Size 4 Jeans

Let me ask you something: Are you ever really “you”? Do you ever really show your true face to the world, I mean your deep down, “this is the uncensored me,” raw and open you? Does anybody?

I think the answer everyone would like to give is yes, but the honest one is no. Are there times when you’d like to say or do something, but don’t for fear of how others will react? I think that everyone has moments like that, and that means you’re not giving out the real you. I’m not necessarily saying that this is a bad thing, just pointing out that I’m not sure anyone in today’s world really shows their true self all the time.

If you show your raw and uncensored self to the world, you have to be prepared for the reactions you get, and not let them affect you. I only know one person who claims that she is like this and that’s my mother, and she’s one of the most unhappy people I’ve ever known. I don’t know if her unhappiness stems from a complete inability to connect with anyone or whether the inability to connect is because she’s extremely critical of the world and just about everything in it, from my father on outward, but there it is. And I’m not sure she really operates that way all the time anyway, no matter what she says. Read the rest of this entry »

Let me be completely clear at the outset: The title of this blog says exactly what I mean. Size 4 Jeans, ’til death do us part. Put simply, I fully intend to be wearing size 4 clothing when I die. I wear a size 4 now, and I expect that it won’t change.

This does not, however, say anything as to why I would call my blog that. The title is a result of a fair amount of convoluted thinking that started when I woke up yesterday morning. It’s difficult to reconstruct the exact stream of consciousness at this point, but in the interest of back story, I’ll give it a go:

I woke up thinking “damn, I really should try to exercise, but I really HATE it. Being 40 probably means that I can’t skate by much longer on metabolism alone, and every year it gets harder to keep my weight where I want it. And yeah, I may be thin, but I’m not fit. But I HATE exercise! Maybe if I started a blog to keep track of the ups and downs, maybe interact with some readers who had the same feelings or could share some new fitness activities, that would motivate me.

“Of course, then there are all the people that look at me and say ‘what do you have to gripe about? You’re thin, you look great!’ like I have less of a right to be conscious of my weight than they do, or the people who say ‘yeah, right, where from?’ when I say I need to lose five pounds if the subject comes up in conversation. That kind of thing really pisses me off. I’m not obsessed about my weight, I’m just conscious of it, and if I’m conscious of this five pounds now I won’t need to lose 20 later. I should be able to say what I like about my weight, without being quiet because I’m in a room full of people who have more to lose than I.”

And that set me off on a whole round of things that I sometimes don’t say because of someone else, things I get irritated about, things I wonder about or have to get out of my system, or things I just want to chat about. I spent an hour or two brainstorming about these types of things, so there’s lots of content waiting to get put on the screen that I won’t talk about on my other blog. No, I’m not telling where that other blog is, because nobody needs to know that. Read the rest of this entry »