Maybe that’s why the weight loss effort is so important to me. Maybe that’s why I sit here and just think “I owe this to myself.” This is may be the first thing in my life that I have attacked with the kind of vigor it deserved.

But could it be that I look at the weight as a beginning to being the man I want to be? And, of course, once I am through with this, I will have to move on to the next task. But in that next task, I won’t be solely responsible for success. Nope, I’ll need the judgment of an editor if I choose to find a new job. I’ll need the judgment of a woman if I choose to forge ahead into a healthy relationship.

It’s always been easy for me to look on from the outside and think about how much better I could do if I was on the inside. In my mid-level job now, I can read the big-name sports columnists and scoff at the superior eloquence of my take on the same subject. If I see a guy talking to a girl at the gym, I can amuse myself by knowing that girl would much rather be talking to me. And, as an overweight man, I can just imagine how much better life will be once I slim down.

I take comfort in those thoughts because there is a certain safety to being on the sidelines. Currently, my work (at my newspaper) is read by maybe 10,000 mostly apathetic readers. But what if I was putting myself out there for 100,000 avid readers who might disagree with me or, worse yet, think I suck? I see attractive girls on a weekly basis (the pickins’ are kind of slim in this part of town), but I never make the move to talk to them unless I am a bit drunk.

Yet I complain about these situations because they aren’t what I ever wanted. Everyone wants to be the person in the middle of everything. That’s why girls love Sex and the City so much. But when you aren’t in the center, when you are actually physically removed from the center of things (remember, I live 30 miles from San Francisco, and my previous home was a two-hour drive to Denver — kinda far away from The Stuff), you eventually get sick of looking in. Instead, you want to be able to look around from the center.

The more I think about it, the more I see that the weight loss was the first step of moving towards the center. The second step was moving to California and upgrading my job. But neither step was the cure. They just got me closer. Now that the weight loss is coming to a close, I have to start thinking about the next big step. And Alexandria is right, it is kind of scary.