Little Bill

So for about two months there, during this summer, I was eating healthy and in the gym three times a week, sometimes more. As a result of a better diet, swapping out Diet Coke for Seltzer water and regular exercise, I’d lost fifteen pounds. And then, somehow, for the last three (maybe four?) weeks, I fell out of the habit again.

I was really starting to feel better, and had begun to notice some differences in how I looked. Already I’m beginning to feel a little bit lethargic, though that could be the beginning stages of Seasonal Affective Disorder — not that I know if it really does anything to me — now that the sun’s setting before I step out of the office.

Though not quite sure why it happened, I really need to step up my game again. I’ve only gained three pounds back which, considering how I eat, is surprising. Starting tomorrow I’ll have to make up a grocery list for dinner, since that’s when most of my bad eating habits show up. It’s difficult with pizzerias, Chinese food, tacos, burgers and fries are all within walking distance from me. Also I’m just too exhausted after work (let alone after the gym!) to cook. Still, it’s got to be done.

So I’m back on that. And I’m also going to revisit my workout and try and make it more enjoyable. After all, if I’m not going to enjoy it, I won’t make it into a habit. Simple as that.

If you live in New York, you discover that there is, in fact, a sound to silence. It is the incredibly conspicuous clack of your fingers dancing across the keyboard. The fan of the laptop humming against the top of the bed. The actual ticking of your wristwatch from five feet away, and the freight train’s rumble across the tracks and whistle over three miles away. The simple fact that you can hear these things is a reminder of the things you’re not hearing.

And those things are the sounds of New York City. It’s where you’re forced to hear drunken people shuffling down the street. Cars and cars pass by. And what’s not expressly identifiable becomes this low hum of white noise which is the cumulative sum of every siren, junkie, broken bottle and subway train crossing town.

I’ve found silence again by coming to my hometown. Here, in the beginnings of autumn, not only can I find peace and quiet, but I can discover — I never fully appreciated that which I took for granted growing up here — the incredible beauty that are trees, spanned across the horizon, peppered with greens, browns, oranges, reds and yellows. Here I can find twilight with a dark landscape, indigo sky, orange sunset with the very rims of the clouds overhead painted a delicate red-violet.

Here is where I can find dew crystallizing in the middle of the night to greet the morning as frost.

I may never again belong here, but I’ll certainly never forget that I still call this place home even though I live two hundred and fifty miles away.