Friday, August 5, 2011

Persevering through the pages

When I was in college, I enrolled in the philosophy course "Existentialism and Literature" in order to fulfill my philosophy requirement. One of the books required for the class was Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian. Now, for reasons I won't get into in this blog post, I didn't complete that course that semester. I did complete the course later, but with a different instructor and different books.

So, I had struggled through a third of the book before I just walked away from it. Yet I came back to it, before I  finished college, in an attempt to read it for pleasure. My second attempt was no more successful than the first. The book made its way to a box with a number of other novels yet to be read (Anna Karenina, War and Peace, and the beginning of Stephen King's The Dark Tower series, just to name a few).  Fast forward a few years to my time in Brattleboro, and on my third attempt, I made it nearly halfway through the novel.

When I moved back to Maine, though, I took one look at the cover and made peace with me NOT finishing the novel and tossed it in the pile of books to be passed along. But then...it stayed at the back of my mind and one day...well, I guess I just looked at it as my Everest. I had to conquer it because it was there.  And again, I am about halfway through the book. There are definitely moments of pure artistic genius, but it is certainly a book that requires one's undivided attention and perhaps my inability to not finish it has stemmed from laziness more than anything else. Either way, I am determined to see it through but I wonder if I am being too stubborn. Is it possible I'll regret spending so much time on this book when I finish it? There's only one way to find out!

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Weigh-In #7...Eh

I can't complain about this week's weigh-in.  I didn't gain weight, nor did I stay even. I lost eight-tenths of a pound. Obviously, I had hoped to be more "successful" in the sense that I would have lost at least a pound. Still, in the back of my mind, I knew my expectations were a bit high. I went over my points allowed by a few points so at best, staying even would have been a good thing. I also know that I am likely approaching a "plateau point" for me.  My body has adjusted to consuming massive amounts of water, and as I've been able to push myself during my exercises, my muscle mass is probably increasing, too. My immediate goal for the next week is to lose one pound, which will bring me down to my first goal of losing 5% of my weight.