peternew-blog

[peternew-blog]

Somebody Hide That Guy’s Food

Those of you who know me, know I’m a bit portly. Those of you who’ve seen me likely also know this, though I’m often told, “oh you’re not fat” or “you carry it well” or some other platitude designed to make me feel better about it, as though being portly is something I couldn’t possibly control if I had a mind to. Because of course I could. 

Couldn’t I?

I suppose I don’t think of it as a problem. Not really. I’m comfortable. I so far don’t have many of the negative health effects associated with lifelong obesity, but that is the diagnosis. Morbidly. 

I think if I did think of it as a problem, the evidence for how to solve it is well documented. Eat less and do more. No fad diet, no quick fix, just burn more calories than you consume and presto change-o you're skinny like a cobweb, though I suppose not as dusty, cause of all the moving. And it’s not really presto change-o either, is it, because it’ll take a couple years, and then I have to keep eating less and moving more if I want to maintain my sexy cobwebby physique. 

Ok no more cobweb-as-metaphor. Don’t let me. 

The problem, as it were, is not that I don’t like being fat. It’s ok, really. I’m not weak, I’m not super tired all the time (well I am, but that’s stress, not lard - a subject for another day). The problem is that I really like to sit. And I really like to eat. And if I want to do those things, guess what? I get tubby. I know because I’ve been not-tubby before, and between terms of tubbiness, senator skinny jeans has been elected. 

Sorry. I don’t know. Trying to keep it interesting I guess. 

But recently, much as I enjoy it, I have been realizing that maybe - just maybe - I eat too much. 

Like I don't want to be a calorie counter. I’ve tried it and there’s nothing worse. It’s a one way ticket to making me feel bad about every morsel of joy I can squeeze out of a quarter teaspoon of peanut butter. Or making me feel depressed that the only things I can eat in unlimited quantities are lettuce, and apparently, mustard. Joyless and Grainy, the two missing Smurfs.

It doesn’t apparently matter particularly what one eats, over the long term. Maintaining a healthy body weight is contingent on moderation over elimination. In other words I can eat a bowl of ice cream, just not daily, not twice daily, and probably not with sprinkles, a half-litre of chocolate sauce and a banana to make me feel healthy while I sup.

But I needn’t eliminate the occasional banana split. Just work around it. Move more, eat less besides it. As long as I’m getting my daily balance, no banana split can possibly sabotage any overall progress on its own. So what’s my deal? Why am I stuck never fitting into any of the pants at the Simon’s. Why do I only feel full when I’m absolutely stuffed? Why is the hors d’oeuvre table afraid of me?

In short: why do I eat? 

Well because I’m hungry, obviously. That’s reason number one. But the chubbier I get, the hungrier I feel. I can’t always tell the hunger from the gas, and boy do I have gas with all the food I eat. It’s self fulfilling. I feel a hole made by my own methane and fill it with snacks, producing more farts. I don’t need these snacks. So I try to only eat when my tummy growls at me. But that’s not enough.

I eat when I’m thirsty.

What the hell is this about? My brain seems to know I need to ingest something, but rather than the useful and calorie-free glass of water I’m actually craving, it’ll tell me to have a handful of chocolate covered almonds. When that doesn’t satisfy me, it’ll say, maybe that wasn’t enough almonds, so I have more. I don’t keep them in the house anymore. It’s defeating and it makes me feel kinda stupid, so I sit down and tell myself not to get any more of them. But then I get bored and it’s all I can think about. Also:

I eat because I’m bored.

So often I’ll find myself pacing back into the tempting zone around where the snacks live. Other people call it the ‘kitchen’ so I’ve heard. I have come to think of it as a bizarre trap full of food I don’t want and also full of food I do want, except the food I do want is usually food I don’t want and the food I don’t want is the food I really do want if I think about it for even a half-second. Think pop tart vs. arugula and you’re with me. Speaking of with me....

I eat because I’m alone.

It feels like I’m getting away with something. Nobody I live with cares one jot what I eat or when. But if they’re all out? Man I can slay a peanut butter sandwich with honey and cheese with no shame or guilt! 

I eat because I feel guilt and shame and stress and socially awkward (remember the fear I strike in the tasty core of the amuses bouches!). 

I eat because I’m sad.

I eat because it feels like love to me.

A year or so ago, we did an April fool’s gag on my daughter. One of those cling wrap on the bedroom door things. We shot the video attached, of me setting the trap and then of her coming out of her room and face-firsting into it. She was confused, then took it like a champ and we all laughed and went on with our day.

We posted the video and a bunch of people chuckled at it and liked it or whatever, but the one comment that sticks in my craw - and I mean sticks - is some stranger’s only input was to say, “somebody hide that guy’s food!”

I am not proud to say how hurt I was. I am. 

I think about it every damn day.

What I’ve described to you is an eating disorder. And I have it. I cannot control my eating easily, and one cruel comment like that can send me face first into a fucking cake to make myself feel better. 

There are many reasons I’m fat. But I know I’m fat and I needn’t be protected from that fact, nor reminded of it. I suppose I would prefer to be skinnier, to fit into old clothes, to be more versatile when casting directors are seeking an actor - it’s limiting, I know. But the effort isn’t just move more, eat less. It’s not as easy as that. 

It’s finding other ways to feel loved. Other solace for shame and sadness. Training myself to know when to stop, and how much to start with in the first place. It’s daunting, overwhelming, and those emotions drive me back to the love and security I feel in a full belly. I do need to change this, before it makes clear the ways in which it will shorten my life.

But in the meantime, I’m proud of myself for writing this. So I’ll probably go reward myself with a snack.

Or maybe I’m just thirsty.

[peternew-blog]

The Physics of Creativity

There is a feeling we all have I think. Every creative person I know, certainly goes through it. It’s that moment when you’re in the zone, writing, creating, and you realize someone is over your shoulder- watching you. 

You freeze. 

Fingertips hover above the keyboard. The tip of the brush drips idly, mere millimetres from the canvas, unable to produce a single stroke.

The observer can be trusted. It’s worse if they are, sometimes. If some schmuck I don’t know is watching me churn out words, fine, whatever, I don’t suppose I really care, but if it’s my wife? Or a writing partner? Nope. No. Wait until it’s finished, then maybe read it. If i’m happy with it.

And I have no qualms showing my writing off, clearly. I mean here you are reading it. But that point of observation is a nasty feeling of suction. As if the observer is a sponge and all your creative output is just siphoned straight out of you until the observer goes away again. 

It makes me think of a scientific experiment. A really weird one, often called the double slit experiment. I’ll explain as best as I can, not being educated in these matters, but definitely being a science curious person:

So if you shine a light at a vertical slit in a shield, it creates a pattern on the screen behind. A vertical line. So far so good. 

If you shine a light at two slits it follows that you get two lines, right? WRONG! You get what's called an interference pattern- a series of vertical lines. Weird, right? Sure, but explainable. As the light wave passes through the slits, it refracts like the surface of a pond when disturbed by a stone. It does this at each slit. These two refractions intersect multiple times and create a series of lines, one for each point of intersection. So ok, less weird when you think about it. 

Bit here’s the thing, guys- here’s the fucking thing:

If you do the same experiment with particles, it also creates the interference pattern. In other words: Particles - individual tiny specky things - create a spattering of tiny specky dots on the screen through a single slit, but the interference pattern through two slits because somehow through two slits this inconsistent, disorganized chaos of matter suddenly behaves like a wave.

But it gets weirder:

If you bring in a device to record this phenomenon, the phenomenon stops.

... 

Yeah. 

The particles know they’re being observed doing something borderline magical, and they just - freeze. Fingertips above keyboard. Brush unable to paint. They make two predictable boring specky vertical lines. Take the observer away and presto. Magic. The wave pattern again. They know. 

That’s the feeling I get. Like all my particles together, without communication, understand that to be witnessed in the act of creation is impossible, uncomfortable. Better to just sit and behave normally, whatever that means. But take the witness off my shoulder and light moves through me, obscenely, beautifully, and with no regard for expectation. 

But there’s an unresolved problem. A balancing act I’m forever distant from perfecting.

How then, do you live creatively, and let yourself shine into the world without also becoming a hermit, turning inward from all witnesses, just so the light has a private place to behave itself?

[peternew-blog]

I Got Nothing

I can’t blog today because I can’t keep my eyes open and my fingers won’t work. I got nothing. 

My brain is a betrayer and my guts are rebellion. All my muscles are atrophied. So I simply couldn’t possibly do the work. 

It’s not that I’m tired, or sore, or drunk, or high, or suffering from food poisoning,  or anything like that. It’s all just... stopped. Too old; Not talented; I missed my chance anyhow, so I may as well give up trying. I don’t try. Why bother. Nobody likes me anyhow.

I spent the morning doing crossword puzzles, playing mindless games, and doom scrolling, all as a distraction from the fact that I have literally nothing else to do. I am uninspired and uninspiring. When I’m not distracted, it all stops functioning. I’m not suicidal, not in the least, but I may as well die, because what else is there? I fantasize about winning the lottery and what I’d do with the money, but if I subtract the expenses related to ‘escape’ I have nothing. No projects, no self improvement- just hedonism, ultimately, so I won’t have to think about mortality and the illusion of success.

People call these thought intrusive. But It’s hard to imagine them that way when they seem like the background noise- the very fabric onto which all other thoughts project themselves. No joy is experienced without the filtered bleakness of the voice in my ear saying, “this joy isn’t real- not as real as other people’s joy, your joy is false joy.” And so my joy diminishes, just enough, so that the prophecy I whisper can be fulfilled. My smile fades a little. I laugh more desperately (or stifle it for fear it might win? Perhaps.). And the joy inverts to a thing I can’t even name- a feeling of negative joy, like joy itself was only an idea I know, and not a thing I can ever experience.

Every time I stop, it consumes me. And yet I cannot think of what to do to keep going. So it has no barriers. No safety net. It is all I have, these thoughts; this voice of deceit. I befriend it, though it tortures me. I sigh heavily. I pace. I nap. It remains constant. It disallows all peace. It refuses to go silent, even when muted by the medication. 

So you see I couldn’t possibly blog today. It would be impossible. The signal to noise ratio is impractical and the only thing you would read is a buzzing of self-deprecation and a droning of self-sabotage. 

So no. I won’t do it. It can’t be... done... oh. Oh dear. I seem to have.... Perhaps I have more power over the intrusive thoughts than I think I do. Or than it feels like I do. Perhaps if I just start typing my eyes will open. My fingers will find the right keys. A calmer, more confident voice will emerge, and my guts will untie themselves, my brain will purge itself of the steel wool clouds of misery - at least a bit - and something will emerge worth reading. Well perhaps, perhaps. 

A small bell rings, the rope pulled by a tiny zap of serotonin with a dopamine chaser. I did it. I blogged. It’s something.

[peternew-blog]

Just in case Elon bans me I wanted to keep a record.

[peternew-blog]

I Guess We Blog Here

I am a lost sheep in the dark woods.

I am holding a banana and awaiting instructions. 

“Eat the banana,” and so I do. “Now walk.” And so I begin the trek that turns the lost thing into the found one. 

At first, as always, the blackness is total. I am convinced that there will be roots and pitfalls over and into which to trip. But with each step the blackness softens and I find there is light bouncing into my eyes from somewhere. The moon or the stars. Perhaps there is a distant enormous light on a Genie crane like they have on movie sets. Regardless, I begin to see trees and shrubs, the shape of things.

I am alone. 

Who the hell told me to eat the banana?

I must have said it to myself, though I don’t remember speaking. 

I understand that this path leads to connection. Perhaps to one person, but perhaps to a thousand. The connection frightens me a little, if I’m honest. I’m afraid it will diminish me and cow me back into the darkness and solitude. I have read, I think, that connection will bring light. Or long life. Our brains crave it. I suppose that's why social media notifications are so irritatingly addictive. They are a proxy for love. 

The path has brightened still further. I can see past the shadows and into the night. The path before me stretches long. I cannot see the end. I have a purpose, then, to pursue it to its end, to illuminate for myself- and hopefully for you- some things in the darkness so we might walk together in the light.

Eat your banana. You may need the strength. 

[peternew-blog]

Apparently I’ve had this Tumblr account for years already and never used it. So here’s a picture at random from my phone. Oh God of course it’s this one. Well welcome to this thing.