Book: It Was Me All Along by Andie Mitchell

One of my friends from college studied "Communications" as her major. Early in my days, I also actually considered pursuing that major because I told some sort of counselor at the school my interests and it was suggested that it might be a good fit for me. Though I did not declare a major, I prepared to follow the path that was being recommended by going out with my mother and purchasing an expensive SLR camera. Though it was the cheapest camera of its type, a "Chinon", it still cost about $240. In 1982, that was an enormous amount of money to pay for anything, but my mother encouraged me to buy it because she took my student loan debt about as seriously as her own debts. That is, she saw it as essentially pennies from heaven.

That manual SLR camera stayed with me for many years and I never really learned to use it properly. Though I'd taken a photography class in high school and I'd been taught all about F-stops and lighting conditions, I had retained nearly none of the sophisticated information necessary to coax a great image out of such a camera. In fact, I couldn't even coax a focused image out of it. More than 20 years later, I gave it away to the boss at my job at the time. He actually knew what to do with such things and accepted it despite its antique nature.

The truth is that I never really understood what studying Communications was about. In the middle of my sophomore year, I chose psychology and have never looked back or regretted it. My friend who actually studied Communications seemed to mainly work at radio stations as a result of her choice. She spent some time at the college station and later had a part-time job at a Boston station while she worked full-time as a nanny. She could never really break into anything in media with her degree and worked for a time at a factory that makes medical equipment after finishing her nanny stint. Currently, she teaches immigrant children by distance methods and is preoccupied with grammar and writing. These are the only parts of her major which have factored into her current work.

I probably would have been a good fit for Communications based mainly on my love of writing. However, I have learned that people who study things like journalism or Communications are taught a particular way to write. My writing almost certainly would have been reshaped to fit certain parameters had I studied it. I think that there is an edge and a style that is filed off when you are taught to write for papers, magazines, or other media. My way of writing was once described as "crafty". That means that I sling words together in a somewhat artistic way, or at least in a way that shows more personality.

The reason that I'm talking about all of this in regards to the book I'm talking about today is that Andie Mitchell studied Communications and it shows in her writing style. She writes in a straightforward way that is easy to read and cogent. Unfortunately, she also writes without attitude or personality. This is counteracted in large part by the fact that she's generally very self-aware, self-reflective, and revealing. While her words do not betray intimacy, her content shows plenty.

My asserting that her writing is not stylized is not a criticism, but rather an observation. I've had some experiences with writers who are all style and no or little substance. They wow you with how they say things rather than what they're saying. Ms. Mitchell, by and large, is luring you with what she's saying rather than how she is saying it.

It Was Me All Along is mostly about Ms. Mitchell's short life and the role that weight plays in it. I have an incredible amount of overlap with her life in many ways (poverty, alcoholic father, obesity and weight struggles - losses and gains). She has some important things for people to know and understand about how distorted relationships with food evolve and the complexity of repairing them. In a world that loves nothing more than to talk about "will power" and views excess eating as overindulgence in pleasurable experience, she has an important point to share. That point is, and I know it well, that eating for those with serious problems don't eat out of a love of food, but suffering. They often eat to the point of pain. It's not, "This is so good that I can't stop," but rather "I don't feel good about my life so I can't stop."

The book is on the shorter side and is a quick and easy read. While Ms. Mitchell is talking about her pain, growth, and personal relationship difficulties, she breezes along. Things stall out a bit toward the end as she seems to run out of relevant material or fail to fashion what she has experienced to fit the overall theme of her book. There is a chapter in particular that feels out of place and it could have found a better position had it been shorter and more focused and a certain conclusion reached on her part that tied it into her self-image and weight talk. While not everything in a person's life has to be about a central theme in a memoir, you can't spend 90% of it that way and then joyride into other territory and expect the reader to wonder what you're doing taking that particular detour.

Though the book loses steam in the last three or so chapters, the fact that it does so is a good reflection of a fact of life. That fact is that we learn and grow a great deal more from struggling and suffering than we do through success and joy. The reason that the end of the book runs out of steam is that Ms. Mitchell is living in a "happy ending" at present. She's a successful food writer and blogger and has maintained her weight loss and health. I'm truly happy for her success, but this does make the end of her book feel more like she's twirling in front of the mirror showing how great she and her life are now that she's thin. The message starts to feel much more like she has found all the answers than continues to explore questions, though she asserts that she does not. The tone of her writing post-weight-loss comes across as the same dogmatic messages your read from many weight loss bloggers, though she is a lot less preachy.

This sense of completion in her life lessens both the impact of the majority of the book and undermines the depth of compassion with which the reader has been regarding her throughout the experience of sharing her life. My positive image of her went terribly south after she broke up with her depressed and unemployed long-term boyfriend who stood behind her (and financed her) when she was the one struggling. There is a part of the book where she says things between them often became about 'me, me, me'. It turned out in the end that it was still all about her and I could not help but speculate that the break-up would not have occurred had she stayed very fat or not found her dream job. I still think this is still a worthwhile read, but it's better to brace yourself for the hollow feeling you'll experience near the end.

A Dream: October 4, 2014

Context: Last night, I read a review of a T.V. comedy series on the AV club which included Martin Short in its cast. Also, last night my husband told me a small detail about his childhood (that he liked to watch game shows when he was home sick from school and liked a particular show which he found on YouTube and we watched it).

The Dream: I don't know where I was, but the sense I got of the setting was that it was generally supposed to be my home (though it was not where I am living now). I was married, but not to my husband. In fact, I had somehow forgotten that I was married to a younger version of Martin Short. He looked like he did while dressed as a human in the T.V. mini-series "Merlin". That is, he had very blue eyes and blond hair (though shorter than in the show) - about as "dashing" as Martin Short can look.

I don't remember much about the dream except the end in which I realize that I don't know my "husband" (Martin Short) very well at all because I spend all of my time thinking about and learning about the man who is my real husband now. I feel that I've done my dream husband a disservice by not devoting attention to him and focusing on my real husband (though in the dream, he is not my husband at all - just a man who I'm drawn irresistibly to). Despite this realization and a momentary commitment (expressed internally to myself - not explicitly to anyone else in the dream), the moment that my real husband comes into the dream, I go over to him immediately and start cuddling with him.

Analysis: I believe that Martin Short entered the dream only as a placeholder based on my reading his name so very recently in the aforementioned article. My (real) husband in now way ever suffers any sort of neglect. In fact, if he suffers anything, it is an overabundance of attention and I know him extremely well. In fact, I frequently ask him to tell me something about himself that I don't already know. I'm not asking for secrets (we have no secrets from one another), but just some tidbit from his past that he may not have thought to mention.

I believe there are two possible paths of interpretation. One is that some part of me felt that I didn't really know my husband as thoroughly as I thought because he told me something new. This seems a somewhat shallow interpretation, but it is possible as a partial one. The deeper interpretation is that there is something that I'm not exploring in my life or digging too deeply in because I am too distracted by something that I find so much more attractive.

The main problem with the second interpretation is that I'm currently at a complete loss as to what such an issue might be. The distraction could very well be my husband. At present, much of our lives revolve around his interests rather than mine for various reasons. That being said, I don't have any interests which I am neglecting or putting off in favor of attending to his. I write. I read. I learn new things. I recently started volunteering at the local library to be an ESL partner for non-native speakers. I pursue what I want to pursue and never feel that my interests compete with his. I do accept that it is possible that my unconscious mind knows and wants to convey something that my conscious mind does not, but I could not pinpoint what that might be at this time.

Interpretation Confidence Scale Rating: Not knowing husband well interpretation: 4 (I have no sense that I don't deeply know my husband. It would have to be an idea which lacks depth and is built entirely around the recent nature of the new information.) Something about my life that I'm not getting into deeply in favor of attending to my husband's interests: 7

Six Arils

This morning, as I was harvesting the seed-like fruit (arils) of a pomegranate, I thought of the Greek myth of Persephone. In the simplified story that I heard as a child, she was kidnapped by Hades and taken to the underworld. She was told that she could leave if she ate nothing while she was there. However, because she ate six pomegranate seeds, she would have to spend half of her days in the underworld and half on earth. This was an explanation for why it was warm and verdant for half of the year and dying and cold during the other half. Her presence caused things to grow. Her absence caused them to wither.

Persephone ate only six seeds. As I painstakingly removed the arils from my fruit, I thought about how one could decide to eat so few because of the effort of removing them. I also recalled that I had seen plastic containers of ready-to-eat arils in the local supermarket. For a much higher price, you don't have to go to any effort and can have a plethora of fruit. If Persephone had lived in the modern ate, let's just say that our winters would be about two years long as she could effortlessly shovel handfuls of them into her face.

When I see plastic containers of prepared fruit or vegetables, I think about a lot of things. First, I realize that there are people out there for whom money is less valuable than time. I also know that these are the same people who have moderate to high amounts of road rage as they rush home after work and display enormous impatience with anything that slows them down. When they get home, they often use that time to putz around on the internet, text people, or watch T.V. They value that time, but they don't do anything valuable with it.

The whole idea behind offering ready-to-eat "fresh" food is that it will compel people who otherwise wouldn't go to the hassle of spending a few minutes preparing it. It may get them to eat more healthily than they otherwise would. In my parents' days, and before that, this was accomplished with canned fruit and vegetables. Packaged "fresh" produce is a step up, though it's still not as good as dealing with it yourself.

I thought about the reduced nutrition when I put my arils, which I'd harvested using a method in which you take apart the pomegranate under water in a bowl, in a strainer to get as much water off of them as possible. If there is too much moisture, the chances that they'll get musty or moldy is increased so it's good to get them somewhat dryer. In the past, I've found they can get a little funky very quickly if you're not careful. If the arils are sold in plastic sealed containers in stores, there must be something mixed in to treat them so they don't go bad for awhile. Whatever that is, it's probably in small enough amounts that it doesn't have to be listed (like a minor and weak bleach solution), but it's also probably not good for you.

Mainly though, I thought about how buying our food as we do removes us from the process of preparation and discourages us from ever learning how to do things for ourselves. One of my friends once posted on Facebook that she wanted a quick and easy dinner. I recommended she have an egg with some avocado. She reminded me that she doesn't like eggs, a situation which is informed largely by her irrational fear that one day she'll crack one open and a half-formed baby chick will be inside, and informed me that she doesn't know how to slice avocado. I, once again and with just as much futility, assured my friend that the eggs you buy in markets are not fertilized and told her how easy it is to slice avocado once you learn the technique.

My friend didn't heed what I said about either the eggs or avocados. She didn't believe what I said about the former and couldn't be bothered with the latter. If she had had a long history of food preparation, cutting and slicing an avocado would have seemed a trivial exercise. With little in the way of deep cooking experience, it seemed by comparison to just buying something pre-made to be a huge and troublesome to manage.

Some time ago, I read pieces about several people who worked on developing a "soylent" formula for food. Essentially, they wanted to make a mix of nutrients that would provide all of the necessary calories and macro and micro nutrients to just guzzle down. The idea behind this was to chuck out all of the "hassle" of shopping and preparing for food and just ingest a powder mixed with water for sustenance. At present, I think people value the taste of food enough that they aren't ready to go quite so far as to drink a sludge of prepared nutrients, but they are more than ready to exchange freshness for convenience.

Finally, I have concerns about people losing track of how much they eat when things are served to them ready-to-eat. After I finish digging through the flesh of my pomegranate, I have some idea of exactly how many arils come in one fruit. The same goes for a peach or an apple. When I do it myself, I can conceptualize portions. If you buy a container of prepared fruit, you have no idea how many pieces it represents. It becomes far easier to overeat, and, yes, you can eat too much fresh fruit. It's good for you, but there are a lot of calories in fruit as well. They are good calories, but you can lose a sense of how  to balance your diet when you're buying a quantity of pre-cut slices. 

I'm not a food Luddite, mind you. Though I rarely buy cut and peeled fruit (and frankly find the idea kind of awful as I think it's got to be drying out or chemically treated), I do buy some frozen food on occasion like mashed squash and I pick up bags of broccoli florets at Costco (removed from their stems). Usually, I buy these things when I'm in exhausted or feeling sick or am using these things for a specific end which doesn't necessarily require the freshest produce (like making broccoli soup). There is a place for ready-to-eat produce, but I don't think it should be the main or only way of consuming such food.