None tomorrow, either.

It’s hard to tell how much additional site traffic I’m getting this week, or whether or not I should be addressing hypothetical New York Times readers who by now will have concluded this is a weight loss site where I don’t actually lose much weight. For most of the summer I haven’t been trying; I haven’t been active but then again, I’ve been a different kind of passive.

It keeps occurring to me that maybe I can go through life and just not get fat, and by that I mean I’ve somehow stopped believing that my body is tugged along by some kind of destiny toward or back, or that the distance between two points in one’s life is always charted as an angle: that there’s a hill to knock yourself out on; that your next movement will take you up or down. For months I’ve been off the radar and I keep checking to see if I’m lost but I’m not.

So I don’t know if this will be an inspiration to anyone. If you’re a new Pound reader, you are hereby warned: you’re taking fitness advice from someone whose favorite athlete is Amelia Earhart at the moment.

And if you’d rather think of this site (well, this front page, really) as just a regular old blog, I guess that’s fine, too.

That said, here’s stuff that’s been making me happy lately: finding out that my friend Dana’s site has been up for four years now; listening to inappropriate songs by the band Gravy Train!!!!; reading about even more inappropriate Thai karaoke lyrics, and going to my friend Jeff’s site and flipping the style switcher to the “1997” setting.

Happy Wednesday, people.

Apparently having your site mentioned on the front page of the New York Times is a big deal or something. Or so I’m finding out.

This site was listed as a “weight loss blog” in this article (login: poundy5 password: poundy), and if you’re coming here for the first time, you might be a little confused, because I’m not (as the article puts it) “sharing detailed reports of calories and cravings.” But hey, I crave attention. And that’s really why I’m here. I won’t kid you.

This part of my site might better explain what I’m all about, and plenty of entries in my journal talk about body image issues. At the time I started the site because at the time (late 2000) it seemed like the only way people ever wrote about their own bodies online was through a lot of progress charts and hardcore diet talk.

Over the years I’ve written more and more about other things, and I’d sort of considered putting the weight loss stuff into a separate section, but I’d decided that would be a lot like saying only part of your personality is relevant, or that you even sort of have to take on a different (i.e., anonymous) persona in order to think and talk about these things.

The thing is, I think that’s pretty much what the Times article is implying about weight-loss blogs in general. Which is why it feels a little strange to have my site mentioned there.

Oh, I’m fine; someone just needs to snap their fingers in my face or something. Summer is washing over me like… like, well, I don’t know. It’s summer.

I’ve been hanging out on other people’s decks having drinks, and talking, and staying up too late; also I keep finding myself downwind of complete strangers smoking pot, and you know what a nightmare that can be. And I’ve been going around with the feeling that the next few months in my life might become really interesting; I get that certain persistent high-up-in-the-chest heartbeat pulling me through the day, nudging me out of the little naps I’ve been taking–the ones I take to catch up with or else prepare for something; something I don’t know what. None of this is bad at all, but somehow it takes up all my time at the moment.

But I miss you people, and if you miss me too, please feel free to email and say hello, or send me a joke, or a funny link, or tell me a story because JESUS FUCKING CHRIST my inbox has been full of SoBig virus email that I’m going nuts today. Clearly my email address got spoofed at some point because I’ve gotten hundreds of these things now (I’m on a Mac, so it’s harmless, just annoying).

Anyway, if you’re a human, I’d love to hear from you today.

Ever since I read your letter I’ve been wondering how you’re doing. I don�t know when you wrote it, so maybe you’re not feeling the same way now, since the winter�s been over for awhile. I’m glad you wrote Sarah, because she is insightful as all hell when it comes to this stuff, and I’ll leave it to her to give the advice. But your letter made me want to say something, if only to just tell you about how it�s been for me sometimes.

I’ve wanted to tell you that this whole matter of “doing it” is not an end unto itself; that I’ve spent the past two years learning that fact over and over, constantly doing and undoing; that it’s always taken me about a month to figure out whether I’m going to click with a therapist; that just telling someone what I need can be the hardest thing in the world, so hard that sometimes I pretend I’m autonomous as a fucking houseplant and just wait for the sun instead.

So in case you need someone else to tell you to take Sarah’s advice, I’m telling you now. I’ll also tell you to forget about the self-help books and instead go read this book by Betsy Lerner, because sometimes it just helps to have other people tell their stories (and tell them well), and also this one by Caroline Knapp, which will tell you everything you already secretly know in a voice convincing enough for you to believe it.

That’s all I have to say and I hope it’s okay that I said it here. Please write me and let me know how you’re doing.

Stop writing me. You do not want to know the rest of the grape Slurpee story. YOU DON’T. You will not get to hear it. Go ahead and try to ply me with alcohol, I WILL NOT TELL IT.

But I suppose if you give me enough alcohol I might be able to demonstrate one of the things that the Slurpee did to me.