raiders of the lost blog posts

doing some house cleaning (hah!) i found the following unposted post:

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the obvious (in the new me) 12/22/2005

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i can pinpoint the exact moment that i became a grown-up. an adult. a post-larval being. the new me.

it was the moment i said to myself "stop whining and do
something about it".

now, that's kind of abstract. but i can do better than that. i
remember the "it" that i needed to do something about. the "it" was
that i was fat and i no longer enjoyed being fat. and the "something"
was exercise.

up to that point in my life, there were many hints, and building
blocks, and signposts, and guides, and tools, and even books. i had
all i needed to "do something about it", except the will. the
drive. the maturity.

so one day i got the final building block and everything snapped into
place. i mark the day i did my first home deadlift as the day i grew
up and began the slow transformation into "the new me". i could look
up the date. i have records.

50 lbs of fat and 200lbs of deadlifted iron later, i'm not the same
person. but i'm not finished.

being an adult -- mature -- is not a binary state. it's a measure. a
thing of degree. i am an adult to the extent to which i stop whining
and do something about it. i don't do something about
all my problems. i still whine. i still have some maturing to do.

this weekend <LINKLINKLINK> i woke up on saturday with a horrible sore
throat. it ruined my weekend. i got all congested and thought i had
a cold. maybe i did. maybe it was a flu. maybe it was allergies. i
suspect it was allergies.

i decided on monday to stop whining about my allergies and do
something about them. this reinforced my recent resolution to stop
whining about my general lack of cleanliness and style and do
something about it (hence the <LINKLINKLINK> coffee table and
<LINKLINKLINK> fridge). as a result, i'm on a cleaning spree. a
deep cleaning spree. i'm vacuuming and moving furniture and
cleaning on my hands and knees with a flashlight and a soggy paper
towel. it's killing me. my allergies are so bad from the cleaning
that i can't breathe, even through my paper dust mask.

so what.

fuck it. i'm not going to whine about, i'm doing something about it.

and the simple matter of doing something about it has
revolutionized my attitude. i'm just as sick and allergic as i was on
the weekend. i'm just as unable to breathe or smell things. but this
weekend i was miserable, and down, and depressed. now i've never felt
more positive.

for christmas i will have a nice, clean apartment, for the first time
in a long time.

and i'll be one step closer to the "new" new "new" new "new" mature me.