classes. I have to do a tangled kind of dance with myself to get past that feeling in every new situation, and what I usually do is try to use my own anxiety and insecurity to invent a persona in each new conversation. It's starting to exhaust me, my own self-pity and self-consciousness, the way I nurture my own discomfort and turn it into a fat clown suit. If I met myself at a dinner party I think I'd pretty quickly find a way to migrate to the other side of the room. That may not be entirely true, actually, but I do find it very hard to get out of my own head and interact honestly and sincerely with new people. My friend Peter, who I haven't spoken to in years, unfortunately, was one of the most intense and most sincere people I've ever known. He used to get very upset when I'd turn on my self-deprecating fat loser schtick and he always used to call me on it. He would tell me it hurt him to hear me make those jokes, he would tell me I needed to give myself permission to love myself the way he and others did, he would tell me that the way I see myself is not the way the world sees me and I should stop assuming it was and stop trying to punish everyone for my own insecurity. And fuck...he was right. I was too cool for school back then, and I liked to pretend that he meant well but just didn't get it, didn't really get me, didn't understand the sophistication of my oh-so-meta verbal somersaults. But in truth he nailed me, and it was not much for to process at the time. So thank you, Peter, wherever you are. I love you too. And I'm working on it.
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Add Some Extra Just For You
My wife and I decided early on that we wanted to make parenting choices that would instill a sense of warm, unconditional love in our children; we wanted to create an environment of support and encouragement and empowerment that would hopefully give our children the tools to be kind, loving, confident and, most importantly, happy individuals; we wanted to help them discover and nurture their own individual spirits, to have the courage to love who they are, and we vowed to evaluate all our choices against that criteria. We didn't want to raise obedient, well-mannered, respectful children, necessarily, unless we believed that being obedient, well-mannered and respectful were necessary steps toward becoming kind, loving, confident and happy. If rebellious, rowdy and loud is what it takes for my kids to be kind, loving, confident and happy, then so be it.
And boy have I gotten what I was asking for, or what I had coming to me, depending on how you look at it. My children are beautiful creatures, but my children are also...my children. We have two boys, 5 years old and 2 years old, respectively, and, like most children, they can be total and complete animals. Maybe not like most children, actually. In the movie "Dangerous Liasons," there's a great line about Valmont, the John Malkovich character: "What's true of most men, is doubly so of him." And I suppose you could say the same about both my kids: imagine your normal, rowdy, spirited, trouble-making toddler. Then double it, for each of them.
So I don't have obedient, respectful, well-mannered kids. They're not monsters, don't get me wrong, but they're also not very good company for the faint of heart. But that's all fine with me, I even kind of appreciate the anarchy to a certain extent. The real question is: are we actually giving them the tools to be kind, loving, confident and happy people? The answer, right now, is: fuck if I know.
I do know they give and receive huge doses of love. I know they exude joy, laughter, energy and intellectual curiousity. I know the feeling I get when I watch them sleeping or hear a belly laugh or get a hug is real, and I know it's reciprocated, in their own way.
But it turns out there's another hugely important factor at play beyond the values we consciously instill in them and the behavior we decide to allow or not allow or punish or praise, and that's the behavior we *model*, on a daily basis. And really, that is far and away the most important thing in the end. What kind of person will my child turn out be? What kind of choices will my child make? How comfortable will my child feel in his own skin?
Look in the mirror, bub, and you have your answer.
Yikes.
A friend of mine once told me that somebody once told him that the best way to be a good father to your child is to be a good husband to your child's mother. If I stop and think about that too much I find some problems, but, then again, stopping and thinking too much is in and of itself one of my biggest problems. So just go with it, for a moment, Of course it's true, on a certain level. And of course it follows that the best way to be a good husband is to be...a good man.
I've always wanted to be a good man, I think. But I've also always been lazy. It's a different thing to want to be a good man because you want to be a good husband and a good father. I can read all the parenting books in the world and espouse the most beautiful ideas about nurturing and unconditional love, I can feel all those things and even put them into practice but at the end of the day, what really matters is what my son sees me do, what my son sees me feel, how my son sees me live. And by that standard, I've got a lot to work on. If I want my children to be kind, loving, confident and happy, the most important thing i can do is to become kind, loving, confident and happy myself.
That's a tall order, for me. Am I a kind man? I think I can be generous, but that's not the same thing as kindness. I have an instinct for kindness, I think, for which I largely credit my own parents modelled behavior, but I pull back on it too often. Loving? Whoa. That's the hardest one, by fucking far, and probably the subject of a whole other post. Suffice it to say that one of my life goals is to truly learn how to give and receive love, and I'd like to think I'm on the journey to get there. Confident? Not quite. Not yet, not truly. I've got some important work to do in some key areas on that front. And...happy. I think that comes down to giving myself permission to experience joy in my daily life, and on that front some days are better than others.
When I think about things that way it changes some key decisions I've made about how to be a parent and what it means to really be present in my childrens lives. In some ways, I think, it means my wife and I both need to give ourselves a little more permission to have our own lives, to make ourselves fuller and richer people, with the faith that those experiences will turn us into better parents. I think we've both been circling this revelation recently, but haven't quite come to terms with it. And, you know, it fucking hard to find the time to read a newspaper article when you have two young children, let alone carve out a self-improvement plan. But we'll get there, I know we will.
I just don't want to fuck up my kids too badly. I want to give them the best chance I can. And there's a delicious kind of irony in the fact that I've been using my Role as Father to avoid dealing with my own fucked up shit, when deep down I've always known the only way to really play The Role of Father is to deal with my own fucked up shit.
Back to the old drawing board.
(The title of this post in take from one of my favorite poems, "This Be the Verse," by Phillip Larkin, the text of which I now present to you in it's entirety:)
And boy have I gotten what I was asking for, or what I had coming to me, depending on how you look at it. My children are beautiful creatures, but my children are also...my children. We have two boys, 5 years old and 2 years old, respectively, and, like most children, they can be total and complete animals. Maybe not like most children, actually. In the movie "Dangerous Liasons," there's a great line about Valmont, the John Malkovich character: "What's true of most men, is doubly so of him." And I suppose you could say the same about both my kids: imagine your normal, rowdy, spirited, trouble-making toddler. Then double it, for each of them.
So I don't have obedient, respectful, well-mannered kids. They're not monsters, don't get me wrong, but they're also not very good company for the faint of heart. But that's all fine with me, I even kind of appreciate the anarchy to a certain extent. The real question is: are we actually giving them the tools to be kind, loving, confident and happy people? The answer, right now, is: fuck if I know.
I do know they give and receive huge doses of love. I know they exude joy, laughter, energy and intellectual curiousity. I know the feeling I get when I watch them sleeping or hear a belly laugh or get a hug is real, and I know it's reciprocated, in their own way.
But it turns out there's another hugely important factor at play beyond the values we consciously instill in them and the behavior we decide to allow or not allow or punish or praise, and that's the behavior we *model*, on a daily basis. And really, that is far and away the most important thing in the end. What kind of person will my child turn out be? What kind of choices will my child make? How comfortable will my child feel in his own skin?
Look in the mirror, bub, and you have your answer.
Yikes.
A friend of mine once told me that somebody once told him that the best way to be a good father to your child is to be a good husband to your child's mother. If I stop and think about that too much I find some problems, but, then again, stopping and thinking too much is in and of itself one of my biggest problems. So just go with it, for a moment, Of course it's true, on a certain level. And of course it follows that the best way to be a good husband is to be...a good man.
I've always wanted to be a good man, I think. But I've also always been lazy. It's a different thing to want to be a good man because you want to be a good husband and a good father. I can read all the parenting books in the world and espouse the most beautiful ideas about nurturing and unconditional love, I can feel all those things and even put them into practice but at the end of the day, what really matters is what my son sees me do, what my son sees me feel, how my son sees me live. And by that standard, I've got a lot to work on. If I want my children to be kind, loving, confident and happy, the most important thing i can do is to become kind, loving, confident and happy myself.
That's a tall order, for me. Am I a kind man? I think I can be generous, but that's not the same thing as kindness. I have an instinct for kindness, I think, for which I largely credit my own parents modelled behavior, but I pull back on it too often. Loving? Whoa. That's the hardest one, by fucking far, and probably the subject of a whole other post. Suffice it to say that one of my life goals is to truly learn how to give and receive love, and I'd like to think I'm on the journey to get there. Confident? Not quite. Not yet, not truly. I've got some important work to do in some key areas on that front. And...happy. I think that comes down to giving myself permission to experience joy in my daily life, and on that front some days are better than others.
When I think about things that way it changes some key decisions I've made about how to be a parent and what it means to really be present in my childrens lives. In some ways, I think, it means my wife and I both need to give ourselves a little more permission to have our own lives, to make ourselves fuller and richer people, with the faith that those experiences will turn us into better parents. I think we've both been circling this revelation recently, but haven't quite come to terms with it. And, you know, it fucking hard to find the time to read a newspaper article when you have two young children, let alone carve out a self-improvement plan. But we'll get there, I know we will.
I just don't want to fuck up my kids too badly. I want to give them the best chance I can. And there's a delicious kind of irony in the fact that I've been using my Role as Father to avoid dealing with my own fucked up shit, when deep down I've always known the only way to really play The Role of Father is to deal with my own fucked up shit.
Back to the old drawing board.
(The title of this post in take from one of my favorite poems, "This Be the Verse," by Phillip Larkin, the text of which I now present to you in it's entirety:)
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Life in the Fast Lane
I was in a car accident last week. I've been spending a minimum of four hours a day on the freeway since early February, driving from North San Diego county to West Los Angeles every day, so I suppose my own personal "Crash" moment was inevitable at a certain point. I was hit from behind while slowing for traffic on the northbound 405, and at the time of impact I immediately understood exactly what was happening and for a split second felt sure that this was it, this is how I die, slowing down in the fast lane in Torrance, California on sleepy Tuesday morning.
That didn't happen, of course--my car is totalled, I've got a weird bruise on my left arm and some sore ribs, but nobody was seriously hurt and as freeway collisions go mine turned out be relatively mild. But the accident stunned me, in more ways than one, and I don't think I've fully processed the experience yet. It wasn't a "brush with death re-evaluate the meaning of your life" kind of thing--I don't think my subconscious will let me engage in something that cliched at this point in my life--nor was it quite a traumatic "how can we all be spiralling toward our destruction in these death traps every day" kind of thing either, though that kind of panic is more up my Lexapro-soothed anxiety alley.
As I get some distance and sort through my thoughts I think my reaction to the accident is more about reminding myself to pay attention. I wasn't at fault (I'm saying that now less any Geico claims processor stumble across this blog) and I'm not sure I could have done anything to avoid the collision in any way, but I was on auto-pilot, drifting with my morning thoughts, abstent-mindedly sipping coffee and half-listening to the radio, taking my foot on and off the brake at the same places I take my foot on and off the brake every morning. I was not, as they say, "in the moment," until the moment reached out and grabbed me and punched me in the ribs and poured coffee all over my Sirius radio receiver. The moment decided it would not ignored, in this case. And all I think I should say to that is: thank you. I receive you. I'm grateful to be awoken and I'll try to keep my eyes open as best I can from now on.
That didn't happen, of course--my car is totalled, I've got a weird bruise on my left arm and some sore ribs, but nobody was seriously hurt and as freeway collisions go mine turned out be relatively mild. But the accident stunned me, in more ways than one, and I don't think I've fully processed the experience yet. It wasn't a "brush with death re-evaluate the meaning of your life" kind of thing--I don't think my subconscious will let me engage in something that cliched at this point in my life--nor was it quite a traumatic "how can we all be spiralling toward our destruction in these death traps every day" kind of thing either, though that kind of panic is more up my Lexapro-soothed anxiety alley.
As I get some distance and sort through my thoughts I think my reaction to the accident is more about reminding myself to pay attention. I wasn't at fault (I'm saying that now less any Geico claims processor stumble across this blog) and I'm not sure I could have done anything to avoid the collision in any way, but I was on auto-pilot, drifting with my morning thoughts, abstent-mindedly sipping coffee and half-listening to the radio, taking my foot on and off the brake at the same places I take my foot on and off the brake every morning. I was not, as they say, "in the moment," until the moment reached out and grabbed me and punched me in the ribs and poured coffee all over my Sirius radio receiver. The moment decided it would not ignored, in this case. And all I think I should say to that is: thank you. I receive you. I'm grateful to be awoken and I'll try to keep my eyes open as best I can from now on.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Cold Water
I'm trying out a new blog as a way of shaking off some dust and holding myself accountable for my own thoughts and plans and shortcomings. I think I need a kind of living document to play around with, both as an outlet and a way to provide myself with some structure and focus and a way to get out of my own head and create a dialogue with myself. Strangely, it seems like a good idea to do this in a semi-public way. I think that will force me to take the whole idea more seriously and as a consequence my thinking will end up being less precious, less self-conscious and hopefully more constructive and useful. But who the fuck knows. I'll probably end up abandoning the whole thing after a few posts, but that's ok too. On the Internet, no one can hear you give up. For the immediate future, at least, I vow to update this blog at least once a day, and I'm going to limit my subject matter to...me. My only goal is tap out something every day that honestly reflects my state of mind at the time. No theorizing, no grandstanding, hopefully a minimum of bullshit. Which probably means it will be boring as hell to anyone but me, so you might want to just go ahead and close that browser window now. Thanks for stopping by.
I feel a little numb today, bloated and slow. It's a far too familiar feeling for me, a recurring rhythm (shit I had to write that word four times before I got it right. R-H-Y-T-H-M. I've never been able to spell that fucking word. I'll choose not to speculate on what that may mean) that I can't seem to shake. PASSIVITY, my old enemy, my crutch, is rearing it's head again.
I want to shake it off. I want to splash a little cold water on my face, get my ass moving. As a first step, I submit a kind of state-of-the-nation status report from Republic of Tom, as of June 2, 2009:
--I can't get my eating under control. I'm a 35 year old husband and father who is grossly overweight and does not take responsibility for his own health, and whatever else may be true about me I don't want that failure to end up being my legacy. It's a complicated and silly lifelong saga, but the current crux of it is that I can't seem to find the will and discipline to focus and give my own physical (and by extension, emotional and spiritual) well-being the attention it deserves. So, yeah, I should probably keep working on that one.
--On the other hand I'm feeling relatively healthy creatively, intellectually and, as a byproduct, professionally. My wheels are turning in a lot of the right ways, and it's leading me down some surprising paths. The key is to find the strength to follow those paths, but I'm not trying to rush that. My goal right now is just to keep re-working the muscles that I had let atrophy for a good 15 years, and that's a process, not a flip of a switch. So far so good, for the most part.
--I love my family. I worry about my family. I worry about my ability to be who I need to be for my family. I miss my children, still, every day, when I'm not with them. I obsess about how the choices I'm making now are affecting them, in both practical and emotional ways, in both the long-term and the short-term. I worry that I am not the best husband that I could be, I worry that I am not giving my wife the kind of foundation and support she deserves, I worry that I am taking my incredible fortune and good luck for granted. I breathe in the essence of my family with every breath. My instinct is to define myself completely and totally and only by them, to shut out the rest of the world, to cocoon ourselves with each other forever. And I know that's not healthy. And so I don't. And yes, I'm on medication. It kind of helps.
--I don't care about sports anymore. I just don't.
--I miss reading novels. I'm reading like 10 fucking scripts a week but I haven't read a novel in the last 4 months, and it's hurting my brain.
--I want a drink. Right now. My name is Tom, and, in addition to lots of other things, I think I'm probably a high-functioning alcoholic. So there's that.
Well that should do it for today. That kind of felt good, I think.
I feel a little numb today, bloated and slow. It's a far too familiar feeling for me, a recurring rhythm (shit I had to write that word four times before I got it right. R-H-Y-T-H-M. I've never been able to spell that fucking word. I'll choose not to speculate on what that may mean) that I can't seem to shake. PASSIVITY, my old enemy, my crutch, is rearing it's head again.
I want to shake it off. I want to splash a little cold water on my face, get my ass moving. As a first step, I submit a kind of state-of-the-nation status report from Republic of Tom, as of June 2, 2009:
--I can't get my eating under control. I'm a 35 year old husband and father who is grossly overweight and does not take responsibility for his own health, and whatever else may be true about me I don't want that failure to end up being my legacy. It's a complicated and silly lifelong saga, but the current crux of it is that I can't seem to find the will and discipline to focus and give my own physical (and by extension, emotional and spiritual) well-being the attention it deserves. So, yeah, I should probably keep working on that one.
--On the other hand I'm feeling relatively healthy creatively, intellectually and, as a byproduct, professionally. My wheels are turning in a lot of the right ways, and it's leading me down some surprising paths. The key is to find the strength to follow those paths, but I'm not trying to rush that. My goal right now is just to keep re-working the muscles that I had let atrophy for a good 15 years, and that's a process, not a flip of a switch. So far so good, for the most part.
--I love my family. I worry about my family. I worry about my ability to be who I need to be for my family. I miss my children, still, every day, when I'm not with them. I obsess about how the choices I'm making now are affecting them, in both practical and emotional ways, in both the long-term and the short-term. I worry that I am not the best husband that I could be, I worry that I am not giving my wife the kind of foundation and support she deserves, I worry that I am taking my incredible fortune and good luck for granted. I breathe in the essence of my family with every breath. My instinct is to define myself completely and totally and only by them, to shut out the rest of the world, to cocoon ourselves with each other forever. And I know that's not healthy. And so I don't. And yes, I'm on medication. It kind of helps.
--I don't care about sports anymore. I just don't.
--I miss reading novels. I'm reading like 10 fucking scripts a week but I haven't read a novel in the last 4 months, and it's hurting my brain.
--I want a drink. Right now. My name is Tom, and, in addition to lots of other things, I think I'm probably a high-functioning alcoholic. So there's that.
Well that should do it for today. That kind of felt good, I think.
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