Okay, so I was at work tonight and it was pretty slow. I pulled off the road to eat snack number 1 in the day. You know, this diet isn't really that bad, but I have to be honest. I didn't want to eat this today. The thought of collard greens and turkey was not really doing it for me tonight. I was thinking more like heading over to Golden Corral, pulling up a chair at the bar, getting out my fork and daring anyone to pull me away from the mashed potatoes. In case you should see me leaned over the buffet with a fork full of steak and a fist full of rolls with honey butter and decide stop me, be forewarned, I will be armed. The I snapped out of my daydream and whipped right back to reality as I popped open my plastic container and the aroma of the collard greens filled up my car.
As I sat there and ate, I looked over to my computer and opened up one of my favorite computer games in history, Minesweeper. Is there anyone out there that has never played this game?? I mean really, this is the best thing to waste a few hours, but keep your mind sharp at the same time. For those of you who don't know how to play it, let me give you a quick tutorial.
When you first open it up a little tiny screen opens up for you to play. You can open up the options and you find that there are three levels, Beginner, Intermediate and Expert (I check expert every time). Once you have the level selected, you see all these small gray squares and you take your mouse and start randomly clicking on each little box. Sometimes you get a number and sometimes you get a bomb. What you are trying to do is hit the right square that will open up a big field of blank spots. Once you hit one of these, you see all these different numbers in different colors surrounding squares. Each number represents how many bombs are connected to the number. If you find a number 1, that means that there is only one bomb somewhere around it in the nine spaces. It's your job to find it.
Once you think you have found it, you have two choices. You can right click once, which places a little red flag. This says that you know a bomb is there. You can also right click twice, which places a question mark on it. This says that you think a bomb is there but you're not sure. If you leave a red flag, you go back to the number and click with both mouse buttons. If you are right, this will open up all the spaces around that number that do not have a bomb. Then you start back over finding the bombs and placing the flags. If you are wrong, BOOM!!! Then you have to start over.
At the top of the screen is a little smiley face. Each time you either place a flag or click with both mouse buttons, the mouth of the smiley face turns to a circle, as if it's shouting "Oooo, you better be right!!" If you blow up, the eyes of the smiley face X out and he gains a frown. If you go through the whole game and find all the bombs, the smiley face then dons a pair of Don Johnson's Miami Vice sunglasses and you win. The point of this game is that you have to really think out what you are doing, you have to go slow and you have to be very deliberate with your selections, otherwise BOOM!!! Now that I have explained this game, I'll give you a minute, or a few hours if you are like me, to play it so you get where I'm coming from.
All done? I really hope that you played it or know how to, else the rest of this isn't going to make any sense to you at all. Okay, back to the point I'm trying to make.
After a few minutes, I was really into the game. Out of 100 bombs I had found 43 of them, 56 to go. I started moving even faster, very confident at my skillz in the Minesweeper arena. I took a bite of turkey, then a bite of greens, then clicked. BOOM!! Dang it all, starting over. Bite of turkey, bite of greens, clicked a few times more and my sunglass wearing friend appeared at the top of the screen, that's right, I'm the man. Found all 99 bombs in record time. As strange as it is to sound, I started thinking about how much this annoying game represents somebody that is trying to lose weight, especially me.
You get the similarity right? You start off at the beginning not knowing what to do. You blindly bounce here and there trying to get the right option. Sometimes you find a big empty space and suddenly it looks like everything is going to be going your way. You keep going, making all the right choices. You select everything very carefully, sometimes you find something that you know will work and you drop a red flag. You move around that red flag, thinking that you are running smooth, then you find something you aren't sure about and you drop a question mark. A few more choices later and you start getting confident, then BOOM!! Dang it all, starting over. Other times, you blindly move around and you get a couple of choices right, but never get the wide open spaces, then BOOM right at the beginning!! Dang it all, starting over. Every time, hitting that X'd out eyed smiley face to start over, letting the frustration start to get to you and your determination builds with every click. After a while, if you keep getting blown up you either lose interest and give up or become so insanely obsessed that you won't stop till you win.
I think that the last few years for me with this weight loss thing are exactly like this game. I never saw the similarity until I had a mouth full of collards. I have tried this and tried that. I have moved around blindly and then BOOM, something happens and I have to start over again. I start over and get the wide open space. I start losing weight, dropping pounds left and right, then BOOM!! Something happens to get me side tracked. After a while I just lose interest or it seems to never work right and I start screaming, "I QUIT!!"
This time is different. I have a determination that has arisen somewhere from within me that I AM going to do this. When I started this, I knew that things would blow up at times. The last few weeks has been proof positive, but after it was all over, I decided that I would get back up and start again. I'm looking for the Don Johnson sunglasses and I'm going to find them, no matter how long it takes. For anybody else that's reading this and are finding themselves clicking around blindly and getting blown up at every turn, don't give up, don't lose interest. Just know that if you move slowly, make the right choices and be very deliberate with your selections, you can do this too!!! If you blow up, blow it off and move on with determination!!!
With that I will give you the latest updates. I jumped up on the scale after some really good sleep and guess what, another loss!! As of this afternoon I currently stand at 345.6!!! That's right folks, another 2.6 pounds GONE. Total loss to date of 12.2 pounds. I also have to be honest with you, I think that I have lost all of it from my rear end. When I put on my pants tonight I noticed that the back of my pants weren't skin tight, they were actually baggy. Hey, I don't really care where I lose it from, as long as it goes away.
It's amazing how you can get such inspiration from such an irritating game, ain't it?? I say again to everyone that is out there fighting this fight with me, don't give up. Throw out those red flags and those question marks, blow up if you have to, but get back in the game to win, because the good Lord knows, if I can do this, you can too.
Tossing out red flags right and left,
Badge 662
A Cop Without Donuts
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