Feb
17
Here’s something I’ve been wondering about lately, and I hope I can phrase this in a way that conveys my honest and unbiased curiosity about the answers: what do you think about childhood obesity?
Is it a real issue, worthy of concern? (And political focus?) Is obesity among children a different issue than obesity among adults? Does fat acceptance, specifically the health component—the belief that health is independent of weight—apply towards children? At what age should children be allowed to make their own lifestyle choices with regards to food and exercise?
I’m particularly interested in hearing from people who strongly identify with the fat acceptance movement, but all (civil) opinions are more than welcome.
Feb
16
I’m not sure what it is I crave these days. Adventure? Spontaneity? Or muted creature comforts: a quiet room, an uninterrupted stretch of time to laze around in.
All of the above, maybe.
Every day is stacked with routines, one after another. Storybooks, snacks, shoelaces. Cooking, cleaning, commuting. I should be wearing this life like a broken-in pair of jeans, every frayed edge and accommodating curve a comfortable familiarity. I should be managing this on muscle memory alone.
It doesn’t seem to work that way, though. At odds with the day-in, day-out patterns is this sense of impermanence to everything. The ground is insecure, it’s untrustworthy. One minute everything is fantastic, the next my patience is nearly gone and I’m pacing in my brain like a zoo animal. I wish sometimes that my children would just be quiet and predictable for an hour at a time, but they aren’t, they can’t. They buzz from one distraction to the next, they laugh and scream and cry. They are all wild oscillations and unstable surfaces.
I do the laundry but it never gets done. I clean the floor but it never stays clean. I put on my running shoes but every block is an unknown, I can so easily switch from feeling strong and motivated to fighting every hateful, shitty step. I eat healthfully and happily, then switch to crap for an entire weekend, unable to stop. My sense of worth at my job can be undone with one email.
Everything in my day used to revolve around the contents of a bottle, and at least this isn’t true anymore. It’s hard, though, to take back control only to realize I don’t really have it, and maybe I never truly will. I am like everything else, constructed of delicate material that sometimes doesn’t hold up, defined by things that are in flux.
It is stupidly hard to do the things you set out to do.
So, there is this: trying the best you can. There is this: pushing yourself past of what you believe you are capable of. There is this: living in the moment you are in, and letting go of the things that have already happened. There is adventure when you can take it, a quiet room when you can find it.
Tomorrow will be like today but it will also be different and you won’t know how and maybe there is a wild and luscious beauty to that.
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