robsingleton.net

You ever notice how many rules go right out the window on vacation?

• We ate like pigs.
• We slept in way too long.
• We ate like pigs.
• We got way too sunburned.
• We rode twisty, spinning, droppy rides one time too many.
• We ate like pigs.

What’s the deal with theme park food? It costs too much. They give you too little. It cannot be classified into any of the known food groups (unless ‘junk food’ is now and official food group), and it may be among the deadliest poisons known to man.

But we buy it!

At exorbitant prices!

And eat it.

Then go buy some more of it.

 The good news is that I felt I showed some pretty good restraint and came out of this trip with as little damage as possible compared to so many others.

Poor, pathetic, sorry saps!

I checked my gut.

Pretty much unchanged.

Was my face fatter?

Nope, still the chiseled, Brad Pitt type jaw line I’ve become known for (in my own little world).

Hair thinner, perhaps — from all the salt.

No way. I have the hairline of a young Ronald Reagan.

All and all, I thought I came out of the trip pretty much unscathed.

Still, I thought it a pretty important policy not to look in the mirror  for a solid month.

Michelle thought I was nuts.

We all got slack on this trip.

No more junk food in the house!

All healthy food.

You (Rob) need to start working out again! You’re letting yourself go. A lot of people depend on you!

Wow, had the Florida sun gotten to her worse than I thought?

I think I look pretty good, I said on the last day at Disney. Seriously, Michelle, go ahead and point out someone who looks like me and be honest, I can take it. <— That statement will go down in infamy as one of the dumbest I ever uttered.

It took her a while, but she finally found the perfect match for my current body type…

Which raises a whole host of issues we won’t go into right now, but here’s what I am thinking regarding the, “way we see ourselves.”

It has to do with a couple things I’ve noticed about people as they get older:

 They usually think they look younger than they do.

• They usually think they look thinner than they do.
• They usually think they “still got it,” more than they do.
• They usually think they’ve broken the cycle of bad habits their parents exhibited more than they have.
• They usually think they’ve found more balance then they have.
• They usually think they are more spiritually mature than they are.
• They usually think they are more reliable than they are.
• They usually think the world was tougher, kinder, more respectful and all around better when they were young than it really was.

Why do we think this way?

Because we want all the best things for ourselves without most of the hard work that typically goes right along with it.

The good news is that we are often doing better then we did when we were young and restless in most of these areas, but almost never as good as we think we are doing in most of these areas.

Why do we try to convince ourselves? I mean, do we really want to get to game day and find that we’re no where near as ready to play as we thought we were? — maybe even not ready enough to be on the team? That would be the ultimate embarrassment with everyone looking on.

But we keep right on lying to ourselves anyway.

That’s dumb.

Any way to break this pointless cycle?

I’ll talk about that in tomorrow’s post.