So much of our reality is dictated by how we perceive it, but it’s the stories we tell ourselves that guide us
A few years ago, I came across a story that has stuck in my mind ever since. It was about a small-town newspaper in Alaska, which from the jump had my attention. The former publisher was retiring and looking for someone to take it over. His asking price was one dollar. All you had to do was convince him you were qualified, capable, and willing to move to Alaska and run a local newspaper.
I’m a romantic. A dreamer. I have fantastical ideas that I have absolutely no stamina for. To paraphrase the Admiral from Top Gun, my imagination likes to write checks that my body has no intention of cashing. I have a long history of falling in love with an idea only to sour on it days or weeks later. Either it would become too much work, or my constant fantasizing about it would burn up whatever goodwill I had, leaving me exhausted and over it. In the end, I only really do the things I have to do, and the path to moving to Alaska was long and fraught with danger. Better just to dream about it.
For some reason, it popped up in my head yesterday, and I went looking for it. Funny enough, the woman who took it over, at the time, had just retired herself, and the new owners, a husband and wife team from Texas, who have been living in Alaska for years, and even running several other newspapers there, were just starting up. Not a big fish-out-of-water story there. Not much of a stretch for them, I suppose, but nice to know it’s still carrying on.
It got me thinking it would make a good basis for a story, a fictional story. Not a story about some guy who moves to a small town in Alaska to run a newspaper, but what if I moved to Alaska to run a newspaper? I spent the better part of the day researching the original town and the surrounding area, the history of the region, and the local indigenous people who got there first. I went so far as to outline a basic three-act structure with plot beats and an alarming amount of detail.
I don’t have the story right just yet, and who knows how it will change if I were to actually write it, but I like going through the process, and something will surely come of it. I’ve never thought of myself as a plotter or a planner. In my mind, I’m more of an intuitive, by-the-seat-of-my-pants sort of artist, but that’s not really true.
When I take a trip, for instance, I plan every part of every day. What time we leave, what seats we’ll be in, where we’re staying, where we’re eating breakfast on Tuesday, what we’re doing for dinner on Thursday, and which beach we’re going to on Wednesday. I don’t have any problem deviating from the plan if an opportunity arises, but I don’t like to go in cold. I want something to fall back on at all times. I want options.
This is because I have an aversion to making bad choices. I have a fear of regret, which is quite common in how people make decisions. It’s why we don’t try new things. We are afraid we will regret our decision before we’ve even made one.
I don’t mind wandering when I have the time and resources to get lost, but I have no interest in being lost in the wilderness of a novel for the rest of my life. A meandering essay is one thing, but a novel needs structure or the reader loses interest and sets it down.
I loved the show Northern Exposure, and even dated a woman for a time because she reminded me of the character Maggie, a former socialite turned bush pilot. My favorite character was Chris, the local radio DJ and resident redneck philosopher. Everybody wanted to live in Cicely, Alaska, and listen to Chris in the Morning, before stopping by The Brick for lunch. I loved all the quirky personalities and the individualistic nature of Alaska.
When I moved to the village of Goshen, New Jersey (Pop. 400) from Philadelphia, it was quite an adjustment, but nothing like living in a small town that is geographically isolated. New Jersey is the most densely populated state in the Union, so just because my town is small, it doesn’t mean I’m not surrounded by hundreds of thousands of people. I don’t even know my next-door neighbors’ names, but they are quirky.
Publishing a local paper is more like running a company newsletter than anything resembling investigative journalism. You rely on local advertising and subscriptions for revenue, so you can’t really afford to alienate anyone. You have to be Switzerland. You can get creative in your writing, but it’s hard to be terribly critical if you expect to survive. You have to learn to make the mundane interesting, and that’s always something I’ve been fascinated with.
I’m not dogged enough to be a good investigative reporter. I’m too empathetic. I don’t have the bloodlust necessary to keep at something or someone until they relent. I’m a street fighter, not a boxer. I’m not conditioned to go twelve rounds. If it lasts more than 30 seconds, I’ve already lost. But tell me that something is boring, and I’ll volunteer to write about it, even if it means inserting myself into the story.
It’s Gonzo journalism at its finest.
I really am thinking of trying to turn this idea into a work of fiction. Worst case, it becomes a short story, or maybe even a novella. Right now, in my head, it’s a sort of mystery, crime novel, which is not something I’ve ever tried. I don’t really care for much genre fiction, but I like a good story, and mystery and crime provide cheap drama.
I have been heavily influenced by a revelation I came to recently, over the nature of Norman Maclean’s “A River Runs Through It.” In my head, I knew it was classified as a novella, but I always took the stories in the book to be memoirs. I had just never made the connection. It was so well crafted that I had been fooled into believing this was all really his life, and not a work of fiction. I even missed the clue at the end when his father tells him that even though he likes to write true stories, maybe one day he’ll make up a story that will help to explain the loss of his brother Paul.
So much of the tale is autobiographical, it hadn’t occurred to me that he had made the story up. He’d taken his life, including many true details of it, and then fictionalized it wherever and whenever he liked. Wait, you can do that? Shit. Why bother with the truth and fact-checkers? Write entertaining stories and let them go where they want to go.
As I’ve struggled to get any interest in my nonfiction book ideas, I have begun to turn to the idea of writing a novel, or at least fiction. Not because that’s easier to get published, but because it relies entirely on my abilities as a writer to tell a compelling story and not on my resume as a resident expert or a known celebrity. It becomes an exercise in daydreaming, which, as I’ve explained, I have a black belt in. What would happen if…?
It’s worth the exercise, I think.
My Fighting Weight
Before I lost the weight, I thought of myself as chubby, but not really fat. I would call myself fat, but mostly because I felt it was an exaggeration. Like I was being self-deprecating for effect. “Oh, you’re not fat,” people would say. Then I would see photos of me, especially from the back, and I was indeed fat. It just wasn’t how I thought of myself in my mind’s eye. Now that I’ve lost 60lbs, I’ve begun to think of myself as “normal looking” when really I’m finally just “chubby.”
It’s funny how that works.
I currently weigh 205lbs. I have gotten as low as 203, but haven’t quite been able to break 200 just yet. According to BMI calculations, I would have to lose another 35lbs before they consider me healthy. That’s 170lbs at 5’11”, which is ridiculous. I’m sure there are plenty of people who live like that. They’re called teenagers, or prisoners of war.
As it stands, I’m no longer considered obese, just overweight, and only barely at that. I gain even a few pounds, and I’m back to being obese. There are only four categories of weight according to the scientists: Underweight, Healthy, Overweight, and Obese. I’m guessing the underweight people are starving or dying, the only people considered healthy are athletes, and everyone else is overweight on their way to becoming obese. It would be a very lopsided bell curve.
It’s not like I’m trying to get ripped, or anything. I don’t even work out. I walk, and not every day. Roughly five days a week, I walk two miles, up and down my street, twice. It takes about 36 minutes. I haven’t denied myself any type of food, but I try to be conscious of what I eat, and I’ve learned to eat smaller portions and snack less.
The biggest difference has been laying off sugar in general. Not fanatically, but reasonably. I put sugar in my coffee, but between cutting out booze and soda, I was putting away a good bit of sugar each day. I also used to travel a lot, and that led me to eating and drinking poorly at horrible hours and in excess.
I’ve quit drinking in the past, once for 18 months, and didn’t lose a ton of weight, so that can’t be the only reason. I suspect one reason might be that I was severely anemic, and I’ve since taken care of that. So, between having enough blood in my body and not poisoning it so badly, my body has responded rather favorably.
My biggest fear is that since my weight loss wasn’t entirely intentional, either A) something is wrong with me, or B) it was a fluke and I’ll just get fat again. I am highly motivated not to let that happen, and I don’t believe I’m otherwise sick. I’m not a hypochondriac, but I do fear that I’m secretly dying. I just won’t go to the doctor as I don’t want to know.
It’s not as if I want a trophy body. I’m never going to work that hard, and who would be impressed if I did, and why would I care if they were? I’m not trying to get laid. I would like to pass for normal. I’d like to get to a place where people don’t think of my weight at all when they meet me. Not jacked and not a fat fuck. Just an average schlub. This is my goal. The old Dad bod is fine with me.
Honestly, I have no idea what my ideal weight should be, but I’m going to guess that it’s around 185lbs, so I’d need to lose another 20lbs in the next year. I think if I lay off the booze and continue to eat cautiously and exercise regularly, this is achievable, but it might require more discipline and effort than I’m willing to give. In which case, I’d be comfortable sticking with 200lbs. Even if I lost just ten more pounds and settled in at 190, that would be pretty damn good.
The biggest advantage I see in losing weight and keeping it off is that it greatly expands my fashion options. This is something I’ve missed. I have much better style in my head than I’ve been able to display on my body because of being overweight for so many years. I’m already planning on tucking in my shirt on occasions this winter, so I can go back to wearing waistcoats, simply because I like the look. I can put myself together if I can fit into the clothes.
The irony of looking forward to wearing things I haven’t been able to previously wear is that I no longer go anywhere. I have no place to be and no reason to go anywhere. I work from home and don’t socialize. My big daily outing is walking up and down my street, and I don’t even wear nice workout clothes, which I hate anyway. The only time you’ll ever catch me wearing running shoes is when I’m exercising. I believe in proper leather shoes or boots and natural fibers. Lululemon is the last bastion of those who have given up.
That’s the ultimate irony in all this. I’ve finally lost the weight and look the way I want to look, only to find there’s no one to impress, and nowhere to go.
When Your Life Comes With A Soundtrack
My wife Jane sent me a social media reel the other morning, which featured a guy making a big Mexican feast while listening to Spanish music. The headline said, “Does anyone else’s husband insist on only playing the genre of music that best matches the vibe of whatever they’re making for dinner?”
I play opera when I make pizza, sometimes. Apparently, she’s noticed.
Not always, but often enough that she’s made a note of it. It began before I’d ever met her, when I was introduced to opera and Italian cooking at the same time, sometime in my 20s, and began to play opera as I prepared dinner. I enjoy a few operas, mostly just the super famous ones: La Bohème, The Marriage of Figaro, The Barber of Seville, Carmen, and Madame Butterfly.
It was around this same time that I began enjoying classical music, especially on rainy days and Sundays, when I wanted to relax. This was a throwback to my parents’ house, where we would often listen to classical music on a Sunday afternoon. Everyone would be snuggled in with a book, a drawing pad, or taking a nap. I thought it was all very civilized. I would light a scented candle in my urban hovel of an apartment, turn on some classical music, and read a book. It was lovely.
While it’s true I like to listen to opera when I cook, and I mostly cook pizza and not much else, I’m not sure it’s a fair comparison to say that I play music that matches the ethnicity of the food I’m making. I don’t play Copeland when I’m making burgers. Beef, it’s what’s for dinner, though maybe I should start. I guess you could argue I play music that matches the vibe I’m looking for. But who doesn’t play music that matches the vibe of whatever they’re doing? Isn’t that sort of the point of music, to add a pleasant soundtrack to your life?
The comedian Bill Burr tells a story about getting advice from a veteran comic before making his first Tonight Showappearance. He told him a whole bunch of things, but the thing that stuck with me was one specific piece of advice.
“When you walk out, and the band’s playing,” he told him, “don’t bop your head or react in any way to the music. The music is not for you.”
I’m a big believer in moods, vibes, and how things feel, not just what they are. My guess is, the romantic part of me has always been this way a little, but I ended up choosing a career that became all about designing experiences. Not just what things looked like, but what they smelled like, and how they sounded. A full sensory immersion.
When you’re designing a space such as a retail store, restaurant, hotel, or really anything in the field of hospitality, the environment you are creating is for the guest, not the employees. While I think you have to keep them in mind and not repeat the same playlist over and over again until they quit or go mad, the music is not there for them.
The biggest mistakes I see are when the vibe is built around the staff and not the guest. It’s not really important what the kitchen staff wants to listen to if it doesn’t click with the experience you’re trying to create for the guest.
I have different playlists for different aspects of my life, just as I imagine most people do. Most of us don’t relax to Slipknot, just as we don’t exercise to Enya. It’s the wrong vibe. I say most people, so if you sleep to death metal and work out to lullabies, good for you, but that’s atypical and most definitely against the grain. We tend to listen to music that fits the mood of the activity we’re doing, with the context of music we enjoy in the first place.
When I used to shoot in a studio, I had a whole range of playlists depending on the mood I wanted to convey and the emotion I wanted from the subject. If I were photographing maternity or nudes, it would be light and airy, folky and warm. If I were shooting fashion, it might be high-energy shit I would never listen to otherwise, the kind of music that would drive someone insane. There is driving music and cooking music, music to mow the lawn to, and music to walk to.
When I make pizza, I listen to opera. It’s really good pizza.
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