Fat Brain. Bad Thing.

Living On a Fat Brain

Ahhhhhhhh………….

Don’t try this at home. I’m a professional eater.

There are reasons why only some “great” things---- emotions, hungers, periods of turmoil ----produce great writing, great focus, great results. When you’re sitting stuffed, relaxed, happy, 10 minutes away from the start of a great NFC semifinal, and 15 minutes from an even greater late afternoon nap, it’s hard to have an edge. Physically OR mentally.

“Fat, drunk and stupid is NO way to go through life, son.”

Some folks find their mantras printed on pretty pink paper, packed in with other especially unpalatable prose and poetry. For me, its Animal House, and the realization that two out of three isn’t any bed of roses either. See, I never was “fat”. But, I often have not been hungry enough. For too many things. So let’s make it an even three of three.

I remember a particularly brutal negotiation involving the sale of a company our BIG company had owned for 6 years. We were selling it---giving it away, basically---to a gang that might make money with it, but clearly intended to make some fairly significant personnel “changes” soon after the purchase. I was the lead counsel. It was quite a coup for a young lawyer. I didn’t like the buyers, shady people who operated with money that seemed to have even shadier origins, but business is business, and, if I haven’t mentioned it, I was the lead counsel. After the screaming “I’m gonna walk out/no, I’M gonna walk out” bluster and posturing (on both sides)……the contract got signed. There was much rejoicing, which culminated in a dinner party awash with wine at one of the best restaurants in Philadelphia. I didn’t make it; instead, I found myself working the phones with the HR person at the no-longer-our subsidiary, seeking my assistance as the now-belongs-to-them owners eliminated 30% of the staff. That day. That very day, 2 whole days before Christmas. I didn’t have any food in me. I suddenly wasn’t very hungry. I was sick to my stomach. I realized, too late, that maybe if I’d been hungier during those negotiations, that maybe if I hadn’t been drunk in the euphoria of being involved in a BIG DEAL, things might have been a whole lot better for a whole bunch of people that Christmas. I had had a fat brain.

Reality checks are good things. I recommend you keep a reality-check package on you at all times. Whatever makes your own brain fat, keep something reminding you of that whatever.

Maybe a short article on something you’d always thought about doing that is being done by somebody else. Maybe a picture of yourself as a child, in a play, or dressed up as an astronaut. Maybe a photo of yourself lying passed out on a sofa from overindulging in everything but opportunity.

For me, it’s a copy of a separation notice, a pink slip which I didn’t get, but which I will always believe I wrote.

Don’t go fat. It’s no way to live.