So heres the thing, there are days when we should NOT leave the house, we should shut the phone off, we should disconnect the internet, and we should NOT pay attention. Today was one of those days for me. It was brutal. I felt betrayal, inadequacie, girl issues, and professional problems. I felt alienated, disgusted, financially over extended, and really quite bad. I felt this growing all day, it was just coming and coming and coming. It was going to result in bad movie rentals, cookies and milk, and buffalo wings and two liters of mountain dew.

But, I felt it coming. I tweeted it, andthe tweeterverse, specifically Wendy, and Cheryl, Lacy, Shawn and Carlos all stepped and were so supportive of me, and talked me off the bad  sugar ledge.  Just with their presence.  Just with a calming touch electronically, with a kind word in a time of betrayal.

So tonight I went to the gym, and had a mediocre workout, but it was good enough, and I am happy enough that right now I feel amazing.  I feel so lucky to have friends like these.

Now, it is 315 am, and I feel so proud of myself.  I broke another ten pound weight loss barrier, and that is simply intoxicating.  So those that want to tell me I am on the wrong path, making bad choices, or whatever, I trust my judgement, and I do not think I am going to waver from my path.  I am right.

But more than that, this night when doing my meditation and breath work, I was confronted with a recurring thought. I have not learned my lessons well.

By that I mean I have not learned things that have been clearly taught to me emotionally over and over again. I have even internally commented on the lesson, when I thought it prior, and said something like…See Dino that was the last time. But it never is. It never ever is. No matter how unhappy some relationships make me, no matter how bad they are, I often find myself reaching out to them.

So, now I am writing it here in this blog, in the hopes that my typing it will make it better. The lesson is that I have people or relationships in my life that are bad. They are negative, one sided, often predatory and humiliating relationships that I have held onto because I have been ruderless. Without rudder and direction, one is left often in the hinterlands, and has to take on whatever is in front of one.

That is a handful of relationships in my life. They are marked primarily by long periods of non interaction, marked by my seeking out that friend for some hollow interaction in my time of need, and being met with even more superficial or unresponsive action. These are not the actions of a friend or in my case a healthy spirit.

These relationships are also often marked with a one sided expense. These folks know some of the rules or guidelines I have for myself, and in many cases exploit those and rarely if ever reciprocate. Often I am left expending something, and it is to anothers benefit, and nothing is returned to me. In short, I give and I give, and I never get. But, that is melodramatic.

The nice thing is I was reminded of this tonight while glancing at facebook.com. I happened upon a message from one person to another, and it reminded me that the intimacy between these two, that I assumed was something I shared, was in fact not part of my life. Or theirs.

Please do not think I am feeling sorry for myself. In fact that is not the case. But what is the case is the reminder of what is a true friend, and what is not. What is a intimate relationship, and what folks are simply looking for something for themselves and know that moving me this way or that will get them what they want.

I am glad that I have true friends in my life. Friends that show themselves to me in this case by refusing gifts of any kind from me no matter how small. I realize now that the refusal is a good thing. That those true friends are showing me that they they want to be my friend for my friendship, not for the items or gifts I give.

So thank you true friends.

One must address the solution element to all of these lessons. I think this lesson is great and difficult. The lesson demands that I cull these faux friendships from my life, and internalize them as business relationships, and that is hard. It is also hard to not reach out to these relationships when I am sad and lonely. So I must work on that myself.

Thank you universe, and thank you facebook for that eveer so sly lesson.

So far I have been pretty positive, and all of the rest, but the past week was sort of ugly, and as a result it was emotionally brutal. So tonight I am drinking a mountain dew Best Buddy from Kwik Trip, and am sort of filled iwth self loathing. I know no one likes this stuff, but this is part of the journey, and as a result we all must embrace the whole experience. And the crappy dark nights of the soul are part of that.

I think one of the worst things about being a fat guy, and a developed quickly fat guy, is the shame. I mean, I put on weight post college, but I really packed it on in the last 4 or 5 years. I mean it was a massive increase. It happened fast, and it happened in a way that I did not really expect. And it honestly happened when I was not thinking clearly. I had my fathers passing, change in careers to a very sedentary one, and it just happened.

I became aware of it one morning with my buddy Sullie. We had gone to play racquetball, and it had really been the first sort of activity I had taken on athletically in at least a year, and probably 50 pounds. I went to start running, and I fell. I did not trip, but my balance was so compromised that I fell down. It was a new body, and I was not ready for it. It was humbling. I had never been that guy before, and suddenly I was fat. In front of a friend. that was bad.

I think when I think about it, I get so upset. It has been a long time since real “companionship”. I think one of the things I do not want as a fat guy is to be touched. In anyway. This is also a departure for me. I spent my 20s with a massage therapist, and we existed in the touch arena (get your head out of the gutter). In my latee 20s I was a Pub guy, and that was a physical existence (its okay to go gutter there).

Now, I cannot imagine someone touching me. I feel my fleshy body, and it feels foreign and a bit wrong. It is hot and sweaty in the summer, and I would not want to be touched. I have always been vain, and I have always wanted to be attractive, and now I just know I am not. I dislike people telling me they like me as a person, especially when my self loathing is flaring, and I cannot hear anything other than, “You are nice, if you were not fat”.

My clothes are shit, they feel like drapes covering me. Because I know I am hiding. I am putting on blanket sized t shirts to hide the fact that I look like a pile of goo.

I think Fat Guys like me are hiding, and the hiding is a self fulfilling prophecy. The more we hide, the more we eat, the more we eat, the less healthy we are, and the less healthy we are, the more we hide.

So this blog is about my return to health.  I have to say, that the woman who started exercise wausau has been a huge inspiration.  Plus, I think she is pretty, so that never hurts.

I started taking my life back, and connecting to my body a bit ago, and I have a long way to go.  But, I am going to get there.  I know this because I am inspired and driven by the goals I see manifesting in others.  There success can be mine.

Well, Exercise Wausau has fallen on hard times.  She was running a gym, and that sort of twittered away.  But, you have to respect a single woman for trying.  She has a lot of gear, and you should explore it, or the services she offers.  Help her get back on her feet.

At the very least send her an encouraging email through her website, or call her and wish her the best.

She is good.  She deserves happiness and success.

So, its been a good summer. I have never felt this physically active, and I sort of feel like I am turning the corner. I still have problems eating every four hours, but that is something that will be a daily activity, and a struggle each day. So I thought I would look back a bit, at where I have been and what has meant some stuff to me.

Looking Back.

-Cheryl and Chris. I met Cheryl through this website, and I met Chris because she is married to the guy. They are really a cool couple, and a pretty serious inspiration. I know I have written about the whole competitive thing on walks, but it is something more than that. They were telling me, at Chalkfest, about how they have each lost like 40 pounds, and have a commitment to simple foods and raising their kids in this conscious way. It sort of went over my head at the time, but man what a cool thing. It is a simple idea, and that somehow makes it the best.

-The Hill. This started as a thing I was going to do with Sullivan, but we all know he is not one for commitments that he has to drive to. Even if THEY ARE HIS IDEA. But the hill has sort of been the crucible for the summer. I have been there like three times a week or more. And me and the dog have hiked that bastard of a hill like crazy. In the beginning, I would drag myself, and really just not want to do it. Now, the joy comes in the punishment, and the fact that it takes longer for me to get destroyed. I can survive longer than I thought. The Hill is the key if you want to do this.

-Prison. Just last week I saw the movie FELON, with Val Kilmer. And it was about prison, and I got to thinking about prison workouts. We all see the muscled up dudes in the movie coming out of the joint. I did some research, and found some links. More than that though, I just decided to lift heavy weights again. To break down my muscle fibers in a new way. They had grown used to the other workout, and it was barely a workout. So I needed to change. And I did, and I feel amazing. I am sore, and I can see the change in the muscle, it is awesome. No more listening to David Allen on the treadmill. I listen to hip hop now.

The Future.

Keith Uhlig at the paper and I have been bouncing around ideas for riding the 24 Hours of Nine Mile. And I got the doctor to clear me. So now I have to deal with that reality. Which is pretty exciting.

But more specifically I am thinking of two things.

-Swimming. I spent my 20s in the water. I swam in high school and college, I coached swimming, taught swim lessons, Sue Lewitzke defined my life. I went and swam this morning. 1000 brutal yards of free style at what had to be a snails pace. But it was electric. I am so excited about swimming.

-Snowshoeing. I am friend with Jim Carlson, local bon vivant, and he has won gold medals in this snow shoe thing. So, I live in Wisconsin, and have no desire to ski. But walking in the woods seems cool. So that is what I am going to do.

thanks to Lisa for being so cool, and she is working her program too.

This video is sort of a good example of changing it up, as inspired by Cheryl and Chris Mathis. Making ones body do new things, exciting things. These things, the new things, inherently change the shape of your body. To new things.

So, I am not sure what happened. I do not go to the gym for a while, 2 days, and somehow the endorphins leave and I am stuck thinking about stuff. And we all know that is crap. So anyway, here was my realization this weekend…I saw something from my past incorrectly. I had made something into something that it was not. I realized the my love of the story had me as a leading charecter in said story, but the reality is I had nothing to do with it as a narrative at all. The thing that hurts, is if we look at our own narratives individually this was a large, and significant chapter. A sort of defining thing. And as I explored it from the other side, I was barely a part of the narrative for the other person that mattered so much to me. So that absolutely sucks.

You combine that with blues fest, and I am pounded. I am ground like today. So I am taking a week off from the sort of extraneous sharing of my life, save for CW, and my direct friends. I am not retiring to the cabin the woods. I am not doing that. I am just setting a boundary that will allow me to focus on that which is tangible and real. Real friends, not created ones. Organic growth of my life.

But today, my feet hurt. I pace. At blues fest I pace. If I arrived at 1 pm, I did not stop moving, until 2 am. I pace to make sure that something is right. Like doing a checklist in my head. I pace. My good friend Tom Jordan knows my pacing, and actually supports it.

So today my feet hurt, I am humbled by a life lesson, and I am going to eat a frozen pizza and have a diet mountain dew. Tomorrow the gym will loom large.

I am 37, and in my life workout out had been a part of my up until about 7 years ago or so. During that time, that would have been thirty years, I went through 3 workout partners. 1 was my semi famous boss out west, and that was just a great workout time for me, but it was also like another person. I have no idea who I was then, and how it all worked.

In college Jackie was my workout partner. In a way. Once school at Marquette started we were left making our workouts sort of couples activities. Since I was not a student there, I had to get a pass for the athletic buildings and such. Since it was downtown, there was less green space. So we were left to improvise and return to UWM or the beach or the eastside in general. As our relationship fell apart, I found myself far more interested in rock climbing and boxing on the north west side. She and I had nothing to do with each other then. We also had exercise equipment in the house, and that fed a bad addiction. This is when I came out of the pool also, I stopped lifeguarding and teaching swimming and coaching swimming. These were all life mistakes.

Jackie and I talked not too long ago. The Olympics are happening, and an old college acquaintence is the seetter for the mens indoor volleyball team. So that is fun. I do not have anyone, no one, in my life in town that I feel okay talking to about volleyball. I mean I have a framed Karch Kiraly poster on my wall in my bedroom, and I believe that Ricci Luytes was over rated, and Kent Steffes might have been the best on the beach ever. But Jackie and I need to talk about that, and that is fine. It is once every four years.

I was thinking about this when we were talking, and she brought up Gina Carano. A muy thai fighter. I was shocked to hear about this from her, but not all that surprised. It was in the same convesation where she told me that she wished I had taught her to swim. I wished that as well. I never thought that I had ever met someone with such physical gifts as her, and there are too many stories to tell to confirm it.

Now, in the mornings SunspotWendy wakes me up to go to the gym. Honestly ten minutes after I answer the phone I have no idea what she said to me, or I her. But I get in the car and go to the gym. So in that regard I call Sunspot Wendy a workout partner. And an amazingly positive one.

Next week I am going to the doctor. I got a semi serious challenge from Keith Uhlig to do the 24 Hour of Nine Mile race. I am going to get all the medical testing I need, and get cleared to take it on. Then I have a whole year to get ready. I miss riding my bike. And that means I can shop for a mountain bike.

Night. See you in the morning Wendy.

I could truly get used to this waking up with a rock drummer girl. But I digress.

Today, I did the eliptical thing. I gotta say, that sucked. But, the fact is there are few folks at the Y when I go, so I am less likely to be ashamed as I am when say the high school volleyball teams are working out. Then I am just a fat old guy. In the morning, it is a group of old guys like me, so I do not feel so bad about it.

I did the treadmill workout, then I got on the elyptical thing, and tried that out. I sucked at it, and knew I would, so I was just trying to get the movement down. Then I did legs in the gym.

I need to stretch more. A lot more. I need to get a stretching program.