It’s Not Easy

This morning I decided I would walk to work, under the heading “cursory health conscious behaviour”. Normally I couldn’t give rat’s date about exercise, and simply maintain my ability to wear all my current clothes by (occasionally) regulating what I eat. However, working in Fitzroy puts me in close proximity to a dazzling array of food outlets; and when I’m not at work I spend a lot of time at the The House of Interchangeable Beards, where something delicious is baked approximately every eleven minutes (seriously, on a good day there are so many timers going ‘ding!’, heralding the arrival of some new delicious foodstuff, it’s like someone is playing Tubular Bells up in there). As a result, I find myself consuming vast quantities of food at all times; and exercise is becoming increasingly important in my quest to continue fitting through regulation sized doorways.

So, walking to work. It’s functional, it’s good for my fuel tank (and more importantly, the environment), and I get twice the amount of exercise for the willpower required (because I only need the impetus to walk to work: once I’m at work with no car I’m compelled to walk home again, whether I want to or not).

The problem is, that small amount of willpower is still hard to come by. If I am struck by the desire to walk to work, I have to act quickly; otherwise I’ll talk myself out of it again. It means getting my walking gear on, packing suitable work clothes to change into later, and getting out the door fast.

Possibly too fast.

I realised this morning when I got to work that I should have paid slightly more attention to what I packed to change into. EVERYTHING is green, or a shade thereof. I look like I just stumbled out of the crowd at a school sports carnival. I wouldn’t look out of place dancing behind Feist, or singing about my troubles in a swamp.

As a result, I have been subjected to varying degrees of ridicule. Normally I would be crushed and hurt and embarrassed, but it actually highlighted what a clever group of people I hang out with. Here is a selection:

From the person in the café where I get my coffee: You look good in green. It makes you look healthy. It must be all that photosynthesis?

From one of our voiceover artists: How terribly coordinated. It’s almost preppy. You look like you’d be friends with Emily Gilmore.

From a coworker: Oh, come on. Even The Wiggles wore black pants.

And so on. What not a single person mentioned, however, was that the green looked slimming on me. I guess that means it didn’t. As a result, I am going to continue walking to work, and continue running the gauntlet to get out of my house before the impetus to walk to work wears off, and may continue spending the day dressed like some kind of sociological experiment. Because quite frankly, I don’t need to waste my time or my energy on something as superficial as whether or not all my clothes are the same colour.

What I do need to waste my time and energy on, however, is figuring out how the hell I came to be in the possession of a pair of green pants.