Donkey Lips' third-in-command

I used to be fat, which sucked. This is no strike against the fat; I just hated being it. The worst thing about the fat condition, as I recall, was the constant burden of avoiding being conspicuously fat. Nervous concerns about how to sit, stand, act, dress, eat, and comb my hair so as not to call attention to the fat knocked everything else at least a couple rungs down the priority ladder. This was actually exacerbated by the fact that I wasn't quite the class fat kid, though I surely would've been sworn in if the four or five fatter kids were to suffer fatal heart attacks. Maybe when you're Donkey Lips, you own your size, but when you're the borderline — Donkey Lips' third-in-command — you obsessively front like you're on the other side.

Before biting the bullet and burning the weight after junior high, I'd often fantasize about my glorious post-fat future. Oh, the question wasn't about what I would do after being fat; the question was, what wouldn't I do? This gave me a certain amount of motivation, but in retrospect it was a recipe for grand mal procrastination. I pushed everything into the then-speculative after-fat era. Should I play music? Nah, I'll do it when I'm not fat. Should I act more? Nah, I'll do it when I'm not fat. Should I maybe make some more friends? Nah, I'll do it when I'm not fat. Now are you gonna pass that tray of peanut-buttered bagels, or aren't you?

The alert Alex J. Mann linked me up to a Hacker News post from Paul Graham about what changes when you get rich:

One thing you learn when you get rich is how few of your problems were caused by not being rich. When you can do whatever you want, you get a variant of the terror induced by the proverbial blank page. There are a lot of people who think the thing stopping them from writing that great novel they plan to write is the fact that their job takes up all their time. In fact what's stopping 99% of them is that writing novels is hard. When the job goes away, they see how hard.

By the same token, the younger me blamed his lack of achievement on being fat. The period right after losing the weight was, to be fair, fantastic. (Chalk up a point to my half-baked theory that life's best times are all openings-up of new vistas.) I almost immediately got together with a girl who, in appearance if nothing else, seemed to have been crafted from my mental image of The Girlfriend the World Has Long Owed Me. Yet the episode taught me a remarkably ill-serving lesson. It encouraged the delusion that progress in life is held back by some single obstacle whose defeat will allow everything to automatically fall into place. (I suspect another sketchy video game metaphor at work.)

Just like suddenly getting rich, this proved to be more of a distraction than a real advancement. Cut one obstacle down, and two more rise in its place. These obstacles can take any form. Just do a find-and-replace on Graham's words: "One thing you learn when you stop being fat is how few of your problems were caused by being fat." "One thing you learn when you get enough time is how few of your problems were caused by not having enough time." "One thing you learn when you get more information is how few of your problems were caused by not having more information." "One thing you learn when you get a significant other is how few of your problems were caused by not having a significant other."

For all the discomfort and self-consciousness, being fat had the advantage of giving me that single obstacle, that boulder in my path to fixate upon. If I was feeling down, I could just daydream about what might be behind the boulder. It was quick a pick-me-up that didn't require me to get up and, y'know, move the boulder. I've never stopped feeling the weenieish instinct to do the same about other simple problems: I'll do it when I know more people. I'll do it when I live somewhere bigger. I'll do it when I'm more fired up. I'll do it when I have better ideas.

The really poisonous part of this behavior is that it gives you an easy avenue of self-sabotage. If you suspect that, having cleared the boulder, you won't actually be able to realize that envisioned potential, you can always treat the boulder as insurmountable. This is just what Richard Yates wrote about in Revolutionary Road: claiming to dream of the amorphous expat writer's life in Paris, the thoroughly suburbanized Frank secretly relishes every one of fate's ostensible cruelties that prevent his "escape." He anesthetizes himself with the vision of, and desperately fears the reality of, what James Wood called "an invisible 'creative' life that he is too unimaginative to envision."

I've recently come to believe that, if I'm performing below full potential — though, as with perfection, the approach to full potential seems to me asymptotic — it's because my social connectedness is somewhat thin. I'm insufficiently networked, a marketing guru might say. While I do, in good faith, see this as the largest stone in my road, the trick is to avoid succumbing to the delusions that it's immovably large or the only one in my way. Both are so very pleasing, but not as pleasing as, uh, making something out of life.

Comments

[jannie_b]

Once again, you hit close to home.

My comments are here: http://berkman.ca/whats-the-boulder-in-your-path

[Jonathan M]

I was fat too up until this year. Lost about half my body weight.

I never saw it as something holding me back though. I've always been quite conscious of the fact that if anyone is pissing in my corn-flakes it's me and my bad people skills and my desire to be alone with my principles rather than compromising and being with people with similar (but obviously divergent) ideas and ideals.

Conversely, I have for a long time now been planning around my mother's death. This is largely for logistical reasons : She's old and sick and I'm the primary carer. In a way it fills a similar role though : "When she's gone I'll be able to go to readercon". "when she's gone I'll be able to visit Japan".

I'm sure that there are some things that could have been done that were not done but at the end of the day, life is about setting priorities and my priorities -- no matter how fucked up and irrational -- are my own.

There is a counterpoint to this.

Because there is a bolder in my life, I have been forced to make decisions based upon the existence of a bolder. I define myself by pressing against those boundaries.

Why are decisions made on the basis of complete freedom more legitimate than those made on the basis of limitations?

If we are, in fact, radically free then the decision to NOT act because we might be fat or easily distractable are no more or less authentic than any other. Freedom is choosing one's own priorities.

[Kate K.]

Great article, Colin.

I went through a similar crisis when I turned 30, but then I realized turning 30 and still being single wasn't holding me back in life- it was fear. So now I try to be more fearless.

Not sure if you follow these blogs already but I find them inspirational:
http://fiverulesforlife.blogspot.com/
http://www.happiness-project.com/

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