Excerpt

 If I had to pick just one Christmas song to call my very favorite, it would no doubt be this one:

A crowded room, friends with tired eyes

I′m hiding from you and your soul of ice

My God, I thought you were someone to rely on

Me? I guess I was a shoulder to cry on

A face on a lover with a fire in his heart

A man undercover, but you tore me apart

Ooh-ooh

Now I've found a real love, you′ll never fool me again

 

 

Wishing you all the warmth and joy of the holiday season,

The Don't-Call-It-A-Blogger. 

Know When To Run

 I'm not a gambler.  I mean, I've done it, but I don't do it.  Not my bag.  I'll tell you a short story before I tell you my story.

 I took a walk through a big casino a few years ago.  I went because it was raining outside, the parking was free, and it doesn't cost anything to go in.  Seemed like a way to kill some time and people watch.  I definitely saw some stuff.

A young man walked up to the Blackjack table with $100, placed a $50 bet.  Lost.  Placed another $50 bet.  Lost.  Turned and looked at me with a smirk and a shrug, feigned a chuckle, and left.  *poof* 

A group of bros went to the roulette table, one of them bet $100 on 0 Green, and hit it.  His buddies erupted.  Then he placed the exact same bet again, and hit it!  Immediately and out of nowhere, a swarm of suits came and changed out the roulette wheel and the little white ball.  The area turned to chaos and we just got out of there.

I walked by a completely different roulette table, said "27 black" and hit it.  No bet.  I just called the number.  Do you know the thrill, in and of itself, of guessing which number the little white ball will land on turns out to be rather minor?  I think in that moment I learned the games themselves are pretty boring.  I'd guess most people walking into a casino never much think about that.  They're not really there for the game.

I left that casino without spending a dime on anything.  Not even a snack or drink.  That was kind of a good feeling.

 But when some entity says they're giving away close to a billion dollars... well, for a $2 gamble, you should probably throw your name in the hat.  At least I thought so.  Now the jackpots often reach the high 9 figures, and the drawings are every few days.  A non-gambler could find themselves going to the convenience store a few times a week to hand over those $2.  It's the kind of thing that will make a non-gambler habitual.  But you know what?  This isn't even what I'm here to talk about.  Let me get right to it.

 I sure do have a lot of self-imposed rules for a non-gambler.  That's because I believe in fate. I think when it comes to the lottery, you have to.  You can't control any of it.  You pays your money, you takes your chances.  That's the full extent of it.  So when I buy a ticket, I ask for a quick pick.  I don't pick my own numbers and I don't intervene by injecting any "lucky numbers" into the mix.  What the computer gives me is what I get.  Fate.

So when I ask for a $2 quick pick, and the clerk accidentally spits out a $3 mega-multiplier or whatever it's called, well frankly that fucks up the whole system because now what do I do?  WHAT IF THAT TICKET TURNS OUT TO BE THE WINNER?  I have to take that ticket.  I hope this doesn't sound like comedy because I think it is absolute truth.  If the winning ticket in a high 9-figure lottery drawing comes from the same store where I refused a ticket, I don't see how that would not gnaw at me for the rest of my life.  No sir, if someone hands you a lottery ticket, you take that ticket.  Minimize your personal points of failure in the fate-delivery system.

If you’d rather see that wrapped in comedy, here - try this.

Me: One $2 quick pick please.
Clerk: No!  $3 multiplier.  Take it or live in regret forever.

And seriously - don't pick your own numbers.  Forget about your lucky number.  What if, because you had to play your lucky number, you match 5 out of 6 and the one that was wrong was your "lucky" number?  You okay living with that?  Don't put that on yourself.  Leave the heavy lifting up to fate and don't try to inject yourself into the process.

 And while we're at it, no, don't buy a lottery ticket for someone else. "Hey, when you go to the store, will you buy me a lottery ticket?"  That's a hard no.  That says, "Hey, can I borrow your fate for a sec?  Just long enough to make me rich, thanks."  I hope I don't need to explain that further.

 Anyway, I’m not a gambler.
[*smirk*, *shrug*, *nervous chuckle*]

This Photo Saved Me $22

 There was one time in my life (that I can remember) that I was late paying my property tax.  I just completely forgot.  I paid a day late.  Fun Facts: it was even toward the end of that day before I realized I hadn't paid.  I raced down to the Clerk's Office.  I was pretty pissed about it but the clerk said I should at least be glad that it was the last quarter; the penalty is a percentage of the unpaid balance.  Still a dumb mistake on my part and not a lesson I needed to learn twice.

Last week I got a letter from the Clerk's Office saying I had been assessed a penalty for being late on my Q1 tax payment.  The letter said it was received two days late.  That, plain and simple, wasn't true.  I paid on time, first thing in the morning.  The confusion came from the fact that I used the drop box so I didn't get a receipt.  I always use the drop box.  I've never had a problem with it.

I called the Clerk's Office and tried to find what the mix-up was.  I got some pretty vague info, but they were quite confident they couldn't have made a mistake.  I was 1000% sure they did, but, in case you don't know, here's how you handle any fines levied by a government: Pay it first.  Argue later.  The appeal will take a long time and interest will continue to accrue while they sort it out.  When you lose, you'll pay a lot more.  So stop the bleeding, then begin the fight.

 The City's position was that they were so confident that they check the drop box so thoroughly each day there was no way it could have been missed or lost.  "I stick my hand all the way up there" is what a clerk told me about how the box is checked.  Easy to tee off on that quote but I just pointed out that's a blind check.  

I was invited to file an appeal.  Believe it or not, you use the Property Tax Abatement form for that.  This is the same form people use to dispute their appraisal or to request a general reduction in tax based on general hardship, so when you submit this form, you need to show a copy of your tax bill, your entire payment history, a copy of the assessor's card, and some other stuff that... you... get from the City so you can print it out to... give... to... the...

City?

  Only took about 4 dozen trees to feed that bureaucratic ouroboros and my paperwork was in order.  For proof, I had a few things that at least showed I wasn't remembering things wrong.  I had a screenshot of a text with someone at 8:05AM saying I was heading downtown to pay taxes and asking if they wanted me to take theirs too.  I had a screenshot of another text at 8:38AM saying how easy parking was.  I had a record of a bank transfer at 8:51AM providing the funds to cover the check I just wrote.  And as fate would have it, I had this photo...

 

For whatever reason, I decided to snap this photo of a new art installation that was recently placed in front of City Hall.  I took the photo because it had snowed that morning and, on a gray and white day, this piece of art was trying to sell people on the idea that the skies here are rosy and we have lots of flowers. That's cool.  By the way it's literally 6ºF outside as I write this but the point is, the time stamp on this photo is 8:36AM on Tax Day, and this spot is about half a block from the drop box.  The photo allowed me to pinpoint, almost to the exact minute, when I paid my taxes.  I told them that (yeah - no one is going to take it this far, but) I'm sure there's security camera footage of City Hall from that day and I can tell you within a two minute time window where to look to find me dropping off my payment.

I like to think that, for a guy who didn't get a receipt, I had a pretty damn good idea of exactly when I paid my taxes.  I included all this in my Abatement package, loaded it all on a flatbed and dropped it at City Hall on a Thursday.

On Monday of the next week I got a call saying the fee was being refunded.  I was told specifically that the piece of evidence that impressed most was the photo. 

I can't quite believe this was overturned but I'll take the victory.  They still don't quite know what happened down there but the best guess is that the electric department who uses the same drop box must have absconded with my envelope (which by the way said TAXES on the front) and they sat on it for a couple days before returning it to City Hall.  Woulda been nice if someone there thought to tell them about their mistake instead of just silently putting it back two days past the due date, but I guess we can't have nice things.

Anyway, the whole problem is sorted out just as simple as that and now it's just an easy 4-6 week wait to get my money back!

Rumours

 I don't think so.

 One of the top 100 most over-hyped albums of all time.  This is a good album.  "Dreams" is a masterpiece.  I can remember being squeezed into a car full of older kids who wanted nothing to do with me, being driven by a parent I'd never met before on a rainy night in a part of town I'd never seen before, not understanding the current vibe at all... the parent tuning around the radio dial.  He skipped past this song and some kid in the back who seemed very mellow and adult asked to go back to it.  The parent obliged and the entire car full of people just shut up and listened.  Everyone tuning into that vibe is why I remember that moment at all.

 But that's not the whole album.  It has other good songs, but overall the album is just an imitation of the one that preceded it.  The one they dare to call the "White Album", which is nothing at all like the actual White Album but rather is Fleetwood Mac's eponymous offering from 1975.  It's the one with "Landslide" on it.  You'd think "Landslide", being so popular, must be on Rumours though, wouldn't you?  Same with "Rhiannon", but nope - White Album.

 The White Album really put the new Fleetwood Mac (Mac 2.0, now with Buckingham/Nicks) on the map.  It wasn't wildly successful right out of the gate, but it got there. 

 For Rumours, I think a couple of things happened. Because they just got a new lineup and had completely abandoned their blues roots, in a very real sense they were coming off what could fairly be considered a debut album - with a couple of bona fide hits, so the Mac had everyone's ear and people were eager to hear their follow-up.  

 It's so rare that a sophomore effort ever captures any of the magic of the debut.  There are a lot of legitimate reasons for that.  Of course you can only be new once but another thing many artists will tell you is that you have your whole life to write your first album and six months to write your second.

I think on Rumours, Fleetwood Mac just went to make another White Album (Fun Facts: both have 11 songs and clock in, total, within 3 minutes of each other.  The albums also sound very similar overall.  Even the covers of the two albums are a bit similar; a black and white photo of two people.  Okay, Rumours is off white) but it just so happens Rumours had a lot of great songs.  The ideas kept coming - at a time when they had everyone's attention.  Credit them for their preparedness at the opportunity.  That alone is worthy of recognition.  Almost all initially successful artists get that second opportunity.  Few, if any, do what The Mac did with it.  This album wins its spot on any list by acclamation.

 Nice, but listen to them side by side and I think you'll agree Rumours is just a turgid version of the White Album. More or less the same songs with most of the fun and youthful hunger stripped out of them.  You can just hear the cocaine and breakups, but none of that was ever a value-add for me.  It didn’t make the music better - it made the mythology better.   For me, I'll take the rather breezy, relaxed groove of "Over My Head" over any track on Rumours all day.  

Both good albums, but typically credited in the wrong order.  I prefer the one that made Rumours possible.

How To Jump A Bicycle

 A Guide for Old People

 First, I don't mean how to jump over a bicycle.  I mean how to go over a jump on your bicycle.  I hope that was clear.  If not, let's probably don't bother to read on.

 Online you'll find... I don't know - hundreds? of videos breaking down every moment of the act of getting air and successfully landing.  Watch all of those you want.  I don't think they'll be of any help.  From a technical standpoint there's really only one thing you need to know; stand up.  Don't try to do it while seated.

But that's it.  Otherwise the way to do it is to just go do it.  Sadly, this perfectly serviceable advice nugget has been ruined by people trying to sell sneakers, but if we can get past that for a moment I can explain what I mean.  Then you can go buy your sneakers. 

It just isn't possible or even reasonable to expect a video to break down every critical moment of a jump for you, and you wouldn't have time to recall all of it in real time anyway.  You eventually just have to jump and feel it out.  You have to put yourself in the situation and feel your way through it.  That's the hard part because a healthy, sensible fear will stand in your way.  

The way to break through that isn't strictly mental toughness.  I mean - that doesn't hurt, but the answer is to become super comfortable with bike riding in general and develop a keen sense of balance.  With both wheels on the ground, get good at taking your bike over all sorts of surfaces and become generally adept at negotiating the everyday turns, hills, and dips etc.  You need a ton of confidence with the bike on the ground before you're ready to get airborne.

Crossing that line to liftoff still takes guts, but more confidence gained = less guts required.

If you have this foundation going in, your first attempt shouldn't be the disaster you might fear.  You might come up short or land a little wrong, but with solid fundamentals you're hedging your bets that you'll be able to ride out of it.  

Denouement: when you're up there in the air even for that brief moment you should quickly get a feel for it.  It should make sense to you.  That's where you learn.  Then it's just a matter of dialing it in the same way you did with everything else.  

Now go shred some gnar, brah!

 

Three Cheers for the Guardrails

The Internet of course is a mess, but I'd like to take a moment to appreciate the time we're in with it right now, because... well, at the risk of sounding like an old fogey, the standard of decency tends to devolve.  Each generation lowers the bar a little bit.  I don't mean to sound too judgemental of that.  I think it's empirically true that priorities shift and what was important for one generation to protect just isn't even on the RADAR of the next.  The song "Anything Goes" which complains about this perceived moral erosion was written in 1934.

 Oops I got off on a tangent about this but "perceived" is really the key word.  It's generational perspective, and I don't think that each generation gets together and holds a conference to decide what does and doesn't matter to them.  I don't know what happens, but the collective consciousness somehow seems to tune into the same wavelength and change the standard of what matters and what doesn't - the ambient decency.  I'm sure my generation did it.  A glimpse of stocking most definitely was looked on as something shocking, but at some point skirts went above the knee and it just didn't matter.

So for as much of a mess as the current internet is, I'm happy that the really terrible stuff (and you know it's out there) still remains very hidden.  Maybe I'm wrong about that but even in a time when it seems you're never more than one typo or errant click away from naked boobies, there still remains a "dark web" where new categories of abhorrent are surely being invented every day.  I really don't know who or what is responsible for keeping that stuff so hidden, but ultimately it remains that way because it violates the current collective moral standard, and that's great but if anything I just wrote above is true, the clock is ticking.

Why Is The Sky Blue

Because that's the wavelength of light that is scattered in all directions when it hits the molecules in our atmosphere.

If a different wavelength were so dominantly scattered, that means our atmosphere would be made up of different molecules, which probably means everything on Earth that lives off air would be living off something else, which means everything would be completely different.

A green sky could mean the atmosphere is made of a very thick gas, so we're all 11' tall and offensively hirsute with incredibly deep voices.  Trees are made of iron.  Hard ocean waves crash on the shore like pieces of slate.

Yellow sky might mean a very thin gas atmosphere and scorched planet where nothing grows more than 8" high because the average temperature is 120ºF.  

We are what we breathe.  The oxygen we all need probably informs our physiology.  If we were made to breathe something else, we'd likely be very different beasts. 

That's why the sky is blue.  Now go to bed.

Nectar's

Nectar's really was like the touchstone of our young lives. It was home base. If you were going to get together with friends and go out for the evening, you at least met there to decide where you were going. You might go to another place for a bit, but usually you'd step back in to Nectar's just to reconnoiter. It was as much a lounge as anything else. It always had live music, so I dare say the place held extra meaning for those of us touched in that particular way. Also, it never charged a cover.

The food was fantastic and fantastically bad for you. The staff were all long-serving employees and each one was a character that helped color the whole experience. In a lot of ways it was like high school. There were cliques and circles of friends - some you could hang with, some you would just smile and nod at. Different nights of the week had slightly different personalities depending on which band was playing, but even if it wasn't your kind of night, the food was always there for you and if you timed it right you could show up during set break and eat in relative peace. So even if you weren't "going out" that night, you still stopped in to this place to connect with your central nervous system. And on the nights when you were there to see the band, you saw and heard some stuff you'd never forget.

You could probably describe Nectar on paper and most people would think "Yeah - I got it" but it couldn't really tell the story of his significance. The most involved owner you'll ever see. He didn't just make all this possible, he fostered it. But it's not like he cultivated or curated it. He just built the perfect platform for the time and let the community express itself through it. It was just meant to be. This word never gets used in a positive light anymore, but Nectar was the enabler. He was also a bit of a guiding light. Your band better start at 9PM sharp though.

Even though the current "Nectar's" is closing for good (and in this case I mean "for the better") the real Nectar's finished long ago when the avuncular Greek we all knew and loved sold it and retired (and took with him the best breakfast ever served.)

It became a very different place after that. Generations after might have valued other things more, but they never had the chance to refute what we all thought was a good time. They created their own version of Nectar's, but that's partly because they had to.

Today they may wax prosaic about what the place meant to them, but just know they were paying a cover charge and watching a "headliner" that has long since disappeared. We were dodging horrible covers of "Brown Eyed Girl" while enjoying a bowl of turkey soup and a slice of blueberry pie before heading across the street to play pinball.

The Nectar's of the 1980's could never be forgotten and is the reason the Nectar's of today lasted as long as it did, and while this really seems like the part where I should say "We'll miss you, Nectar's!" the truth is most of us said that 35 years ago. The thing we loved was never coming back. So goodbye, whatever that thing is today. It was time for you to go. If it's meant to be, something original will take your place.

Erosion

 Well we ruined it.  Way to go, everyone.  We've thrown every barb, jab, and downright personal affront at every one of our presidents over the last 25 years.  The bar of decorum has been lowered almost to the floor.  Who in their right mind would want the job now?

No one.  No one in their right mind.   Which means we've pretty well guaranteed ourselves that we'll only ever have presidents who can't see straight.  The only people who are going to want the job will be the ones so clouded by ego that there's no way they could serve the country's best interest.  

The argument of course is that each of these presidents has done despicable things; reached levels of incompetence and evil so low that the opposition are thoroughly justified in their reaction.  Maybe, but only if you have that much animus to begin with.  I don't think you can blame the President for dragging it out of you.  Don't try to convince me (or yourself) that it's just your passion for your country that made you print up those "I did that!" stickers, or made you chant "Let's go Brandon!" or create a day-calendar of 365 "Bushisms" to remind people of quotes that weren't his most eloquent.

Just like it's not a good look to trash anybody, I think it's never been a good look to trash the President.  I'm not even talking about respect for the office.  I'm just talking about going off on somebody.  It's generally not well received.  When they go after the President, people think they're in the clear.  It probably makes them feel intelligent and informed to be able to challenge a President's policy on... anything. 

But there's an erosion taking place.  When we stop checking each other as the insults start to fly, the bar keeps lowering.

 

"Slick Willie" - Clinton

"Worst President Ever" - Bush 43 

"Socialist in Chief" - Obama

"Orange Man Bad" - Trump 45

"Fuck Joe Biden" - [you... you figured out which one this was, right?] 

"Fascist, Loofa-Faced Shit-Gibbon" Trump 47

 

So what's left?  What do we call the next president we hate?  And you know, no matter who it is, plenty of people are going to hate whoever it is.  "I love the country so much, I called our new president the most foul thing you've ever heard anyone say!"  Well congratulations on your performative outrage.  I hope it sells you a lot of merch.  And God bless America!

Toxic!

Kinda too bad that "toxic" has become a buzzword.  Nuclear waste is toxic.  Sulfuric acid is toxic.  Those are things that, y'know... kill you almost instantly?  Behaviors generally don't.  They might be abhorrent.  They might be emotionally devastating, but they aren't toxic.  

Doesn't matter though because language and communication today are more emotionally driven than ever, and the word "toxic" is highly charged, so that makes it the perfect choice.  It's all part of Rage Culture®, which I will not rehash here.

Masculinity has really been the main target of this adjective.  There's a concern that men are severely damaging themselves emotionally because of intense pressure to conform to some (unpublished) masculine ideal.  I don't know that there's an owner's manual that defines the masculinity that all men are supposed to strive for, but I'm assured it's out there!

Here's where I say something sexist...  

I think a lot of men just gravitate towards behaviors that have been pinned as toxic.  We don't tend to ask each other how we're feeling mentally.  We don't usually talk about our wives or kids or any family members.  We make up stupid jokes.  We talk about repairs.  We really tend to focus on things different from what women focus on, and I'm here to tell you, it isn't because we're forcing ourselves to think of these things.  We're not, secretly inside, hoping one of our buddies will start talking about an emotional issue so that we can all finally let our guard down and cry together.  Some of us don't even have much ability to cry. 

Of course some men aren't quite wired this way, which is totally fine, but the simple fact is those dudes won't really be able to hang out with the guys who are wired that way.  No different than how a group of guys that want to talk about NASCAR all day won't be seen with the ones who want to talk about Dungeons and Dragons, even if all these guys want to cry.

So go easy with your opinion of toxic men.  We're just following a genetic code that makes us the louche knuckle-draggers you so love to hate to love.  Plus, we went through all this shit with Phil Donahue like a thousand years ago.  We became sensitive men.  We bought sweaters.  It didn't stick.  Don't expect this will, either.

The Clean Room

I got the chance to visit a manufacturing clean room recently.  I didn't actually get to go in the clean room but I got to see it up close through windows and was introduced to the gowning area, where I got to try on all the garb.  I do love that phrase "gowning area."  Sounds like maybe a coronation is about to take place.  Except the reality of it is about a million miles from that.  This brief tour really left a mark on me.  

To prepare for entry into the clean room, you must

• Stick each foot in the shoe scrubber
• Wash and dry your hands
• Wear latex gloves
• Don a bouffant (hair net)
• Affix a veil around your head that hangs from just below the eyes down just past the neck
• Wear a hood that covers all the way down over your shoulders, executioner style
• Wear a full-length jumpsuit (following the correct protocol so the sleeves don't touch the ground while you step into it) that snaps at the neck, containing the veil and the base of the hood
• Step into calf-length "boots" that have their own rubber soles that affix by snapping over your shoes, with protective material that extends up over the calf and attaches with another snap around the leg

That's it.  You're now completely covered, from head to toe, with just a small horizontal space for your eyes.  Are your hands sweating from the gloves yet?

Now you work a 12-hour shift.  Hold on - don't panic just yet.  It might sound worse than it is.

But probably not.

The clean room itself is very large, but no one works the whole room.  In fact, you work in just one of many large hallways within the room.  Each hallway contains the large machine needed to complete one step of the process.  A worker is assigned to only one machine/hall, so that's where you spend your day.  The rows are maybe 10' wide and 60' long.  There are various carts full of bins and other racks of things lining the sides of the hallways.  It's all not too unlike a hospital ward.  Some of these hallways are lit with that similar antiseptic white light, but many of them are lit with a strange orange light.  There's certainly no trace of sunlight.  The sound like that of computer cooling fans surrounds you.  Not excessively loud but elevated and relentless.  No one seems to wear hearing protection, maybe because that would just be the last straw?  The temperature and humidity in the room are always exactly the same.  The net effect here is sensory deprivation.  

You yourself aren't really making the semiconductors.  All that work is microscopic.  It's all done by specialized machines.  Your job is to simply load the machine, and then unload it when it says it is done.  Then you hand off that piece of the puzzle to the person in the next row who feeds it into their tool and passes it off to the next person and so on.  It requires training but is essentially unskilled labor.  Some days you're quite busy and on your feet almost the whole time.  Other days you're doing a lot of sitting around in that ridiculous get-up trying to find ways to kill time while your rods and cones get oranged to oblivion.

I don't think humans are made to do this.  That having been said, it's possible it isn't quite as bad as it sounds.  I mean, it's pretty bad, but I can almost see how anyone even does it.  Within that 12-hour shift, you get two, paid, one-hour breaks.  An hour is a pretty long break.  It's sort of human.  You have the flexibility to take these breaks whenever you want (as coordinated with your co-workers.)  Ideally, you could work 4 hours, take a break, work 3 hours, break, and then finish up the final 3.  There's an exercise room on site.  You could also just leave for awhile and go see life.

But could you do that and, after seeing actual living humans out in the wild, still force yourself to go back to the clean room for your next 3 hours, or would you just walk?  It might help if you think you're providing the world with much needed semiconductor chips.  At least it might help for awhile.  

Still, employers know this world of sensory deprivation is out of the ordinary, and I imagine years of turnover have led them to create a schedule that helps these clean room workers keep their sanity.  Sorry for all the math here, but in this schedule there exists a time when you'll have 2 days off, 2 on, and then another 2 off.  The schedule is 2 on, 2 off, 3 on, 2 off, 2 on... so the worst it ever gets for you is 3 consecutive 12-hour days.  With the two, one-hour breaks thrown in there, the 12-hour day doesn't seem too bad, but when you consider you have to wrap yourself in some kind of polyethylene pita and walk up and down the same hallway for the entire waking day... it starts to seem a little... badder.

Burnout is a problem in these jobs.  I don't think it's just the hours.  It really can't be that healthy to wear that stuff all day every day.  That orange light has to mess with your vision.  The pay is pretty base-level, but it's a job that provides benefits (85% paid anyway) and it's a steady employer.  I think people stick with it for a certain amount of time until it catches up with them that humans really aren't meant to do this - or if at all, certainly not for very long.  It's borderline psychological warfare that eventually loses the borderline.

In this particular case I think it's good news that the employer is currently hard at work trying to replace all these employees with robots.  I'm sure the employer is enticed by the payroll savings and work advantages of not having to have live employees.  Carting items from one place to another, feeding those items into machines, waiting for those machines to finish... all sounds like something robots would excel at.  The company is focusing on a better bottom line, but in some strange twist, this phasing out of human jobs seems merciful.  It might appear to be in the best interest of the company, but what I see is one less cruel circumstance desperate workers have to be subject to.

Dystopia

 Okay!  We've hit that point in the cycle again where weight loss takes center stage!  These are exciting times and I know you, like me, are eager to get started and dive into the soul-crushing world of hunger and deprivation, so let's get to it!

Now that I have that pointless intro off my chest, lemme tell you, from years of experience with the weight loss yo-yo, what the hardest part of the process is.  

(I hope you didn't fall for that "hardest part" misdirection because right off the bat that could be your first mistake. Did you think there was just one hard part?  Nope!  But it isn't all bad.  Really.  Allow me to break it down into the sections as I've seen them.)

1) Starting

Starting is probably the hardest part.  That's the day you decide to break the habits.  It's the day you deprive yourself of the snack that you look forward to every day, which, if I can say it one more time, means you have to deny yourself something you look forward to every day, so there's going to be an immediate void.  Since you're on Day One, you don't yet have any progress or results to look back on.  That means all you have in this moment is disappointment; disappointment in your weight, and disappointment in this stupid, lousy day that doesn't have your favorite snack.  I don't have any advice on making it through this obstacle but I'm here to tell you, once you manage to give that stuff up, you actually get used to living without it pretty quickly.  

Sidebar: Keep in mind I'm a calorie-counter.

The only thing I focus on is my caloric intake,

and I aim for a pretty low number.  Within reason,

I don't worry too much about how I get there.

Although during the diet phase I cut out almost

all sugar, I still sometimes eat french fries and

some other things that aren't good for me.

But, my #1 rule is to make sure I don't exceed

my daily calorie limit.  French fry calories can

add up pretty fast, so if I eat them, I've got a

lot of other offsetting choices I need to make.

Also, I don't do any exercise beyond just staying

active.  I ride a bicycle and walk and do yard 

work, etc., but you won't catch me on a treadmill

or going for a jog.  I've noted before, all exercise

does is make me hungry and I've already got that 

well covered, thanks!

After just one week in, two major things happen.  First, you've established a new normal and, this can't be overstated, you'll start to see your new routine develop a path forward.  You settle into a groove, and the next few weeks won't feel like they require as much effort.  The other thing that happens after just one week is you feel just the slightest difference in the way your clothes fit.  Things are just a liiiiiitle less snug. You really need to key into this feeling and the momentum it carries.  The groove/path forward that you just established only brings more of this over the next few weeks.

  

2) Ten Weeks In

After about ten weeks of this goddamn bullshit you start to lose patience with being hungry.  You really start to tire of feeling famished and you just want to eat something and be happy.  Good luck with this stage. But, after ten weeks of eating sensibly and limiting your calories, you can easily have lost 10 pounds.  Not unreasonable to think you may have lost 15 pounds.  You also need to really key into this feeling and take some pride in your progress and results.  Hopefully that keeps you from throwing all that work away.

3) Those Last Five Pounds

No one has much sympathy for someone who says they really need to lose five pounds.  In fact saying that out loud is likely to get you punched.  In fact, it probably should.  Don't say it.  Those last five coming off won't likely make you look much different but, again, you'll feel it in the way your clothes fit.  Either way, you're so close.  Don't give up now.  You've come this far.  Finish it!

4) Finishing It

Now what?  No, seriously... Now what?  Now you're just thin forever, right?  You put in all the work and I guess you're done and that's it.  The truth to this is there's a glorious moment in achieving your goal weight where, just for a moment, you can eat whatever the hell you want and you're still thin.  There probably isn't a greater feeling in the world.  This moment lasts approximately 12 and one half seconds, then you turn around and march right back into the direction from whence you came.  

Slowly slipping back into the habits that got you in trouble is all too easy and subtle, and that's what makes it so hard to avoid.

I think the key from here on out is to get on a scale once a week and make a move as soon as you see it go up by 3 pounds.  Don't let it get to 5.  Good luck.  

Enjoy your success!  See you back at Step One real soon!

5 Years is Enough

 Here's, by far, the worst thing to come out of the pandemic; ring lights.  Damn those infernal things!  I'm sure you've seen them.  It's like a head-sized black plastic ring on a stand with a holder in the middle for your phone.  It centers your phone in a harsh and cold ring of LED light, and that's not even its worst problem.  The worst of it is that it makes the creepiest little white circle at the center of your eyeballs which produces some weird kind of zombifying effect.  At best.  At worst it looks makes you look like a cyborg.

I am either being recorded or those things are about to shoot bright blue lasers.

So please, people, lay off the ring lights.  The ring light was originally the domain of dentists.  It's a great light source for super closeup (macro) photography because when you get the camera really close to the subject the lens blocks your light, so having a ring of light on the end of the lens was kind of the perfect solution.  These lights used to be called dental rings.  Now I think they are just called "lights".  It would be best if we just called them off.

Right!

Back in the 1900's when I went to a college with training wheels on it, I was taking my final exam in a computer class.  The class was about databases.  It's where I learned the word "concatenate", which is a tremendously fun word.  Let's all say it!  conCATenate   FUN!

I understood that class.  It wasn't that hard but navigating your way around a database requires its own sort of choreography that can trip you up so it was really just about learning some of that.

At this final exam, the instructor asked us to pull a list of names from Group A and Group B that met a similar criteria.  It was one of a series of queries (and I think I am going to trademark "Series of Queries" and somehow use it to profit from the gay community) we had to do for this final exam.  These queries were set up at a variety of workstations around the classroom and we could do them in any order we wanted.  I noticed everyone in the class breezed through this particular question.  When I got to it I hit a brick wall.  With a couple more queries to go, I spent a good chunk of my time trying to figure out how to do this one.

Here's where I make the long story shorter.  Turns out the question was not valid.  Data from Group A and Group B just does not intersect.  After about 15 valuable minutes of self-doubt, wondering if I was sick on the ONE day we discussed how to do this, I boldly (but quietly) went to the instructor and said "This can't be done" fully expecting a disappointed look and perhaps a "I can't help you" but the instructor stared at the question in silence for a good ten count and just said "Leave it blank."

Okay.  So everyone else in the class answered it wrong.  I got it right.  What, do you suppose, are the chances everyone else will have their scores reduced?  Hold on - let me run a quick query on that.  Oh - ZERO.  ZERO CHANCE.

Here's my point, summarized as quickly as possible in the least preachy way I can muster because it's a new year and who wants to start out with a lecture?

Being the only one who is right isn't an automatic free pass.  It puts you against the grain and that makes you a little wrong.  So if you plan to actually do anything with the info, it can take a little courage to be the only one who is right.  Look at the guy who knew the Space Shuttle wasn't ready for launch.  He was the only one and he wasn't insistent enough to stop "the machine" behind the machine so off it went.

Call it groupthink, herd mentality, conformity... whatever buzzword you like. When everyone else has it wrong and you have it right, you're in a position, and I think you often have to weigh the advantages of calling out the error because the first reaction will be that you are difficult.  You're also going to embarrass a bunch of people.  You're going to screw up the social dynamic.  It better be worth it.  Maybe it is, but you might be wrong.