20 January 2006

Medium

Some time during my life, I became a "medium." I gained weight from when I was a size 4 and am now a size 8. Maybe that's large, but in any event, I like to think it's medium.

I used to be right up there with the best students in high school--mostly A's and lots of effort, but then AP History and Calculus killed me. I was medium, or better known as average.

I get up in the morning and put on clean clothes, ironed if they're wrinkled, and moisturize, apply minimal makeup, brush my hair--but I don't go the whole 9 yards. Sometimes I don't dry my hair, so it looks OK, not great. And sometimes, I wear jeans during the week to work (because I can) instead of getting done up to match the job that I'm supposed to be doing (right now!)...

And when I go to the gym, sometimes I race through my strength training part of the work out, or cut the cardio short--or don't push myself, resulting in a mediocre workout intensity.

I cut corners, I get lazy, I whine and complain. And I feel "medium" when it comes to these posts. I feel like I can't be me because certain people are watching.

There are very few people who know about this because if more knew and if I shared my thoughts with my friends and family and colleagues (gasp!), I'd feel limited in my sharing.

But I already do. I've already got people letting me know that they "get me"--but it's funny because I don't even get me. I don't get any of it.

And yet with the few people that see this--and even fewer (read: nobody) who comments, I still feel this safety by writing only little mind jolts. I write about petty law school fears and white wedding dreams. I write but it's not the same. But I'm not quite sure what it's supposed to be.

And for someone who was an English major and someone who worked with books and supposedly edited them, I feel like a fraud. I feel like I really don't know what I'm doing. And it's not just with the writing. It's with so much in my life. And this unknown and this ambiguous path has caused me to be a "medium" who tries to take it day by day.

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