On all of it, all at once

when everything is possible, what matters?

Just the other day I made a decision to completely remove sugar from my diet for a month and then I promptly changed my mind.

Sunday morning. There’s an undercurrent of September chill in the air— a real school bus morning. I’m wearing my brown zip-up fuzzy sweater that Janyce has affectionately named my Fozzie Bear. Today it’s supposed to climb into the mid-80s, like a proper late August afternoon, so we’re greeting the day by sitting out on our patio. I started a fire in the solo stove and lit the torches to keep the morning mosquitos at bay. Light gradually floods the backyard as I finish the last sip of coffee.

“Are you ready for breakfast yet? says my spouse Janyce, standing at the screen door.

“Now is okay,” I say. “I’d like you back for a bit, though. Are you already in active mode?”

“Not going to lie,” she says, “I’m kinda feeling it.”

I took pains this morning to set the perfect morning oasis on our back patio. I even brought out the bouquet of farm flowers in a mason jar we bought yesterday and set it on the coffee table, tossed our Kilim pillows on the furniture, and tuned Spotify to play morning jazz on the portable speaker. But Janyce had already listed out her tasks for the day for me while she sipped her first cup. I doubt we’ll have much more time to linger over breakfast together.

When she arrives back on the patio again, she hands me a bowl of bran cereal made with a frothy blended concoction of frozen strawberries, almond milk and vanilla protein powder. It’s not bad. But it’s no cinnamon crumble coffee cake, either.

I’ve been working out with weights and a health coach for over a year. I marvel at my own staying power this time around. I drive to a gym that is ridiculously far from my house, spend two hours driving for every one hour of working out three times a week. But it’s worth it to me because I love the quality and atmosphere of this gym and lifting these weights aligns with my current values. I imagine my “future self” as fit and active, living a long life with enough muscle to be able to move easily as I get older.

Last night we had our last macro-portioned meal of the day consisting of scrambled turkey meat and some of our CSA vegetables in a spicy Arrabbiata sauce piled high with grated parmesan cheese. We sat on the couch and happily ate it all while watching Everything Everywhere All at Once. We got a few laughs out of this zany 2022 movie that won a bunch of Oscars. It’s streaming now on Hulu and we chose it on a whim last night. I’m not much of a fan of martial arts, or zany comedy tropes as a rule, so it was no surprise to me (and to Janyce) that I didn’t love this movie. But I did see some of it’s charm. The main character of Evelyn, who is mired in a stack of receipts from a laundry business being audited by the IRS, her husband divorcing her just to get her attention, all while profoundly screwing up with her teenage daughter and her elderly father all at the same time was compelling. Essentially, she was living the very worst version of herself out of an infinite number of possible versions.

As the years go by and I get older, I think about the current version of myself a lot. Decisions I make now are more heavily influenced by how much time there is left. But a funny thing is starting to happen lately. Instead of driving myself crazy with all the things I still want, the goals I still have yet to meet, and the places I still want to see, I actually want less choices. I have this feeling that maybe I can live more fully by doing less.

A friend of mine texts me about her recent weight loss and we start chatting about our health goals and our wins and fails of late.

“We had Janyce’s parents’ 60th wedding anniversary cake the other night and I could not skip the slice,” I said, adding a laughing face emoji. “I felt like my life was full-on meaningless without it.”

“If you deprived yourself though, nature would find a way and you'd eat something you didn't want as much,” she said, and then she sent me this video which made me smile.

“That’s wisdom right there,” I said.

Janyce rounds the corner of the house, entering the patio from the backyard with our dog on a leash. They have just returned from their morning walk around the neighborhood. It’s now 10am. We’ve been up for hours already and I can feel her energy getting twitchy as she stands beside me.

“You’re going to start cleaning now?”I say.

“You bet I am,” she says while hooking Swirls up to her lead on the patio. “With the two of you out here, the floors will dry faster.”

“Isn’t it beautiful?” I say, mostly to myself, lifting my bare feet up onto the couch and repositioning my pillow behind me. I’m staring directly out into the backyard sun. The wind is carrying the sound of cheering into the yard from the football field a mile away. A few woodpeckers are rustling the leaves of our tilting oak tree as they scavenge for bugs. The red squirrel paces back and forth on a branch barking out an angry chirp and quivering its tail. The cicadas buzz.

“Think about what cocktail you want later, but remember we’re out of honey syrup,” says Janyce as she turns her back to me and enters the house through the slider door.

I’m cutting myself some slack over the cake fail. Every day is another choice, right? Another chance to do something different. Maybe I will have a mocktail instead tonight and save my carbs for the cauliflower crust pizza. And maybe I’ll blast “Cake by the Ocean” and we’ll dance outside on the patio under the stars.