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I wonder if the photo from my obituary has been taken yet.
I’m not being morbid. I think it’s a good question. Is that photo out there already or is something going to happen in the third act of my life that will cement old me as the definitive me?
On balance, I reckon the photo has already been taken. There’s no guarantee that life goes on and I am not getting any strong indications that the most notable thing that happens to me is in the future, but you never know.
It’s hard to work out what photo they’d use of the ones that exist though. Nothing I’ve done has really outstripped all the other stuff. Lee and Herring was maybe the most high profile, but didn’t really capture the public mood. I am not sure which picture sums up my online work, which is probably the most successful thing I’ve done. Or will it be one of the stand up photos?
I mentioned it on Twitter and Anneka Rice commented that it was a good question. But she’s an interesting case, as she could become Prime Minister, cure cancer and fight off a Godzilla and save the world and her obituary photo will still be her in a jump suit from Treasure Hunt (or maybe Challenge Anneka). There’s nothing she can do to change that.
I’m not nailed on to anything like that and I think I still have the potential to do something that will be my most notable thing in the future. Because of the low bar.
It’s interesting though. The moment of your life that will define you. You’ll almost certainly never know what the choice will be and as the photo is or was taken you’d have no clue that that was the moment. Out of all your moments, the one they chose to define you.
It’s just interesting that’s all. And actually the opposite of morbid because I wouldn’t ask the question if I wasn’t assuming that I had a lot more life in me.
I might start asking my RHLSTP guests. I mean Robin Askwith has it nailed on. Confessions era Askwith is not going to be nudged out by anything.
James Acaster? I reckon his photo hasn’t been taken yet. Ed Gamble? Probably won’t be famous enough to get a photo with his obituary - just be a half paragraph mentioning he’s died in a local paper. Or maybe a photo of his sad face as I win Taskmaster Champion of Champions. We’ll see.
To be fair I probably won’t.
Talking of Askwith, I discovered today that our mobile phone numbers are very nearly anagrams of each other - there is only one digit that is different.The first six digits are the same and then four of the other five are the same but in a slightly different order. Obviously this is going to happen sometimes, but it still feels like it means something, even though it clearly doesn’t.
I looked at my myfitnesspal graph of my weight since I started on the app nearly 11 years ago and the downs and ups of my dieting over the year. In some ways the plunges followed by the climbs makes the whole process seem like a total waste of time, but the good news is that I am currently over 5kg lighter than I was on the 4th October 2011 (though two months ago I was heavier) and I am some way off my highest weight of 100kg+ and not too far off my low of 79 and a bit kg. The two long downward trajectories are so full of hope and commitment, but almost exactly the same length and followed by an inevitable (?) climb. Everything suggests that a third wave is coming and yet I have to keep trying and believing that this time, more than any other time, this time, we’ll get it right. Bum, bum-be-bum bum bum. This time. We’ll get it right.
