Jordan/Yuan-Wei: Pandemic Pounds

Huh, it looks like everybody just sort of laid off at some point last year.  Can't blame them' the Inn apparently didn't open at all last summer, and at a certain point, when you're staying in and taking all the appropriate precautions - and I suspect that once you've been through the Trading Post Inn experience, it's really fucking hard to say that the odds are against anything bad happening to you - there's not much to talk about on this blog.  Oh, sure, there's your "regular" life, but to the extent you're talking about that online, you're doing it on Instagram or some other social media app or just a group text, and I'll be damned if I'm going to write about the same thing multiple times.

So why am I here?  Well, I gather the Inn is opening for Memorial Day, and that means there's going to be a new Chen-Ai soon, and I've got no idea what to expect from that.  They're not going to be a mother figure for me of any sort, of course, but the very fact that there will be someone in that spot means that all the people who may have thought something was suspicious a year and a half ago but either lost interest or couldn't spare resources to dig are going to get interested again.  I'm not looking forward to that, and I kind of wonder if anyone else is in the same situation.

Mostly, though, I'm sort of trying to figure out what it's like to be Yuan-Wei again.  Like I said back in October, working from home and not going out and being social got me back into a lot of pre-Inn habits, especially with food.  I know I'm not alone in this among people who have been able to work from home, but I had a lot of days where work wasn't necessarily holding all of my attention, but I didn't want to just walk away from my workstation, and the kitchen is the closest room to the home office, so I'd get myself a snack or a soda three or four times a day.  That didn't really happen when I was Dierdre - something about her body just rejected eating too much viscerally - and I think some of the memories of feeling like absolute shit when I tried to eat too much carried over into being Yuan-Wei.  Then I kind of liked the way I looked, and had the sort of metabolism I would have killed for back in my first life, but I guess it's been slowing down even as I started living that way again.

Not that I got fat the way the old me did - women's jeans will tell you that you've put on weight and the yoga isn't cutting it - but I guess I found myself accepting it more as the pandemic dragged on, since it would be weeks until I was with other people regularly and going up a size was no big deal.  I went up and down a bit over the winter, and wound up being "up" a bit when we started coming back to the office.  I wasn't going to wear a crop-top or anything, but I had enough of a muffin top going on that I made sure I wore a top that covered it, and when we went out for drinks afterward, I couldn't help but notice that there were certainly women my age who hadn't let themselves go at all.

It's frustrating, because I know it's stupid to feel this way.  I've been fat, and this isn't the same feeling, but I also know that even when I stood no fucking chance, I'd look past girls who just had a couple extra pounds like I do right now.  Plus, I like being hot; it's fucking gratifying to know you look great in a bikini or naked and that people will put out some effort to have sex with you.  I don't entirely mind that I'm going to have to put a little more effort into it for a while (as long as it doesn't involve that running bullshit), but I sort of feel like I should have learned a lesson or have some perspective after all of this that makes it all make sense, you know?

-Jordo