citizen of the planet

When I was picking what I wanted to wear this morning, I was wearing my black jeans, so I knew that I wanted to pick something that would contrast against it, which mean that my dark shirts weren’t right for the moment.  I ended up picking out this beige linen shirt that I’ve had for a long while.  Yeah, since it’s old it’s a size or two larger.  I was running late, so I made the decision to not iron it.  To my eyes it didn’t look that horrible.  I figured that if I tucked the shirt in properly it wouldn’t look that bad.  Really, it didn’t at the time.

About midday, I stopped by the bathroom before heading out to pick up lunch.  I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and was kind of shocked at how sloppy I looked.  The wrinkly nature of the linen shirt was more evident.  The tucked-ness of the shirt was variable, which I should have expected.  After all, it’s not like I was standing still.  All of a sudden, I didn’t feel comfortable at all.  After picking up lunch, I actually accidentally splattered a bit of gravy on the shirt.  That was my cue.  I actually went out to Queen St. W and went shopping for a few shirts.  Time to replace a few things in my closet, right?  Mexx had their whole stock on sale for half-price so I ended up getting a couple of shirts from there.  As soon as I got back to office, I changed shirts and immediately I started feeling better about myself.

I’m only telling this story now because this seems to have become a common pattern for me.  It’s not like I didn’t care about how I looked before, but it’s been ramped up over the past few months.  There really is a lot of truth about looking good being correlated to feeling good.  I’m doing so much to transform myself physically, that I might as well care about what I’m wearing too, right?  It’s not like I’m becoming snobbish or obsessive, though details and fit should matter, right?  If I buy correctly, both shouldn’t be an issue I have to be actively conscious about.

See.  All of this came about just because of a wrinkly shirt and a bit of gravy.  Geez, man.

Yeah, I’ve written about how a lot of my clothes have become kind of tent-like due to my weight loss.  Like I said before, I’m sort of in the process of replacing things but really a lot of my old stuff still remains in my daily rotation.  I can’t just get rid of it all, eh?  Anything that doesn’t look entirely ridiculous still gets some use.  It’s kind of sad though when some of my well-worn shirts start getting borderline.

I have a dark blue button down shirt that should have been replaced a long while back due to age, but is still usable.  This morning, due to have a lot of my clothing being in the hamper I decided to use this shirt.  When I put it on, it didn’t look like I was swimming in it.  When I tucked it in I noticed that it bunched up fairly easily due to all of the extra fabric.  I figured that if I arranged it properly it wouldn’t look so bad.  As I went about my day though, every time I passed by a reflective surface I kept noticing how it just looked off.  This thing just looked one or two sizes too big and didn’t look all that flattering.  Honestly, I felt pretty uncomfortable all day.

So yeah, I think it’s really time to stash these things away and actively find more things to add into the rotation.  I can’t go around feeling self-conscious, like I feel like I look odd.  People sniff that kind of thing out and treat you accordingly, eh?

How many times am I going to second guess wearing my purple shirt? Wear it with confidence or don’t wear it at all! Damn.

I’m not sure why, but this morning I liked what I was wearing such that I felt compelled to take a picture.

When I see this picture though, it’s kind of clear that I need to work on taking these kinds of vanity photos.  There are a couple of things that come to mind.

1. If I ever want to do another picture of this type in the future, I need to wear my damn shoes.
2. I could have spent a minute or two cleaning up some of the clutter in the background.
3. Next time get the compost bin out of the way
4. That’s pretty much my usual colour scheme–pretty neutral. Browns and blacks are common.
5. Need to work on where I’m staring.

About midday, I managed to rip the button fastening my pants.  It’s not that my pants were too tight, it’s just that during the lunch hour, in a moment of bad judgment, I ended up moving in a way where the button just got caught in a bad position.  Yes, I had a belt, and that likely would have been enough to keep my pants up and my fly from coming undone.  The mere possibility of having it all come undone with one false move though was just something I didn’t want to deal with so I wandered over to the Winners down the street.  I found a similar pair of pants, brought them back to work, and changed as soon as I could.  You know, in all honesty I felt kind of odd at having to wear clothes that I wasn’t intending on wearing at the beginning of the day.  It’s like, at the beginning of the day there’s this image that I was choosing to present in the workplace, and one shift kind of threw it all off.  Sure, it’s not like the new pants were off in any way, but mentally I just felt like I wasn’t in control of the situation.

Yeah, this is just more evidence of my daily neuroses.  Bah.

Damn it!  I already knew that the suit that I bought at graduation no longer fits properly, but today I just realized that the blazer and sport jacket I bought in September are also a bit big.  I suppose I can wear more layers to fill them out, but…maaaaaaan.  There will come a time when I’ll need to go to an event and I’ll be scrambling to find something that fits well.  This problem needs to be addressed.  However, do I buy stuff now with the possibility that thing won’t fit again in a few months, or do I wait things out?  Aaaaargh!

So, at the post clinic dinner that I wrote about last night, it was actually the first chance I had at getting a good close up look at CeltGoddess23‘s newborn.  I honestly think that I’m really good with children, however, my lack of exposure to babies means that I just don’t know how to act around them or how to hold them.  Why the contradiction?  Well, I guess, if I manage to hold a baby correctly, the baby is always calm and relaxed.  If I hold the baby incorrectly then no good comes of it, just like at that baptism I went to last September.  Ooh, I’m still mildly embarrassed about that event.

So, my friend allowed me the opportunity to hold onto her child.  I immediately got nervous.  What if I do something wrong?  I wasn’t planning on dropping him, so I sat down and took him.  I supported his head properly and wow…he was so darn small!  My friend took a picture and just recently sent me a copy.

I’m actually quite fond of this picture because there are kind of a few levels to it.  Yes, I was smiling, but when I see this picture I can detect a bit of fear in the smile and in the eyes.  It’s like I’m thinking, “OK…this is really cool but…I’m a little bit scared of doing something wrong…”  And no, I didn’t do anything wrong.  The handovers went rather well.

Well, at the very least, I look good holding a baby, eh?

This morning I stuck around my place for a while before leaving for work because I was expecting someone to come by.  A nurse was coming by to perform a checkup for some insurance purposes.  I wasn’t sure what to expect.  In my mind I was imagining some motherly small woman with a no-nonsense attitude.  When I answered the door I was greeted by a rather large woman with crooked teeth.  Go figure.  Anyway, after the long questionnaire she took my pulse and my blood pressure readings.  I think I was able to impress her with my relatively low heart rate.  After all of my hard work running, I can get my resting heart rate when I wake up to go as low as mid 40s.  For the nurse’s test she got a reading of 52 beats per minute.  That’s pretty damn healthy.  My blood pressure was rather good too.  I was half expecting it to be a little bit high, but I was pleasantly surprised.

Now, this is all well and good.  There was one test though that kind of blew my mind.  She basically needed to take my height.  After checking, she told me the reading she got.  I was shocked.  I’m used to thinking that my height is X, but she measured something that was two inches shorter.  I asked her if she was serious.  She said she was.  I told her what I thought my height should be.  She laughed and said that whenever she measures people at my expected height she really has to talk up to them whereas with me she didn’t really have to look up that high.  I didn’t want to press it any further, but secretly I thought that she was just crazy.

Well, after checking my other measurements, my weight, and asking for a urine sample she was on her way.  As soon as she left I looked for a stubby pencil, stood against a wall and marked my height.  I then got a tape measure and took a look.  Wouldn’t you know it, I really was wrong all along: I really am two inches shorter than what I had originally believed. I suppose it wouldn’t be such a big deal, however, there’s kind of an unspoken stigma when it comes to shorter guys, is there not?  Back when I (believed I) was average height, it wasn’t a big deal, but now that I’m under the average it’s plainly annoying.  Interesting though.  When I look up the average heights of men in Canada, I’m under, but if I compare myself to the average heights of people in the Philippines I’m over.  I guess that makes sense given the difference in standards of living.  What the heck, man?

You know, I think that I’ll forget all about it in a few weeks.  I mean, physically nothing about me has changed.  If people around me treated me a certain way (subconsciously) because of my height they will continue to do so even after my discovery.  The only thing that could possibly change is my attitude, right?  If I suddenly act like there’s something wrong with me then people will just feed off of that energy, yes?  So, hey, it’s just business as usual.  Jason is still Jason.