Stay-cation Daze

I don't usually take vacations.

Don't get me wrong, I take time to go places.  I take time to be sick.  I go back to New York at least once a year.  But very rarely do I ever unplug, go off the grid like I have the last couple of weeks.  I mean, I was still connected at my father's funeral last year.

The last couple of weeks, I've been off.  No day job, no writing, very little in the way of shameless self-promotion.  I needed a break.  It's not even like I went anywhere of importance: I rediscovered my liver, and went on a local boat cruise; went to Pike Place Market with my girlfriend; sat on my butt and watched the All-Star Game.  There was a fun picnic and a beach day where I had an unfortunate skin reaction to lake water (itchy, itchy, itchy!!!).  And I have to say, there's definitely something to this whole vacation thing.

The last time I took this much time off, I went to the Dominican Republic for a week or so and had a blast.  There's a story in there about how my brothers and I were mistaken for members of the 2012 Super Bowl Champion New York Giants, which I will happily recount another day.  I can't begin to tell you how relaxed I felt afterwards, except that I feel the same way now.

There is something to be said about recharging your batteries, putting yourself on airplane mode, so to speak.  A couple of weeks away and I'm ready to get back to the grind of the paying job and the fun of writing.  I'm ready to get the rest of this year going.

I'm back.

Discipline

It kind of came to me as I stepped out of the shower and stepped onto my bathroom scale.

That used to be a ritual I had before I went anywhere. My day would begin (or end, considering I work nights) with me getting home from the gym, showering, and taking a step on the scale, being proud that a workout ended in a slowly but surely shrinking number.  This ghost of my routine kicked in at the end of its cycle and I stepped on the scale without doing all the previous stuff, and the number I saw reminded me of it.

I haven't been to the gym -- not consistently, anyway -- in quite a while.

People are slaves to routine, followers of habit.  They do what they do with repetition, as the repetition is comfortable.  It's why bad habits are so hard to break; they become hardwired into our daily lives until our bodies and minds crave it.  Creative types -- artists and writers for instance -- are even more susceptible to habits, both good and bad, as they drive how and what we create.  I thought about that as well as I dried off and sucked in my gut as I looked in the mirror.  I've lost all my good habits.

I haven't written -- not consistently, anyway -- in quite a while.

We all have our reasons for this, of course, and some of them are even valid.  Good habits, for instance, are invariably the ones that are more difficult and more of an investment in time, and sometimes changing life situations -- good and/or bad -- make it tough to keep good habits.  Or sometimes we get lazy, as bad habits are easier, more instantly gratifying, and creep in when we least expect it.  Either way, whatever the reasons or excuses, the problem comes down to one thing: discipline.

My life situation has changed a bit.  I find myself less willing to engage in the high-energy, cardio-intensive routine of early-morning basketball two to three days a week, and more willing to spend that time in bed.  I end up talking myself out of my workouts as I drag my feet to get to the gym.  I'm completely unwilling to go for a run in the midst of the recent (and absolutely, insanely bitter) cold snap.  I find myself writing less, and I give myself reasons like "Gotta promote the novel," or "Don't have time right now.". Or, if I'm being truthful, the reasons are "I don't feel like it," or "I'm not in the headspace to produce anything good."

Damn that.  No more excuses.  Life is passing us by as we fill the days with stuff we should have done and reasons why we didn't do them.  Our bad habits are killing us.  My bad habits are killing me.  Not with any disease or anything, but with malaise and missed opportunity.  The game is not called because of cold.  We -- I -- just have to find the find the discipline, to create the good habits, that restores the natural order of things.

And with that, I reveal the number I saw. 271.

I say this a lot, but now I'm saying it publicly over the internet, which will hold me accountable.  I will reduce that number by 30 in the coming months.  It's going to take planning, hard work, and discipline.

The other thing, the writing?  Well, something must be done about that too.  At the beginning of the year, I set forth an unreachable goal: to write a million words of fiction.  I know the goal is insanely difficult, but I set it with the idea that if I try and don't make it, I'll stilt have done an unbelievable amount of work.  So far, my word count isn't all that impressive.  I'm going to take a NaNoWriMo-style approach and try to generate 1200 words a day of fiction.  Yeah, I'll be well short of my million-word mandate, but the point wasn't a million words, the point was forging the discipline to transition into a writing career.

And I trust the internet to hold me accountable.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

So, I spent much of the summer radio silent on this blog, poking my head out only once or twice to call for men to better to the women in our lives and so on.  It's not like I stopped writing, or stopped caring, I just got busy.  This has been a very interesting summer on a lot of levels, and while I usually don't talk too much about personal life details all that often, I'll get nice and personal right about now.

My summer began with the grand adventure of dating.  Those of you who know me best know how much I hate the dance of getting to know someone, and pretending to be the sexy version of myself so that I can have the privilege of buying dinner and paying for a movie so that maybe, sometime down the road, we can possibly have sex at some point (Yes, that IS sarcasm, but it's bleak out there).  I was reminded that things tend to work out better when I don't try to be the sexy version of me, or the smart version of me, or whatever version I think someone will like.  I tried being myself, a move I haven't done in a few years.  The result? I get to hang out with an amazing girl on a regular basis.  We're sappy and cute and disgusting -- in public, no less -- and it's kind of cool.  Don't get me wrong, if I were to watch a couple like that from a distance I would probably projectile vomit all over the place (I'm a hypocrite.  I'm also probably bigger than you.) but it IS nice to be so comfortable with someone you don't really worry about what the rest of the world thinks about it.

Midway through the summer, my brother and his wife announced that they are expecting a baby (everyone after me... awwwww).  And then then world got like, hormonally crazy.  People I knew are dropping babies like crazy.  I haven't seen an epidemic like this since my days in the Diamond District! (Seriously, don't drink the water.)  In a few days, a wonderful couple I met through my brother are expecting their own bundle of joy, and after the story I heard about the kid's sonogram pose, I acquired the nickname rights and hereby dub the soon-to-arrive person "L'il Baby Cool Breeze."  I also expect to not hear from those parents until the kid is 6 with that nickname.

Of course, no story worth living is completely happy, and toward the end of the summer I said goodbye to my father.  Without airing business, I will say that while we weren't as close as I would have liked to be (and I take a portion of the responsibility for that), I loved him, respected him, and will miss him dearly.  I hope he was proud of his children, because we all turned out pretty damn good.

The positive to that story is in several parts; number one, it reunited my family under one roof for the first time in a while.  Six boys, two girls, with spouses and children and baby bumps all over the place.  It was chaos.  I was in heaven.  Secondly, my brother took my dad's SUV in order to have a vehicle to drive their kid around in (sidebar: newborns live the life.  They get valet service, chauffeur service, room service, free rent, AND they get adored for it.  It's their world, we're just living in it.).  He's living in Louisville, Kentucky now, one of those places that no one ever thought any of us would move to on purpose, and he's happy there.  Go figure.  Anyway, getting the car there meant one thing: Road Trip!  I logged my first ever road trip, getting to see Pittsburgh and pass through some very pretty country on the East Coast.  Definitely one of my better memories.  Lastly, my father's death made it necessary to do something I was looking at doing anyway.  Last minute flights are expensive, so in order to do the flight back to New York, I had to take a loan.  But since I was going to take a loan out to publish anyway, I did that.  My next novel, The Favorite, should be out by the end of the year!

This summer has been a big one for me.  I can't think of one that's had this many stories in it worth telling, and summer don't end until the Yankees are done playing, so who knows what more can happen?  If the Yankees make the playoffs though, I'm going to be hard to deal with.

Declarations of Independence

It's the American Dream, really.

It's the story we all are told as kids, how in this country, we have the opportunity to take our talents and make something of ourselves, create a better life, and get wealthy doing exactly what we want to do.  We hear about it from the top a lot, from the people who have already made it.  What about the rest of us?

As an independent author, I know that between the starting from nothing and the becoming something, there's a lot of grinding in the middle.  A lot of paid dues.  A lot of separation from the pack.  A lot of figuring out which way is your way.  To be honest, the stories of the people trying to make it is a lot more interesting than the ones of those that already did.  You never hear the stories from the middle, but maybe we should.

I will be taking it upon myself to find these stories and tell them, partly as shameless self-promotion and partly as a way to get the word out on people who are doing it themselves and meeting varying levels of success.  That's the inspiration for us all, isn't it?

So, look for "Declarations of Independence," profiles of independent artist, authors, designers, businessmen and women.  People who started with a passion and a good idea and turning a dream into reality.  And if any of you are out there and wanting to have your story told, contact me on Facebook or at frankcthomas@hotmail.com.

Cheers!

Little Lights

This is going to be a long one.

This past Friday, a terrible thing happened, and 20 little lights were extinguished, along with 6 who would guide them.  A school got shot up.  As I write those words, those words that I've been avoiding writing for several  days, I still get a little choked up.  I struggle with the notion that it happened, and I can't help but think of how this horror could have been prevented.  I still am rather disgusted.  I still am angry.  This should not have happened.    And yet...

This event, this horrible happenstance, opens the door for certain conversations that we have long avoided about the realities of our own culture.  The absence  of those 20 little lights shine a beacon on what's tragically wrong with us in oh so many ways.  If there's any good at all to be taken from this, it's that certain accepted paradigms about us as a people are going to be taken to task, for better or for worse.  Our gun culture, unique in the world for it's stubborn persistence and its effectiveness in killing innocent people, will be looked at.  Our media ideals, where we have more and more eschewed news for entertainment, will be looked at.  Our views on mental illness will be looked at.

The debate going on immediately, and rightfully so, is about gun control.  The 2nd Amendment guarantees the right to bear arms for all US citizens. As an interesting sidebar, the 3rd Amendment gives us the right to not have soldiers quartered in our homes.  That part is important because at the time it was written, British troops had the unfortunate tendency to camp out in the homes of random citizens under orders from the crown, with the citizens of the country unable to do anything about it.  In order to prevent that from happening again, the founding fathers put into legislation this right for all Americans to be able to refuse quartering by force if necessary, and of course, allowing for armed revolt if necessary.  No invading soldiers in the home.  This little bit of history is constantly glossed over in gun control conversations that involve the 2nd Amendment because times have changed.  For starters, the US military is the elite of the world, largest in numbers and most effective in killing power, a development the founding fathers surely could not have envisioned.  We're not shooting soldiers, not without swift, immediate, and likely final reprisal.  Secondly, the founding fathers could never dream of the destructive killing power of the guns we have today.  Single shot smoothbore weapons were the order of the day, musket balls and the like.  Chambered weapons were still a good eighty years away, as were guns that you could wield with one hand. I believe that if those great minds who wrote the Constitution were alive today, they would make a case to clarify and adjust the amendment for today's time.  After all, who really needs a scoped, automatic, military-grade rifle to hunt?

The bespectacled gentleman to the left is Joe Scarborough, MSNBC host and former four term Republican Senator.  He was an ardent defender of the right to bear arms.  After last Friday's massacre, he changed his mind.  (Watch the video. the speech is actually quite moving.)  Our culture regarding guns employs the fantasy of one man, alone, defending his land and his family.  Our firearm based entertainment employs this belief.  What they fail to realize is the reality: that putting a gun in the hand of an average, untrained, and scared civilian is going to get him/her and others killed.  Movies purport the notion that all shots fired find their target, and when they do, death (and usually justice) is quick, clean and swift.  Reality check: it doesn't work that way.  Famously in the early 2000's, 6 trained NYPD officers fired 41 shots at a suspect and only managed to hit him 8 times.  Untrained, frightened people with guns would muster a far inferior hit rate.  The other part of our gun culture that needs to be addressed is ease of access.  In many states, firearms are easier to obtain than a Driver's License.  For  Driver's License, you have to demonstrate physical ability and proficiency in operating a vehicle, and in some cases you can only attempt to show that proficiency after logging extensive hours from approved trainers.  You also have to show proficiency in each vehicle you intend to drive-- separate licenses for trucks, boats, motorcycles, and cars.  To obtain a gun in most states, all you need is a Driver's License and no criminal record.  In some states, the criminal record thing is negotiable.  Like with cars, just being here shouldn't automatically allow you access to a projectile weapon.

There is a thought process of late that says that teachers, principals and school personnel should be armed. Really?  Is that the kind of world you want to raise your kids in, that the teacher is strapped in a school?

Shortly after the shooting, a response attributed to Morgan Freeman was circulated via social media:

You want to know why. This may sound cynical, but here's why.

It's because of the way the media reports it. Flip on the news and watch how we treat the Batman theater shooter and the Oregon mall shooter like celebrities. Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris are household names, but do you know the name of a single *victim* of Columbine? Disturbed people who would otherwise just off themselves in their basements see the news and want to top it by doing something worse, and going out in a memorable way. Why a grade school? Why children? Because he'll be remembered as a horrible monster, instead of a sad nobody.

CNN's article says that if the body count "holds up", this will rank as the second deadliest shooting behind Virginia Tech, as if statistics somehow make one shooting worse than another. Then they post a video interview of third-graders for all the details of what they saw and heard while the shootings were happening. Fox News has plastered the killer's face on all their reports for hours. Any articles or news stories yet that focus on the victims and ignore the killer's identity? None that I've seen yet. Because they don't sell. So congratulations, sensationalist media, you've just lit the fire for someone to top this and knock off a day care center or a maternity ward next.

You can help by forgetting you ever read this man's name, and remembering the name of at least one victim. You can help by donating to mental health research instead of pointing to gun control as the problem. You can help by turning off the news.

It, of course, came out after the fact that he didn't say it, but whoever did has a point.  We glorify the shooters, the Dylan Klebolds and Jared Loughners, the Adam Lanzas and the Trench Coat Mafias.  We may not glorify their actions, but we make celebrities of them, independent of the victims.  Their suicides are massively played up, and if they're brought to justice, their trials are far from subdued.  In the effort to make their deeds infamous, we make these people-- ultimately, these criminals -- famous.  So why wouldn't a troubled person-- whose personal troubles make right and wrong muddy in favor of being noticed-- shoot up a school?  Or a movie theatre?  Or a hospital?  Or a Congresswoman's campaign stop?  The media coverage will get them noticed.  Over the last 30 years, news has gone from informative to sensationalist.  We went from informing on the events of the day, to an invasively voyeuristic entertainment system that focuses on the trivialities of life for famous people.  This is the news.  It's not supposed to be entertaining, it's not supposed to be sold.  Its purpose is to inform the public conversation.  No bias, no context, just information.

Much is being made of Adam Lanza's mental problems as the story develops, specifically his Asperger's syndrome.  And once that tidbit of information came out, there was almost a public sigh of relief, like "Oh, whew, okay.  He's crazy, he had Asperger's, so that's why it happened."  What this shows is a tragic ignorance about mental illness, and that ignorance comes from avoiding what it means to be mentally ill.  Asperger's does not necessarily make people prone to violence.  It's a social disorder, meaning the way one interacts with other people is somewhat skewed by normal standards.  Conversely, people with Asperger's tend to show extreme interest and proficiency in specific tasks and subjects.  We usually observe high levels of intelligence in people with these types of social disorder.

So what now?  Obviously there was something wrong with the kid.  The answer to that is that we may never know what exactly was going through his head in the days leading up to last Friday.  Maybe that's the point.  Working in healthcare, I've noticed that mental illness is used as a catch-all for a lot of things that aren't so bad.  I'm not saying that Clinical Depression or Bi-Polar Disorder don't exist.  I'm saying that the large majority of people who claim it don't have it.  Mental illnesses have been for a very long time over-diagnosed, over-medicated, and under-treated.  The response to depression is to give brain altering chemicals.  Bi-Polar disorder treatment involves mood-stabilizing medication.  ADHD sufferers get Speed.  But how many of these people actually have these disorders?  There's nothing you can see in a CAT scan that shows depression, or bi-polar, or whatever.  Again, this is not to discount the people who suffer from these illnesses.  I've seen the people who do, and these meds are life-saving.

Tell me if this sounds familiar: You're watching TV when a pharmaceutical ad comes on. "Do you feel down?  Less energetic?  Like you don't want to get out of bed?" 

You think,  "yeah, sometimes."  

"Then ask your doctor about Pill X!"

For most of us it ends there, but then there are the people who do have a talk with their doctor and do get a sample of Pill X, which after using they feel amazing, creating a false set of symptoms they must continually treat.  Think about that for a moment.

These are a sample of the conversations that we will be having as a people over the next few weeks and months as we figure out what happened and and how it could have been averted.  Not all of it is useful, or pointed in the right direction, but all of them are conversations we need to discuss.

RIP Donna Summer

Yet another piece of my early childhood musical education has passed on.

Legendary disco queen Donna Summer has passed away, losing her battle with cancer.  She was 63.

Much of my family were young in the mid to late 70's, when disco was in its heyday, so it was far from uncommon to hear some of that stuff in the mid 80's in my house as my older siblings were "digging in the crates" for older records.  For all you younger folk, records are three generations before mp3s.  "Hot Stuff" and "Let's Dance" are two of my older brother's favorite songs... and I have his disco mix CD to prove it.

Ms. Summer was the picture of class, and the world is lesser for her loss.  Rest in Peace.

You Kiss Your Mother With That Mouth? (short post)

Whoa.

I don't get it.

I don't get the assault on the rights of women to control their own reproductive system.  A woman requiring birth control pills to inhibit the growth of a cyst is not all that much different from, say, a man needing to take medication to retard the growth of a testicular tumor.  And yet, this fine citizen Limbaugh suggests that in return for having that paid for, we should get to watch her have sex.

That's just wrong.  It's this kind of talk that drags our openness about the concept of sex further and further behind the rest of the world.  Should we hand out scarlet letters at Planned Parenthood too?

Resolutions? Those never work!

Happy New Year, ladies and gents!

2012 has come, and it seems the end of the world is upon us, the way it seems to be upon us every few years since '99.  I'm scared.  *yawn*

According to the Mayan calendar, the human race doesn't make it to the end of the year.  Or to Christmas, for that matter (the last day on the calendar is December 23.  Anyone of these geniuses think that maybe they ran out of space?).  I guess that means you must be a hopeless optimist to make resolutions.  After all, if the world ends in a shade over 11 months, what's the point in vowing to change yourself, to extend your life, or be healthier?

I couldn't answer that for you.  I'm a hopeless optimist.  I have a list of resolutions.  My "Self-Improvement Plan," that's what I call it.  And here I am, sharing it with the ether.  Happy New Year to you.

            -Read one book per week.

            -Reduce caffeine consumption by 75%.

            -Investigate living in Seattle.

            -Blog once to twice per week.

            -Finish the edits on Punch-Drunk Bastards before March1.

            -Finish plotting Open by July 1.

            -Have PDB ready for launch by July 1.

            -Have all my personal bills down to zero before I get my tax check.

            -Go home in February. 

            -Pay off my car at tax time.

            -200 days in the gym.

            -Make a new meal twice a month.

            -Write something every day.

            -Have a draft of Open finished by September 1.

            -Prepare Underground Rhapsody for NaNoWriMo.

            -Bank $8000 - $10,000 by the end of the year.

And that's all this time folks.  See you next week.

Mr. Candidate (Re-run)

As it's Election season again, I dug up an Facebook note that I humbly submit as a conversation starter.


Hello, my name is Franklyn Thomas and I'd like to announce my candidacy for... well, whatever you got.  I'm not a politician, nor do I have any political experience, but that hasn't stopped some out there (I'm looking at you, Mr. Paladino from New York).  I'm not terribly angry as much as I'm tired of people who claim to have my best interest at heart, but don't.  I figure, hey, these guys are running on sound bites, I might try to run on something else: ideas.  Duh moment: this country has problems.  We need solutions.  Not the solutions that have been crammed down our throats for generations, new solutions from this era.  From us, not some wrinkled old dude.

For starters, as Americans we've been conditioned to believe for the last 30 years or so that the wealthy will save us if we just hand them money.  That is the essential concept behind trickle-down economics.  The problem is, it doesn't work.  Not in this economy.  It may work in a situation where we made stuff, manufactured things, but these days our prime export is debt.  We buy and sell debt like it's wood or brick or steel.  We don't manufacture anything on a global scale anymore.  This is a problem that is endemic to the bottom and has worked its way to the top of our system.  People would prefer to be ballers than bricklayers, to be power brokers instead of handling power tools.  How do we combat it?  We address the bottom of the structure.  As your elected official, I would push forth legislation that would allow the government to make it easier for our children and young adults to be educated, and for our educators to be better compensated and appreciated.  This would include a mandatory minimum salary for teachers in the public system that would provide a 50% increase in pay across the board.  In return, I would insist that a similarly mandatory accountability system that would be handled by an impartial group of parents, alumni, and teachers in the region to rank our teachers and the job that they do.  From the student's side, I would introduce legislation that would sponsor optional region-specific curriculum to better prepare students for post-educational life in these regions.  For instance: our farming states in the middle of the country would benefit from eduating our youth in how to work a farm, how to manage crops and farm labor, animal care, how to turn a profit.  This educational approach could be applied to a wide variety of problems plaguing our society today; teach our children how to better their communities, and those communities will better their towns, their states, and the country on a whole.

Expanding on this point, my government would be willing to abate most or all of the collegiate expense of the children and young adults who enrolled in a program that addressed a specific need in their region or in the country as a whole.  our infrastructure is crumbling, especially in smaller towns and cities across the United States; we need visionary engineers to help us fortify it.  My administration would set up a "farm system" of sorts, where we pay for engineers to be educated to their bachelors level, and they work on rebuilding our roads and cities for 10 years.  We need educators; students who would be willing to nurture their love of teaching would find the United States very appreciative of their efforts.  We need to solve our energy crisis within my lifetime so that my grandchildren will not have to bear the punishment of what we have put into our atmosphere for so many generations.  My administration would be willing to fund the dreams of the wide-eyed optimists entering college expressly to figure out how.

I believe in the ideal that the role and purpose of government is not just to defend, but to invest in its people.  The best of those investments in the education and the health of its people.  And even though I'm sure it would cost me voters who believe that socialism is communism, I would support the defeated Public Option for healthcare.  As a healthcare worker, I can tell you that the insurance companies do not care about you.  They care about their profits, same as any other business.  I would not deny them their right to make money, however part of their purpose is to make it so that being ill doesn't make you broke.  The insurance companies have not been living up to that.  Capitalism is the theory of letting the market decide.  I believe we should introduce a government backed option, similar to the option that is already extended to federal workers and politicians, that offers reduced cost health care.  The response of the industry could only be to reduce their cost, to not repel customers and to end the general (excuse my French) fuckery they have perpetrated on us for the last 30 years.  This may not be as important to the people of New York or Washington state, who already have the benefit of several insurance companies competing over your hard earned dollar.  However, states like Alabama or Tennessee, whose single, statewide insurance companies leave options limited to "eat shit" and "like it" could benefit from this.

The third prong of my campaign falls under energy independence.  This isn't simply about finding new oil wells on our land and seas; this is about changing our worldview.  The reason why the Middle Eastern nations are such an important thing to us is solely about the vast reservoirs of oil they sit upon.  We make bad deals over it.  We fight bad wars over it.  Our mindset must change.  Developing a new, sustainable energy source must be our top priority, if for no other reason than it will remove the leverage of groups like al-Qaeda, who can find refuge in oil-bearing nations who love our dollars and hate our ways.  We can end the extortion by finding another way.


My ideas on this are a little different.  This country is not homogenous.  The landscape alone could be divided into six different nations with six different needs and six different sets of resources.  We can make practical use of the winds in the midwest, the sun in the desert, the water along the Mississippi and so forth to power our nation.  The point is, we can figure out a way to power our nation without fighting another oil war, without worrying about another oil rig exploding.  Ever.  And as your elected official, I would work tirelessly, day and night to do so.

Lastly, and most importantly, I'd like to outline my plan for the unemployment rate.  Harsh, severe taxation for American companies who do more than 20% of their manufacturing overseas.  There is simply no room for that kind of outsourcing in today's economy.  There is no reason why these practices should be allowed to continue.  Conversely, I would like to initiate tax breaks for companies who bring their manufacturing jobs back home.  Overseas companies who do manufacturing in the US would be subject to the same taxation; heavy taxes for not utilizing American workers for products made and sold in the US, tax reprieves for high employment.

So, in conclusion, my fellow Americans, I would look forward to seeing you on Election Day, and we begin the work of saving our country and our planet.

... ah who am I kidding?  I'm no politician.  And this liberal-leaning blog post has probably cost me more friends than I would have had votes.  Still, it's nice to dream about a politician who had more than his career in mind when he voted on shit.  Oh well.

Chubby Me

Ok, so as we all approach and live in our 30's, we come to the sad realization that we're not teenagers any more, and our collective metabolism ain't what it used to be. Some of us are fine with it, others aren't. I fall somewhere in the middle. Yeah, I work out, but not as consistently as I should. I eat okay, but not nearly right enough. I'm not fat, but I'm no Greek God, either.

I saw a documentary the other night called "Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead." It chronicled the journey of two men, one highly overweight, the other morbidly obese, as they sought to better their individual health through better lifestyle choices. They each spent 90 days on a juice fast, initially losing tremendous amounts of weight, and through this action became something of an inspiration to those around them, and presumably anyone who has seen the documentary.

Now I'm not going on a juice fast. I like food too much. But for years, I've been told by people close to me that I lack the discipline to do what was necessary to make my body work for me. That bothers me. Also, on a more personal note, as I've gotten older, my GI tract and I haven't been seeing eye-to-eye as much as I would like. So today, I'm beginning what I'm calling "The Chubby Me Project." I'm going to chronicle in this blog my daily fight with my weight, my body and most importantly, my discipline. This is day 1.

I will post pics every day of what I look like, gambling that I will show some progress and hold myself accountable to anyone who is reading this. In my mind, it'll play out something like a P90X infomercial. Now I already have a pretty stringent workout/exercise routine, and I'm going to add to it the diet. It is by no means groundbreaking, but here's my plan:

Add more fruits and veggies to my diet. I've done a ballpark estimate as to how much "rabbit food" I eat. We're told that the normal diet should include 5 servings of fruits and veggies a day. It should account for about 25% of your daily intake. My intake is somewhere in the neighborhood of 5%. I want to move it up to 33%.

Better portion control. The average American eats simply way too much food. We have this notion that we should clean our plates every time, and our plates are way too full. I am by no means an exception. I'm going to simply eat less.

Goodbye McDonald's. And Wendy's. Burger King. Basically, for the next two months, I will only eat what comes from my kitchen.

Reduce caffeine, eliminate refined sugar, and no more alcohol. This is the hard stuff. I work nights, so coffee is king. I drink 2, sometimes 3 or more cups a night. And who doesn't like coffee dates? No more. I will only drink tea from here on. That will suck, of course. I also have a significant sweet tooth. Cookies, cakes, pastries, goodies like that are always a weakness for me. No mas. As for alcohol... well, this is more general health than anything else. I'm a lightweight to begin with, I get tipsy way too easily, and I just don't like the way a hangover feels.

Anyway, I'm going to start today, along with beefing up my workout schedule. My first order of business... make some juice.

Cheers!