It seems the standard greeting of those who haven’t seen me in some time is, “You got fat.”

Men do it – fat men do it. Women do it – fat women do it. And, really, I’ve been feeling the fat come off slowly as I get back to doing the things I used to do after too much time in Corporate America at a keyboard – intellectually and otherwise, even as I starved for exercise and intellectual stimulation. The only breaks I really got were to eat.

I even got counseled for walking around in the parking lot during my breaks – my witty riposte is that I don’t think best with blood pooling in my ass and I didn’t know that anyone else did, but the clock-watchers don’t care too much about your health unless you die. Death is an inconvenience to them in some ways. It’s troublesome finding someone to chain to a keyboard, and when you have a free thinker wandering the halls and getting answers from other departments to move things along, the answer is… to counsel the person for walking around.

I got counseled a lot. I also got shit done, so the counseling became a tradition eventually, as it did at every brick and mortar I worked at.

So, yeah, I got fat, and I traded these pounds of 3500 calorie energy for… well, really, nothing worth it. I could have effectively wandered the beach in Florida looking for scrap metal and made about as much, because I’d have been good at that too.

But let me let you in on a secret. I’ve lost weight – plateaued a bit right now, which is muscle rebuilding – it happens slower as you get older, and you have less time to do it in, but no one really cares. They greet you, “You got fat.”

At least I’m working on my problems with tangible results. 😉