[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cch9ckGnOk]

I have had so many reminders in the past 24 hours that no day is guaranteed.  None of us know when our time will be up.  From the mass and indiscriminate destruction in Oklahoma, to this video that is going viral today–the day after the amazing main character has passed away from cancer.  This is the day.  THIS is the day.  This is today.

There is no guarantee of another dawning.  And this simple fact is one of the very biggest reasons I do what I do.

There is now no doubt in my mind that I have procrastination built in to my DNA.  I think it is in my nature to think things through, go through all the contingencies in my mind and just let fear cause me to wait to do things until I simply have to start doing them.  I prepare and prepare and prepare for life.  Carefully researched and printed neatly on 3×5 notecards that I sort and sort and resort.  Until the night before the paper is due–when I pour it all out, in longhand on a legal pad in one desperate sitting.  This is my default setting.

So the fact that I have spent much of my life waiting around to be an appropriate weight to go after the life of my dreams can’t be blamed entirely on my weight.  I have always had the tendency to overprepare.  To retype the checklists of my life instead of living.

But.

There are few things in the world that nestle so completely and deeply into that fear as the government-sanctioned, societally supported need to have a perfect body before engaging in any other important thing.  There has been nothing in the world that has fostered and lovingly strengthened my fear of starting–my balking at beginning–quite like having an overlarge body.  And this has helped me to rob myself of decades of my life–decades of awesomeness never ventured–decades I will never get back.

But there is no time.  There is no time.  There is no time when my body and my brain and everything is perfect.  And I can’t save everything up for the night before the paper is due because there is no one–not one single person on this earth–who knows when that due date is.

So I share with you.  In my awkward phrasing and creative spelling.  With my bountiful booty, and my hello goodby arms and my roots showing.  With my imperfect teeth stained from too much coffee and red wine and other assistances for my  upness and downness.  With my last years fashions, inadequately accessorized and improperly ironed.  I share my imperfect self with you.  Because there is no time.

Love,

The Fat Chick