Refashioning the Dave

As my regular readers likely know already, I am back in Denver. I'm beginning my second term here at U. of Denver/Iliff SOT, and I've found that the extended winter break oxidized significant portions of my brain. Though I read three books while back home in Indiana, they were all read for entertainment. Now that I've begun an extended period of reading nothing but Plato and Kant (or writings about those two legendary thinkers) I'm realizing how badly my brain has fallen out of shape in 5-6 weeks of lowered intellectual strain.

That makes me real nervous about how 2-months of nearly unopposed atrophy has impacted my muscles, heart, lungs, and so forth. I had set relatively high fitness goals for myself last term and failed miserably to meet a couple of them. My weightlifting was as complete as it's been in years, but I failed to target my midsection as I'd originally intended AND I went yet another year without incorporating any cardio into my weekly routine.

This term things will change. Not drastically, but significantly nonetheless. It's not a New Year's resolution, but more like a new school year resolution that got put off for 4 months. I'm not crazy enough to try to go from undersized offensive lineman to iron man participant in a few weeks. I do, however, need to improve my overall fitness and body composition for my own health and my own sanity.

I'll be 26 years old soon and I'm already having minor pain in my load-bearing joints. I inherited my mother's bad knees and my father's considerable girth. Hurting my right knee two years ago only added to this problematic equation. After years of compensating for bad knees I have conditioned to bear my weight only sporadically during my adult life, my hips are finally feeling the strain and my ankles aren't doing much better. Dropping my weight by 20 or more pounds is practically a necessity at this stage and cardio is the best way to make that drop happen.

Then there's the ever-present social pressure. Every 2 or 3 years, I am strikingly reminded of how important physical appearance is in our culture and social networking. Your body is usually your foremost piece of currency, and while it's psychologically unhealthy to want to look like a movie star or a professional athlete, it's unwise to let your body become an emulation of John Goodman instead. For the last 18 months, I've been leaning substantially more towards the Goodman side of things than the Brad Pitt/Bob Sanders side. In 2004, I realized this and spent the next 8 months getting into the best shape I'd been in since I was in high school. I got new clothes and shoes and started wearing cologne on a regular basis. Increased female interest, kisses, and even a steady relationship soon followed.

Candler Spring Banquet 2005. 2.5 years and 25 pounds ago.

In 2008, I'm wising up again. For Christmas, I received mostly new clothes I hand-picked myself. I plan to get new footwear by the end of the month and, once I've lost a few pounds, I'm going to restock my deteriorating jeans collection. To state my thought process in a nutshell, I want to take control over those less conventionally attractive aspects of my appearance that can be taken control of. The melanin-free skin is a problem I've learned the hard way (on several occasions) that I can't fix. My teeth are naturally crooked and genetically a bit yellow. And I can't alter the fact that I have a large head or that I walk like Shrek. But I can do a hell of a lot more to improve my general appeal by trimming much of the extra baggage and occasionally draping myself in something more stylish than a Slayer T-shirt.



I know I'm not an ugly man. Field tests have shown that women Dave Scott finds attractive can indeed find him to be handsome in return, yea even sexy. However, I'm presently interested in increasing the likelihood of that happening again. I want that little extra sumpin', sumpin' that might push the potential patron from ambivalence over into full-blown interest. The recent pain in my legs and disappointment in my heart are pushing me into my next phase of self-improvement, of refashioning myself into an upgraded version of who I already am. My laugh, my brains, and my sympathetic nature will still be what keeps 'em hanging around but getting 'em to hang around requires drawing 'em in first.

Time to beef up the magnetism, Mr. Scott.