I can’t believe the reaction that Monday’s post drew from you lot – it’s a while since my mailbox has groaned under so many ‘me too’ emails. And although it made me feel less isolated, it also forced me to really reflect on how flimsy our toolboxes are when it comes to keeping a hold of the things that could really help us along the route to Skinny Town.
If I’d bought a toolbox like this from home depot, I’d be standing in front of the customer service desk right now, complaining about how fucking useless it was, and how easily holes opened up and allowed stuff to fall out of the bottom.
I’ve been writing this blog for almost two and a half years, right? And we’ve talked about all sorts of stuff. We’ve laughed a fair bit, we’ve celebrated successes and we’ve commiserated with each other when the wheels have come off, but mostly we’ve picked over the bones of stuff and pulled some proper golden nuggets of learning out of the shit we’ve waded through. The plan has always been to keep hold of those lessons and use them to drive us forward until we look for all the world like we’ve never met a single doughnut in the whole of our skinny lives.
What I’d really like to know, is where have all those lessons gone? It’s like we unwrapped them, exclaimed over them, wondered why it had taken a lifetime to switch the light bulb on, and then we tucked them away in the toolbox for future reference, safe in the knowledge that we’d never forget that new thing that was going to help us forever, now we knew about it. I can only speak for myself, but in an un guarded moment when my back was turned most of the things I’ve learned have fallen out of the bottom of my fucking useless leaky toolbox and nobody’s seen them since.
One of you even suggested to me a couple of weeks ago that I go back and read some of my early blog posts where I seemed to be switching on light bulbs all over the place, I mean my life was floodlit for months. I was flying, with the strong wind of all this learning behind me. I can’t really pinpoint the moment where my progress stalled and then started going backwards, but somehow I’ve ended up scrabbling around in the dark again, hoping against hope that I’ll find my way back. On reflection, I think I probably should re-trace my steps, I mean it’s the sensible thing to do isn’t it when you’re trying to find something precious that you’ve lost.
Shit. There’s more than five hundred blog posts and close to half a million words to trawl through, I mean that’s a bit daunting, right? It might take a while. And what if I forget them all over again?
I’ll tell you what – why don’t I make a new page, where I can call out the blog posts which have helped me the most as I rediscover them? I could call it the Skinny Lessons page, and as I’m working my way through my back-catalogue looking for inspiration, I could pull out some links to the ones which have switched on the brightest floodlights in my head. Y’all could do the same if you like, and signpost the ones that’ve helped you…having a go to page when we need propping up might at least solve the problem of that leaky toolbox if nothing else, right?
I’ll get on it this weekend when I have a little more time.
And yes, in case you’re wondering…I’m still on the naughty step 🙁
