Wow. It has been a long time since I blogged. When I started again, I made a mental promise to myself to try not to blog less than 1 time per week. This was a commitment that I sort of made to myself, and to you, when I started blogging again. It was an theoretical “line” that I drew for myself in my mental sand so to speak.

I think that I am always drawing these lines. I wonder if there are ever any that I don’t, eventually, cross….

I received a comment that read:

“Hello, Are you still doing the 'no starch diet'? I haven't followed your blogs in a while and I wanted to know if you have been successful. I truly appreciated you 04/04/2004: "the line" blog.”

I couldn’t even remember “The Line” blog so I went back and read it.

It was another attempt by me to get starches out of my life. I was drawing the line: I would never eat starches again

I think that sometimes my drawing of these “lines” is an attempt by me to reel my life in. Because of my basic artistic nature, I tend to feel like I am always sort of spread out and going in a million different directions. I think that I try to counter this feeling by trying to become narrower in one way or another.

It never works, and, unfortunately it didn’t work that time either.

So where did the line go? Well, in my usually fashion, I probably followed it for a short while. My guess would be 2 days. Maybe as long as 5 or 6, but 2 days seems about right. That’s about the outside of what I can do when severely limiting my nature. That line, and many others that I have drawn int eh past and continue to draw for myself now, was not realistic for the person that I really am. It was only realistic for the imaginary me.

I get the two confused a lot.

I sometimes think about the entire year that I was a Vegan. How was I able to do that? Well, it is also sort of like the 3 or 4 times in my life where I was able to stick to a severe diet and exercise regime long enough to lose 50 pounds or so. I can do it. For a while. Then I simply can’t anymore, and no amount of mental coercion will change that.

I think that, too, as I get older, I simply no longer want to live a life of extremes.

It feels as if I am not ABLE to live an extreme life anymore.

I have a friend who is married to the most high-powered woman I have ever encountered. She was, just recently, ranked as the top woman money manager in the country by Barron’s. You can figure out what her income is like. She built, owns and runs a top jumping stable in the northeast and one of her horse was in the Olympics last go around. She is a top jumper herself. On top of this, I read an article about her the other day, where she is also a fitness buff who, according to the interviewer, has the best torso he has ever seen. She is 48. In this article she describes her day. She is up at 5 AM and works out for 3 hours. She then works at her office from 10 to 4. She comes home and rides 4 horses, eats dinner and then settles down to work in the evening. She works until midnight.

This is her routine, day in and day out. She has been married for 25 years to the same person, and has 2 daughters. She is self-made, very rich, in perfect shape and succeeds in everything she does.

It’s tough not to be jealous.

But I am not. I’m not because I know that I can do exactly the same thing as she, if I am willing to do so. The thought of doing that kind of schedule doesn’t appeal to me. While the success DOES, the rest does not. I also know that there is a personal and family price that is paid with that sort of life and it is a price that I don’t want to pay.

I’m not willing to live that life, to walk that line. But with that, I have to give up the dream of being in perfect shape, the dream of being enviably thin. I haven’t given up the dream of being rich yet….

Sometimes I think that I am willing to do it all, and that’s when I start thinking about the line. I am not naturally thin. I have to force my body, very hard, to get it to look like that. It takes eating very carefully, and, truthfully, very little. It takes 3 hours of hard exercise each and every day. It takes total and completely commitment. And, unfortunately for me, it takes committing to that for a lifetime.

So, where is my line?

The truth is, is that I just don’t know. Perhaps there is none. Perhaps I just don’t want to live within lines that are too extreme anymore.

I guess I would have to say that I am still figuring it out.