The Shallow Cup

Sorry for being so lame about this thing lately.
Haven't really been very good at motivating myself lately. I need to find a way around that, but so far its a lot easier to just wallow in it. I kind of wish I was a fatalist lately. That I could just sort of give it up and wait for something to happen to me. But I've never been much for that. Fatalism is for floaters. I don't want to float, I want to swim run bike whatever the terrain requires. I'm leaving under my own power.
Its just one of those things. I'm a girl, and I'm small and I have a total lack of upper-body strength and I haven't ever wanted to give in just because of any of that. I am going to do it on my own, even if I can't actually do it at all. I've never been good at asking for help (with pretty much anything: heavy objects, a total lack of paycheck, whatever, I am much better at giving help than receiving it. I'm always too ashamed--I feel like its cheating, and like other people probably need that help more anyway).
But yeah, so I'm in sort of a funk. The kind of funk where I don't really feel much like doing much of anything at all. Writing included. But I am trying to move past that by just ignoring the whiny pansy-ass part of my mind that is crying "Noooooooo!" every time I get out of bed and just going on with things as though it weren't there at all.
This morning I pretended that my cat needed me to get out of bed, that she was my sidekick in a wacky comedy series and she was sick (cough, cough) and I had to go to work to get her medicine and so I had to get up otherwise the tv audience watching at home would know that I was a lazy sack and stop tuning in every week for our outrageous adventures, and then we would have to get real jobs again and poor sick sidekick kitten would never be able to hold down a real job so we might end up out on the street. She totally played along by getting up even more slowly than I did (loaf--kitty) and then getting all mouthy and following me into the bathroom to perch on the sink and serenade (berate) me while I showered.
I know its rather more involved than it ought to be probably, but providing a zany and improbable backstory to my morning makes it at least slightly better.
I was going to go running yesterday but I couldn't hack it and now the temperature has dropped and its about 10 degrees out and man am I going to feel lame if I can't talk myself into a mid-afternoon run. Perhaps it is some sort of challenge? Maybe I need to rescue a group of retired clowns who are on a hijacked school bus headed toward the ocean. ..yeah, I don't know about that one either.

I hear reminiscence can kill you

Its a bad idea to re-read your own stuff. It just reminds you how enduringly pathetic you are.
And obviously I don't need reminding.
One of the holes the construction workers outside my window dug last week filled with water over the weekend and they have spent all morning pumping it out. Its about 18 degrees outside today so I can look at them and be really really greatful that it was never my life's ambition to be a construction worker, because it looks like today would be the kind of day that would kill an ambition like that.
And nobody really wants to live through the day their life's ambition is killed, do they? I don't anyway.
I have this half hearted ambition to aspire to thinness. I have never really experienced thinness personally, and from an outsider's standpoint, it looks like it could be nice. Those skinny girls always look so happy eating their nachos and batting their eyelashes at the big wide world that would appear to be theirs for the taking.
So I aspire. But really only half-assedly. Its sad really. But most anything approached with a lack of conviction are eventually sad.
I go along for most of a day (we're talking the awake part, obviously, so we can say between 12 and 14 hours in a stretch) thinking that I will be good and control my intake of calories and then put forth some effort in the form of exercize to narrow myself even further and I will win this battle and be able to stand beside someone sideways and disappear. Delightful idea, right? There are all sorts of pop culture images that recommend this approach on perusal. Who among us doesn't look at Angelina and think even as the headlines scream above her that she is wasting away that she looks damn good in that black dress? Yeah, I know. Its totally anti-woman and anti-strength and anti-feminist to believe so but I still wish I had a little more conviction. But I don't, as displayed by the following:
@ I crave chocolate almost constantly. Its horrible and it won't go away and I want to eat Milk Ghirardelli Chocolate Chips every day for a month.
@ I give in an annoying amount of the time. Sometimes I can go two or three days without having any, and then it gets a little easier, but most of the time I can reason myself into a small bowl of chocolate chips or something similar with embarrassing ease.
@ yesterday I bypassed the chocolate chips at the grocery store and resolved to stay strong, but last night as I was taking out the garbage I convinced myself I could go for it and bought some Chubby Hubby at the convenience store down the street and ate the whole pint
@ I can't seem to make myself puke it up either. I am that lame. I thought about it and didn't go through with it. I have no shame and I lack commitment.
@ I didn't even go running yesterday, because it was snowing. I might go today, or I might just continue to suck at life

So yeah, I pretty much suck. Its one of those you-know-better-but-you-just-can't-help-it sort of things: I have read enough stupid books on the topic that I should be attempting to change the bad behaviors and yet I continue the cycle, keep banging my head against that wall, and am frustrated with my lack of results. How ridiculous is that?
Completely. I know.