the Blog becomes Big Brother

It has taken me a while to confront my procrastination to start ruling my foods. I read, enjoyed and even felt that my habits were already generally in line with Pollan’s quirky take on eating, but somehow I resisted complying whole-heartedly to the regimen. Perhaps precisely because I perceive it to be regimen that my automatic instinct says “REVOLT!!” Strangely enough, I have found myself breaking the rules (rules that I would maybe even would naturally follow) more often since I’ve had the book in the back of my mind. Now I don’t typically consider myself one to defy for the sake of defiance, so I tried to dig a little deeper and explore why it is that I would sabotage my success in doing something I want to do anyway. I realized that this was in a way a parallel pattern to a lot of habits that I have wished to break, and have not yet had the discipline to do so. I have often and periodically told myself: “I will exercise, I will eat right and less, I will meditate, I will write letters to people I have met elsewhere and love, I will wake up early and stretch, I will set time apart for reflection and creation, I will smoke less, I will not procrastinate, etc.” The tune has become trite, has not changed, and only sometimes plays more loudly than others in my inner ear. It is not that over the years since this mantra first surfaced that I have been an unconscious slob, to a degree I do indeed do all these things, I just still lack the stability and regularity that I desire. I want my will and sense of wellness for myself to be stronger than any external temptations at any given moment, and in this I still waver. It seems counter-instinctual that an individual can struggle so much in self-nourishment and health, that these are things we choose to put off (see aborted New Year’s resolutions as example), but I suppose there are greater psychological forces at play (such the hedonistic draw to immediate gratification rather than the delayed gratification of a longer life, victimization by the advertising machine, socio-economic limitations, etc.) that endanger the chance of long-term survival. So I will bear all this in mind as I attempt to slowly mold myself some shape of discipline. Good news is that if I can begin to rule my foods, it may become easier to extend this exercise to other areas of my life. Maybe it won’t be such a bad thing.