Scaling Back

What a strange week.

I'm sitting here, leaning against commitments, ready to take on a weekend of creative work and relieved I have the past ten days or so behind me. I'm exercising the usual mind dump into this blog so I can use that extra space and energy to brainstorm, but for the sake of posterity....

I've been to the gym 3 times a week for two weeks now, levelling off exactly where I am right now at 195 pounds. My mission, through exercise and continued attention to the food I eat, will be to reach 175, which is crazy but not impossible. I can feel my body changing, but I can't see myself going to the extreme of holding a magnifying glass to the kinds of food I eat and when I eat them. I just want to make sure they're healthy for now. I'm not going to be fanatic, especially to the point where I preach to someone else that the food they're eating is bad for them. I don't get the heavily cheesed nachos and condiment violated fries I saw before the fireworks on the 4th of July, but that's their business...and their belt notchers...their blood pressure...you get the idea.

As for me, I'm happy about the fact that despite things that are completely out of my control, I've been able to weave past distractions and manage...I use that word carefully...manage my schedule. Of course, I have help. Oh, and of course, I have some good friends.

The end of this difficult, strangely shaped week, has come to this: a crossroad from where I can look at my three major projects in relation to all of the changes in my life. Wait! FOUR major projects. (pause for awareness) I don't know if I can really do any one of those things, but what I'm banking on is that I really have my doubts that I can't do any of them, so I believe - as always - that the odds are with me.

To think, all of this, this struggle and journey towards my future will in the end add up to fewer lines than any name in the Spoon River Anthology. That's why the journey matters. That's why the failures and mistakes always flake off and fall to the side for want of the gilded successes and triumphs. Whether or not anyone else can immediately see the world from my perspective is kind of moot; That's why I believe I'm an artist.

So enough about me. Where are you standing right now?