Motto: ENGAGE!

I gave myself a one-word motto (mantra, resolution, saying, decision rule) last year: MOVE. This was an idea adopted from listening to Gretchen Rubin's podcast, Happier. After the initial announcement here, I don't think I re-visited how it was working in any post here. I did, however, often remind myself of it. It popped up in my ruminations, sometimes while lying on the couch.

What was the point? Did it make a difference?

Reviews are mixed, but given the very low investment, it certainly didn't hurt and was worth doing. So I've adopted a new one this year:  Engage!

Some of the joy of a one-word motto is how I can read many meanings into it. The more specific, the harder that is to do. But with just one word, multiple contexts can imbue it  with multiple layers of meaning to me. And that's all that matters - what it means to me.

The iconic use of the word, copied here, is Jean-Luc Picard commanding the Enterprise into action. I think of it, for me, also as propelling to action. But more specific types of actions than Move was about last year.

I've written about my tendency towards lighthouse keeping before. Much of the time, I'd be perfectly content to live on an island by myself, with some useful work, and a lot of time to just be me, all alone. I love this. But I don't want this always. I value friends, social connections, and also being involved in the public forum to try to do some good. I need to urge myself forward out of my happy little self-centered bubble to engagement.

So I plan family engagements, social engagements, engaging on a civic and political level, and engaging with personal issues such as money and health. I also vow to engage my core muscles as often as I possibly can, to enhance back health!

Enough sitting around. Mr. Riker, Engage!

Time, Time, Time, Where Do You Go?

I was ready to write a nice, humorous, optimistic post. But when I turned on my laptop, it was so slow as to be unusable.

That was two and a half hours ago. I've been down the rabbit hole of is it hardware or software, and maybe made some improvements, but not gonna sit still anymore right now. See you all later.

2019 Recap: Weight is Out of Control

This blog started focusing on diet and exercise. I've had a lot of success, but not recently. As I focus on other things, and I get older, and other things change, this is a sad story. This post is solely a recap, not about resolutions and what I'm doing about it, only about what has happened. Just the facts.

My weight in 2018 and 2019

Since 2017, I've been gaining weight. I managed to interrupt the weight gain just once in the past two years - in anticipation of my hiking retreat in October 2018. After that, I had my knee surgery in December 2018, and I feel like I've felt crappy ever since. Value of the blog: I was able to look back at what I wrote during that brief weight loss. I was following strict rules - the kind that work well for a while and then exhaust me.

It is helpful to look at the history, and see where my weight has been in the past, without having to rely only on my memory. I had my second big loss when I started the blog. I was focused and able to sustain things for quite a while. But I was also ten years younger - not a small change to remember.

My weight since I began blogging in 2010

Now, I'm still below where I was when I started this effort - though not by much. But since one of my mottoes is, "It could be worse", I can take comfort in this.

And, with an even longer perspective, I've benefited from having sustained a weight loss from my peak for twenty-two years. That ain't nothin'. "Better than a hit in the head", as my mother would say.

My weight since 1988

However, let's be clear: I am on a bad trajectory. There is clear evidence that whatever I'm doing is not working to control my weight. There is also clear evidence that weight loss is followed by a boomerang effect, just as every health guru will assert when they say diets don't work. And I have pretty clear personal evidence that the weight gain is bad for the rest of my health (there may be chicken-versus-egg issues there, but that's a rumination for another day).

Happy New Year, everyone. Still hanging in there. Time to engage!