This is my symphony

Half-assed
Jennette Fulda

A few years ago I lost some weight and also began faithfully reading several blogs. One of the blogs I discovered was Half of Me, written by one “Pasta Queen”.  The blog chronicled the life of a twenty-something woman on a quest to lose half her body weight; I think I jumped in at around 250 pounds.  The writer was witty, sometimes even downright sardonic. Her voice was crystalline–I felt like I knew this girl after only a few weeks of reading her posts. And I liked her a lot. Fulda is one of the reasons I started exercising and riding a bicycle–the old “if she can do it, I can” thing.

Half-assed is Pasta Queen’s blog-made-book, rather like the book Julie, Julia of the Julie/Julia Project–only this writer has none of the snarkiness of Julie. I put it on my wish list as soon as Fulda wrote about it on her blog, but there it sat. So you can only imagine how quickly I snapped up a Kindle copy when her Facebook page (I am a devoted fan!) announced it available for only 99 cents.  Here the reader has an even more thoughtful look into Fulda’s weight loss–same inimitable voice, but even more revealing as she begins to take off the fat goggles through which she looked at herself and the world for over twenty years.

Fulda has put her weight-loss blog aside and now writes Jen-Ful, a blog with a little bit of this ‘n that. And while I do enjoy her perspective and getting a peek into her life as a free-lance web designer, I do think she lost something special when she set aside Half of Me. One of the reasons was her new battle, dealing with a chronic headache. All the time. Twenty-four, seven. For years. Although I also deal with chronic pain, I don’t have Fulda’s Vicodin and Chocolate  on my wishlist and I don’t know why. But I do know I’ll continue to read her blog because after reading  hundreds of her posts (often daily), I consider her a digital friend.