A Lost Form

It seems that proper letter writing is an increasingly lost art, what with all the *insert old person comments about technology*, and whatnot. Yet, being the odd person that I seem to be, many of my daily thoughts occur in letter form: letters to people I love, to people I absolutely do not love, to people I don't know, to my animal companions, to random inanimate objects, to myself (or even just to parts of myself). Those of you who are my friends on Facebook may have noticed bits of this from time to time. I'm hoping that getting some of this down somewhere will help unclog my brain a bit, which feels as though it constantly sits at max capacity of late.

Hence, blog.

Why not? It might not stick, it might not suck - but then again, it totally might. We'll see, I suppose. The one thing I will try to do is stay true to my original goal of writing *actual* letters -- that is, I'll attempt to refrain from simply saying things like, "Dear people-who-canceled-Caprica, I hate you. Signed, Me."... even though such things totally go through my mind on (frequent) occasion. There will probably be some profanity, some crass humour, and some flip-flopping between Canadian and American spelling (trapped between worlds as I am). Forgive me, if you will.

For now, I'll start with the most recent letter to bubble up, from about 10:00 this morning.

Ahem.

Dear Body,

I would ask how you are doing, but I am quite certain you do not know the answer to that question. Seriously, what the hell is going on with you?

(A lovely introduction, don't you think, dear reader?)

I'm trying, Body. I really, really am. I know that I wasn't the best tenant for many years. We both know I put you through some really difficult things (that were nonetheless largely awesome). But I'm really trying to make up for that, and have been for some time now. I'm eating all the good foods, I got us signed up at the YMCA (and have been going frequently), and I'm always trying to lower our stress levels.

We've been doing this whole Ph.D. thing for a while now, I know. And I know you've responded to that by developing what I lovingly refer to as a "dissertation booty". I get it. We sit in front of a computer for far too many hours each day.

I tried adding some more dynamic organizational/research methods into our daily routine.


When that proved insufficient on its own, I figured that getting us into a gym might help. For the first three weeks, we went almost every single day. I'm not sure how, but we made the time for it, didn't we? I know it felt amazing for you, just to get up and move and swing and kick and be. I know this, because I felt amazing about it, too.

I even made us a "Gym" playlist.


Life (who will be getting a letter at another time) always seems to interrupt our happiness, though, and so we missed a few days last week. Previously, you'd rewarded my three weeks of hard work by ditching almost five pounds. Five. I was so happy for us! But you were too quick to punish, Body! I took four days off, and you held on to every little calorie, putting those five pounds right back on. How is that even possible?

Now, I know I shouldn't be a pound-counter, and there are far more reliable ways of determining successes in these things. But, you see, there aren't always a lot of quantifiable achievements in my life. I do well in the areas in which I'm expected to do well, and I know that is a great thing. It just doesn't always feel as great as something so concrete as watching a scale steadily drop.

There are a lot of other issues going on with you right now, Body, but we'll just stick with this one for today, as I don't want to overload you with my complaints. So, can we just work together on this? I'll work on keeping us motivated, signing us up for all sorts of fun classes, and forcing myself to walk away from the dissertation and the marking and the course outlines and the Facebook and the conference proposals and the vacation daydreaming and the research and all the other crap that has to be done in front of a computer.

And let's not forget the books...


If it makes you happy, I'll even try to substitute a bit of gym time here and there for artistic pursuits, which also please us both thoroughly. You just need to work with me, then, on reinforcing my motivation by holding on to our successes, and not so callously brushing them off over a minor relapse. Ok?

In Patience,
Me

P.S. Nami agrees.