Weight

“Diet culture is a fear of death disguised as transformation. But the transformation is a fantasy. If, through some heroic act of will, you do manage to heave yourself into a new place, it is still you who did the heaving. It is you who stands in the new place. You will still be you.”

I’ve Always Struggled With My Weight. Losing It Didn’t Mean Winning.

Journalist Sam Anderson writes about his successful weight loss, and its limitations.

I lost 100 pounds, and have kept it off many years. I see photos of myself from the 2000s, and I don’t recognize myself. But inside, I’m still the same person. Likewise, I often don’t recognize the face I see in the mirror nowadays—that’s not me. That’s a middle-aged man. Late middle age.

Courage

Men and women very much like me are taking up arms in the Ukraine and fighting against the invader.

It’s one thing to see that kind of thing happening in the undeveloped parts of Africa or Asia and know intellectually that these are people just like me. Quite another thing to see it happening in a developed, European country.

I do not take for granted that I have the courage to do what those men and women did. I think knowing about myself is part of eventually having courage, if courage is necessary.

Yes, I think I am going to go back to linkblogging and microblogging on Tumblr—a day after loudly proclaiming the opposite—because WordPress is too heavyweight and too much of a pain in the ass for that kind of thing.

I have been married—happily—to the same woman for more than 25 years. Lived in the same house for almost as long. Same politics, essentially, since I was 12 years old. Been a science fiction fan since I was 8, when I read a Robert A. Heinlein novel (“Red Planet,” in Miss Kaufman’s 3rd Grade class), and Heinlein is still one of my favorite writers. Was raised Jewish, lost my faith well before my Bar Mitzvah, but I never stopped thinking myself as a Jew. Have been a journalist of one kind or another for more than 30 years.

I seem to have concentrated all my indecisiveness here.

February 2020

Here’s what I was doing in February, 2020, two years ago this month.

Two years ago at about this time I was in discussion to work on a freelance project in early March that would have required overnight business travel.

Soon after agreeing to take the gig, I remember thinking maybe travel wouldn’t be a good idea. But I didn’t want to alienate a first-time client by saying “yes” and then “no.”

Soon after that, I didn’t have to worry about alienating the client. The event was canceled, and I did the work remotely.

The last business trip I went on was Dec. 2019. I went up to San Francisco for a Cisco event. The business part was a big success, and I got a little free time to walk around that beautiful city, as I like to do.

Business travel was a big part of my life for 30 years. Now that I’ve switched careers, I do expect the occasional trip but not like it was before.

Very few of us realized Feb. 2020 was going to be the last normal month for a while.

I was talking for several minutes on a Zoom meeting before I realized I was on mute. It took me that long to figure it out because other people were talking occasionally in ways that seemed like they were responding to me (“Yes, Mitch?” “OK, let’s look at that,” etc.), but they were not hearing anything I said at all.

It was like I was in “The Sixth Sense.”

I may have fixed my email problems.

I found instructions for upgrading MX records, and followed them as best as I could. They did not precisely fit my situation. I improvised.

Instructions say email should begin within 4-6 hours, but can take up to 48 hours.

So what I should do now is simply wait. Check again tonight or tomorrow morning. If there is still no action, check 1x-2x/day thereafter. If the email has not resumed within 72 hours, then see if I can get professional support.

Or I can just check compulsively every three minutes. That works too.

Westhost support was slightly worse than useless. They not only didn’t fix the problem, they didn’t even understand it, referred me to a different department, and then tried to pass the buck to another company.

I am very unhappy with WestHost web hosting.

I have been trying to change plans for months and am getting zero support. Now my email is broken. cPanel is incomprehensible.

The fact that they have not updated their Twitter since 2020 does not fill me with confidence this problem will be resolved.

This is my primary personal email, mitch@mitchwagner.com. If this problem does not resolve quickly, that could be a big deal.