So I finally started pushing 200, a barrier that I never in a million years imagined myself getting close to, and decided that I needed a change. But it wasn’t until my sister started logging her calories that I decided “Okay, time to do this.” And thus it began.

For the last month I’ve been recording every calorie that I’ve taken in. I’ve vastly cut down on the amount of meat that I eat, which was actually been totally okay. I have found some excellent recipes using lentils and beans and veggies that are seriously just as good as most meat dishes that I’ve had. Curried lentils are the best. I bring my lunch to work, and try to keep it low calorie so that Kelly and I can still have a reasonably nice dinner together. And in a little bit of opposite logic, I’ve added breakfast to my routine. Now I start every day off with Cheerios, and it really helps, actually.

In addition to the food cutbacks, I’ve started exercising, which actually started a little bit before the diet. While I skate, that is only 2 times a week, and especially because of my failed pancreas, I need to make sure the rest of my body, especially my heart, is in good working condition. So I busted out my bicycle, which was my 16th birthday present, and I go out first thing in the morning M-W-F and ride around Forest Park. That part is probably my favorite. It is a good way to start the day, I’m really enjoying biking, and you get to see lots of stuff, so it is way better than an exercise bike. Sometimes you get rained on, though. That’s not so fun.

I’m doing a pretty good job of losing weight, and more importantly, I feel a lot better. There have been some downs, though. At first my body was not used to the change of sugars intake and I had to get my blood sugar issues figured out. But a little bit of tweaking, and that has been better than it has in a long time, actually.

Harder, though, is the fact that I really enjoy food, and really enjoy cooking food. Especially delicious fried food. Giving that up has been really hard. It is less fun to cook, and it is way less fun to eat. But overall it is a good thing, if it helps add some years onto the end of my life, or makes those years more bearable because I will have my feet and hands.

So yeah. This hasn’t been the best month ever. But that having been said, I’m really glad that I’m doing this, and I keep telling myself it will be over soon. My target weight isn’t too much below where I am now, and once I hit that the amount of calories I can eat each day to maintain weight will allow me to eat much more normally.

That’s my monthly update, I guess. At least this one has some substance, right?

It could be that my life is just supremely boring right now. Or I am busy. Or lazy. Or some combination of all of those.

But still, a belated birthday to Baba. I think we all had a pretty good weekend celebrating.

Still, there is a large athletic component to it, and there is competition, and if you can look past the silly outfits and the preconceptions that most people have about roller skating, I think that you can come to the conclusion that it is just as valid a sport as anything else adult part-time athletes do. Then again, that could just be me trying to rationalize this crazy thing that I do.

Anyway, the National Championships for Artistic Roller Skating were earlier this month, and I qualified in one of my events, and even though I told myself I would only go if I qualified in both of my events, I ended up going. And so Kelly and I found ourselves driving up to Fort Wayne, Indiana a couple of weeks ago so that I could put on a spandex leotard thing and skate around in figure eights.

If any of you remember, I went to Nationals last year, and sucked big time. I don’t know if it was my nerves, or just a fluke, but I really messed up one of my eights really bad, and came in 17th out of 24. Not a great showing, and it kind of left me feeling down for the whole year, at least in regards to my skating. I was determined to do a better job this year. Even if just slightly.

And so on the morning that I was to skate, I was super nervous. Not only was there the pressure of doing better than last year, but I had been interviewed on my favorite podcast about this thing I do, and I didn’t want to let all of the listeners down. I was shaking, and shaking is a very bad thing to do when the goal is to be as precise as possible. But nerves and shaking are kind of par for the course for this event, so you soldier on.

Without getting into too many details of the actual skating, after the first round of competition I was in 2nd place. A good deal better than the year before. I had qualified for finals, which was my goal, and so no matter what I was going to be happy. Out of 25, they took 8, so I had done as well as I really felt like I could have hoped for.

And then something happened. As the day went on the nerves started coming back. While I originally figured I’d be happy just making finals, now it was feeling like I’d really only be happy with a medal. And even though I was in 2nd, that didn’t mean anything, because the scores are erased. And the figures that I had to do for finals were different than the ones that I had done for eliminations. And they included the figure that I messed up on last year. And I hadn’t practiced them in a couple of months. Things were not looking good.

But I got out there, and skated as best as I could. And something pretty damn cool happened – I came in third. I won a medal. I got to go stand on a podium with music playing and have a medal put around my neck. And while it isn’t the Olympics, for me it was as close as I’ll probably ever get, and it felt damn good.

I’ve kind of been riding this wave of excitement for the last two weeks. I might never medal again. Skaters in my club who have been skating years longer than have never won medals. And since I came in 3rd, I can no longer skate in that event and have to move up to a much harder one.

But all that being said, for now I can enjoy the fact that I did something pretty cool.

And update on things in a few days. I promise.

But at the same time, the fact that I never practiced meant that I never got really good. I never expanded my abilities much beyond where they were shortly after I started playing. Practice wasn’t a lot of fun. There was other stuff I wanted to do at night. The reasons were many and varied. And then college came, and I just quit. I didn’t really play an instrument college, despite owning one. And save for a couple of months in a community band after I graduated, I didn’t play at all afterwards. I didn’t even think of myself as a musician anymore, and I was okay with that.

Then the opportunity to play in some musicals presented itself, and so once a year I would get out my instruments, and play at the same level I always had, which wasn’t really good, but it was good enough for middle school musicals.

And then something happened. I got a guitar. A classical guitar. And I started taking private lessons. And for the first time ever I really felt like I had an instrument that I loved playing. And so I practice. All the time. Probably an hour a day. Almost every day. And I’m pretty terrible. But I’ve already improved a huge amount. Probably a faster improvement than I’ve ever had with any instrument.

So it is now, at 28, that I realize that maybe all of those years ago I should have practiced more. I probably could have been really good. But I didn’t, and I can’t go back and change that. I guess all I really can do now is give my all to the guitar and enjoy it, and have the chance to do something I didn’t do many years ago. And I’m pretty happy about that.

The quasi-fake/quasi-real MLK quote that was going around the other day really got me thinking. And it got me looking into a lot of other quotes that MLK wrote. And then it presented me with a real problem.

Here was a guy who had a lot of beautiful ideas. Progressive ideas. Ideas that I strongly believe in. But his means for coming to those ideas was through the lens of Christianity, which is something that I don’t believe in.

So how do I deal with the fact that the seeming basis for things that I think are deeply important to humanity come from a belief system that I do not abide by?

I did a lot of thinking about it. And I came to this. Almost all philosophies have things in them that are good, and things that are bad. Divinely inspired ones, non divinely inspired ones. But they were all developed by humans, sometimes showing the deepest goodness of our humanity, and sometimes showing the deepest callousness of our humanity. And just because some people claim that these ideas were given to us on high, I believe that they came from man. Nothing more than people sitting around writing their thoughts, and nothing less.

So the basis for MLK’s speeches isn’t in the Almighty. It is from the best parts that make us human, and have made us human. When he says to forgive and love because that is what God requires, what I read is that forgive and love because that is what our humanness requires.

And so I can read and agree and believe in what he wrote without feeling tied to the doctrine of the religion behind it.

In other news:

- I have started playing classical guitar, and I love it.

- At the end of April I am going to California for four and a half days.

- July 1st – July 10th Kelly and I will be going to California for a costal adventure. We are going to be starting in San Diego and end up in San Francisco.

- I’m still roller skating. A lot of the thrill is gone, but I still do it.

So that is about it for now. I have more to say, but I don’t want to do it right now. But I also wanted everyone to know that I am still alive, and Smackie isn’t doomed to death.