You Can Do Anything For a Month

An old co-worker of mine, Joe, was having terrible time with relationships. He was married for a few years and got a divorce. And it was a really bad divorce. California has a law that basically states that when you get divorced the amount of money that one party has to pay the other is based on the earnings that each made in the previous year. Well, Joe was a software consultant and had an awesome year right before he got his divorce. So he ended up paying his ex-wife an enormous amount of money each month. He actually had to lengthen the payout period by a few years because he wasn't making enough money anymore to pay her. Now she wasn't exactly a poor lost helpless woman. No, she was a well-to-do software engineer pulling in the dough. The alimony check each month wasn't needed for her to start a new life or anything. It was a stab at the heart of her ex-husband. Ouch. Divorce sucks.

 

Well, Joe didn't really want this to happen to himself again. He wanted to find somebody that he was really compatible with. When I met Joe he had been dating a girl for a few months. When people asked him if he was going to marry her, he said that he didn't know yet. He said that when you date somebody they can pretend to be somebody that you want them to be and not really who they are. Now you can pretend to be somebody very different for a short period of time or you can pretend to be somebody a little different for a long period of time, but you can't be somebody you aren't forever.

 

Give me a minute to describe another person. His name is Ben and he's a weightlifter. He's actually quite a health nut and, well, a nut in general too. Ben and I met each other on a backpacking trip through some mutual friends. When you are backpacking you have time to talk with people and I learned much about Ben hiking along the trails. He spent a lot of time thinking about his diet. Not diet like the kind where you don't eat enough food, but the kind of diet that a weightlifter has to be healthy. His diet was very interesting. I didn't figure out all the details exactly but two of his rules were:

• He didn't eat melted cheese
• He only ate whole wheat

I was kinda of fascinated by this diet because it was a little of the wall, just like Ben. I wanted to try it. But this diet has a problem. You can't eat pizza. So I came up with a little idea that combined Ben and Joe's ideas. I did Ben's diet for a month and you know what? It stuck.

 

Well, the eating differently for month part stuck. Ben's diet was a little too restrictive to do longer. So each month I pick something different to eat or not to eat. I've been doing this for about a year and a half now. This month is "no salty snacks" month. Last month was "eat fish every day". I find that it makes me eat more interesting things because I don't get stuck in so many food ruts. I'll blog more about some of the interesting months tomorrow.