Promises of updates. Renewals. Refocusing.

Yeah, we have it all here at ShrinkGeek.

So the blog has been inactive for over a year now, and the “dream” of making this into some kind of viable business model has pretty much gone the way of the dodo. So have, for me, many of my healthy habits. This is not to say I have completely trashed my body, but in the last year or so I’ve put on well over 50 pounds, I’ve stopped running, and most of my healthy eating habits have gone right out the window.

So what happened?

Well, early last year I started experiencing some unusual swelling and pain in my left foot. I was in the process of trying to train up to a 10k, so I figured I had just done a bit too much and that I needed to take a break for a few days. After a week or so in which I saw no improvement I went to an urgent care clinic. They took x-rays and didn’t find anything wrong, so they gave me some anti-inflammatory drugs and sent me to follow up with my Primary Care Physician. When he couldn’t find anything wrong with me either he sent me to see a Podiatrist. Several tests later I had my diagnosis.

Gout.

Talk about a kick in the nuts. I had lost over 125 pounds, was running on a regular basis, had given up smoking and didn’t really drink all that often. I was doing everything right. And yet here I was being saddled with the “rich mans disease.”

I was given a prescription for Allopurinol, and over the course of the next month my gout got considerably worse as the drugs took hold in my system (without getting too technical, the drugs tend to break up the crystals that have formed over the course of the disease. As a result of this, the pain and flare ups are actually worse as the crystals break down in your body in the process of getting flushed out). Wanting to avoid any kind of future flare ups if it was at all possible, I became a vegetarian.

This caused additional problems. Nobody else in the house was a vegetarian, and two of the four residents were incredibly picky eaters. I ended up making a ton of pasta and rice dishes to make everyone happy, and the weight started coming on pretty quickly. I also wasn’t exercising as much. By the time I felt well enough to start running again it was Summer in Florida (which is pretty much the worst weather to run in ever, and made even worse when you’re a big guy who is sensitive to the sun). I was also dealing with the fact that while I wasn’t having any more flare ups, my feet still constantly feel like they are swelling any time I stand or walk for an extended period. It doesn’t necessarily hurt, but it’s not very comfortable at all.

If all of that wasn’t bad enough, earlier this year my personal life completely exploded. I’m not going to go into all the gory details here, but suffice it to say that I spent several months so incredibly stressed out that exercise and healthy eating were pretty much the last things I had the energy to even think of. That’s all just about worked itself out at this point, but I’m still going to be picking up the pieces for a long time to come. My life, currently, is pretty awesome. I am engaged, I am happy, I am doing well in school, and my career continues to be pretty awesome.

My health, however, is not so great.

I’m starting over in a lot of ways, and it’s daunting. Especially when you consider the fact that over the next few months my fiancee and I are going to be working out all the details on how to merge our two households into one. I’ve also had my work-at-home status shaken up a bit, and my boss has graciously allowed me to work at home more often (the trade off being that I have no more “regular” work-at-home days and that I come into the office whenever I need to). While this is a fantastic perk, it kind of cuts into my exercise routine. We have a gym at the office, and it’s much easier to find the motivation to get away from my office for an hour to work out over going outside to do so while working from home. When you combine all this with the continuing gout issues you get a whole ball of exercise demotivating suck.

I realize that this sounds like a list of excuses I’m making for myself. Maybe that’s exactly what it is. All I know is that something, somehow, has to change. I’ve tried to get on board with the whole “fat acceptance” thing in regards to my weight, and I just can’t. Not from the perspective of thinking I’m ugly, really. I don’t. But I don’t feel comfortable in my skin right now. My clothes are all too tight, and I’m super self conscious of that fact. My energy levels are down, and I even had a brief diabetes scare a few months ago.

Let’s also not forget that it was excessive weight that contributed to the strokes I had back in 2000.

Then there’s this web site. We had a lot of dreams when we put it together, none of which came to fruition. I don’t blame anyone for that. We had too many cooks in the kitchen, and none of us were really on the same page as far as what we should do with the site. We were so focused on “monetizing” and making the blog as popular as we could that we didn’t really focus on what we wanted to when the idea came to us.

So last week I wrote an email to Rafe:

What say we start doing so again, and just say “fuck it.” No censorship. No agenda. No editing. Just do your thing, I do mine, and if someone else wants to do their thing they can and just whatever. No pleasing 5 other people. No giving a shit if someone is going to get their nose bent out of shape because of something we say. No putting a business model behind it and worrying about “monetization.”

Just be awesome, and if someone happens to notice, good for them. If you end up wanting to write some kinda e-book and sell it through the site, great. If not, we still just have something we can be proud of.

Whatcha think?

Rafe agreed, and here we are.

I don’t know what the future holds for me, or for ShrinkGeek. What I do know is that I’ve got to find my way towards a healthier lifestyle again, and I hope to blog about my journey here. If that’s something you are interested in, I hope you’ll come along for the ride.

Here’s to the future.