Tuesday, July 10

Resistance Is Futile

Each day the scale fails to drop by the expected number, I say mean things to myself. “Dummy,” is a favorite. Also high on the list: Stupid. Lazy. Sometimes I even direct my venom at the scale: Stupid scale. Dumb scale. Lazy scale.

It seems my “mean” vocabulary is fairly limited. Stupid vocabulary.

But it gets worse. While I’m saying cruel things to myself, I make myself too mad to write. Dumb blog. Stupid computer.

That’s happened twice now.

* * *

I have a former boss whom I much admire. One day, when I was beating myself up over a fairly serious mistake, he stopped me. “Once is never; twice is always.”

Huh?

“You make a mistake once, you get to write it off. It was a bad day, you were tired, you didn’t read the situation right, you married badly, you had a bad boss. Whatever. It happens.”

“Okay. But I’m still an idiot.”

“No, you’re an idiot if it happens twice. You get fired from one job, you can blame the boss. You get fired from two jobs, you have to blame yourself. One divorce is a freebie. Two is a pattern. One arrest is a corrupt cop. Two arrests makes you a criminal. Get it?”

I got it.

“Now get back to work, and don’t miss another deadline...because forever after, that’ll be who you are: The editor who misses deadlines.”

It was a complete paradigm shift. And it applies to everything. If I break a diet once, it’s an aberration. Twice, it’s a pattern. If I skip the gym one day, I had an injury or a bad night’s sleep. Two days, and I’m just blowing off my commitments.

Which is why, despite my throbbing ankle, I walked the Big Hill this morning. I’ll eventually have a better excuse to skip a day, and when that excuse arises, it can’t be my second miss.

My family wanted burgers for dinner on Sunday night. Oh. My. Goodness. Those burgers smelled like little whiffs of heaven. But one bite, and there’d be no stopping me next time. I’d be the fat chick who can’t master her appetite.

And it’s also the reason I must continue blogging. Because by missing yesterday’s entry, I just became the dummy who allows the Stupid Scale to control her behavior, instead of the inverse.

But I’m back on track, I am. From this day forward, I am the master of the Stupid Scale, master of the blog, master of my own personal universe. I make the decisions for me. I am borg. I am. We am. We are.

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Today's soundtrack: Picard goes to the dark side. But never fear! Even Jean Luc's mistake was fixable!

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