COLUMN: Back to Nothing in Particular

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By Tobin Barnes
Nope, there will be no more discussion about the global war on terror from this guy.

After spending three weeks nattering on about something with which I’m only vaguely familiar and totally unqualified to comment upon, I have decided to come back to my roots. That’s right. I’m going to talk about nothing in particular…again. Like usual.

It’s not that serious substance doesn’t suit me—I think I made as good a case on that deeply important global problem as any other blathering idiot—it’s just that solemn, well-intentioned analysis hardly ever makes any difference anyway. So why bother?

After all, nothing ever really happens until there’s some mind-blowing crisis that can’t be swept under the rug and simply ignored like everything else. It’s the modus operandi of human kind throughout history. Emotion trumps analysis every time.

Nope, I’m going back to writing about nothing in particular—at least for a while.

Yeah, nothing in particular like what a cold, rotten, stormy winter it’s been.

There. Enough said about that one. Who wants to hear anymore?

Hey, this nothing-in-particular stuff is easier than I remember.

And, let’s see, other nothings in particular, such as my puppy getting a really rare, weird disease and dying after getting to live for only four months. Uh huh, it was a bummer. Scout was a good little dog with a lot of potential.

And it’s sad.

We’ve talked about this kind of stuff before. How when compared to the mass of misery out there needing to be documented and grieved and addressed, we sometimes get caught up in little tragedies that might better be quickly passed over and given little regard—little tragedies like the grossly premature death of a puppy.

That little loss is a mere drop in the ocean of the global suffering that takes place every day. Therefore, it’s hardly remarkable in comparison.

But, nevertheless, I mention it anyway. Little tragedies make an impact, too, just like little joys. Actually, they are much of what life is made of. If it were all big stuff, good and bad, we couldn’t cope.

So I think I’ll treasure my little bouts of sadness and joy and pass on the big ones; that is, if it’s a matter of choice, which I highly doubt.

And some more recent nothings in particular…?

How about trying to lose weight, a theme that touches most of us?

As for me, it’s been so far so good. I’m about twenty-five pounds less than I was this time last year. I guess that’s one of those little joys I was talking about.

But as we’ve often been told by the media, the process of losing weight and then keeping it off, statistically, is likely to be a failure. Now that certainly qualifies as a little sadness.

That’s right. Most people can’t keep the weight off that they’ve struggled mightily to take off. In other words, taking it off is easier than keeping it off.

Huh.

When I talked about this subject last summer, I was approaching a total weight loss of nearly twenty pounds. I said at the time that after all the effort it took, I shouldn’t weigh a mere twenty pounds less, I should weigh only twenty pounds, period. That’s what the effort feels like.

Yeah, it’s a job, an everyday grind, and, admittedly, things have slowed down this fall and winter. As I said, I’m now at a twenty-five pound weight loss, total, only five more pounds than last summer.

The cause of the weight-loss slowdown must be my caveman genes. It’s like I need to preserve some bulk like our ancestors to survive the life-threatening winter. But like the appendix, this latent characteristic no longer does us much good.

It’s one of nature’s cruel jokes. Ha, ha, I can almost see some humor. My genes are making me work as hard now just to keep weight off as I was when I was losing it.

But then on the bright side, I’m not gaining weight as I statistically should be, which is an unqualified little joy.

If only this and a few other little joys could continue. That would certainly be more than nothing in particular.