the freedom to do nothing
There is so little to report in my life now that i am back in the grind, with no stockpile of annual leave or even a business trip to break the tedium.
I suppose the tedium is something i could be thankful for. For a not insignificant chunk of my adult life, i was a total basket case. Erratic moods. Flights of fancy that had me soaring the highest highs before dropping back to crushing, near-suicidal depression. I spent years in talk therapy, going to psychiatrists, taking psychiatric meds, hormone replacement therapy... for over a decade i was constantly battling my own emotions, and struggling to contain their impact on the people around me, sometimes people i cared very deeply about.
And then... it stopped. I don't know what the trigger was. Perhaps it was because i went through a period of being a crystal meth addict and the drug abuse destroyed the part of my brain capable of feeling things. Perhaps it was deciding to leave the dream of being some perfect facsimile of a woman behind and abandoning hormone replacement therapy, leaving me chemically neuter. Perhaps it was simply old age and the fatigue that accompanies it. Getting to a point where i accepted that it was never going to get any better than what i had already seen, but it also was never going to get any worse, so why not just keep rolling along?
About 10 years ago i made a conscious decision to opt out of the whole concept of having a partner. I no longer feel ashamed to admit that for me solitary activities really are much more enjoyable than doing the same things with someone else. I am not a misanthrope. I love people. But to me what makes society so marvellous is exactly the fact that it enables us to live freely. Individuals no longer need to tie their destiny to the family unit, band or village. We can go forth and prosper. That's an awesome thing.
I remember an ex telling me that she understood how important freedom was to me. I can no longer remember the context of the conversation being before or after we split, but i remember the sentiment because it really struck me that someone else actually really got that about me. And it might even have been the time i first really got it about myself too.
When i was young and stupid i thought freedom meant libertarianism - each man for himself, and nobody owe anybody else anything. It's a comforting philosophy for someone growing up with some degree of privilege, because you can imagine that the reason why other people struggle and you don't is simply because they didn't work hard enough. But once you get a bit older and see that lots of people work very hard and never reap any rewards, and other people do fuck all and coast to the top, you realize libertarianism is bunk. People cannot have freedom unless they have opportunities, and some are born with far more opportunities than others. So now i understand freedom to mean creating a society in which as many people as possible have the same opportunities.
Of course, people still are responsible for taking them, or not.
This year i have made several small changes in my life, partly for health reasons, partly for carbon footprint reasons. Early in the year i decided to cycle to and from work every day, rain or shine. A bit later i decided to cook dinner every night with fresh greens bought from local farmers, not frozen ones sourced from who knows where. I quit drinking a few months ago. And, also a few months ago, i stopped eating lunch.
This Thursday i had a bunch of meetings scheduled for the evening, due to overlap with the European timezones, so i went out at got some fried rice from the Guangdong-style diner round the corner from the office. I realized, as i sat there munching away happily, that i do really love getting lunch. It's not just the food itself, but it's also being out of the office, even if just for 15 minutes. It's exchanging a few words of Chinese. It's seeing those shop owners, whose jobs are much harder and much less lucrative than my own, toil away because that's just what they do. Make the same fried rice for 40 years. Feed the community. It's real. I fucking like getting lunch, goddamnit! So why did i quit?
Because i was getting fat.
I mean, i don't really have a measurement of fatness. I don't own scales. What i do own is a single pair of pants. Actually two pairs of pants, but they are the exact same brand and model, because when i found one that fit, i bought two. They are the only pants i own. I wear them to work. I wear them at home. I wear them when i travel. I will keep on wearing them until they fall apart and i have to buy a new pair. I do not own sweat pants. I do not own pyjama pants. I own one pants, and if i get fat, i will know, because my pants will leave a ring around my waist.
Weight gain isn't rocket science. If your body consumes more calories than it burns, it stores the unused energy in a goopy mess around your waist. I spend 8 or 9 hours at work every day. I already cycle there and back. Once i am home, i am emotionally drained. I do not want a time-consuming exercise routine. So the only other option is to eat less. During the week i already eat pretty simply. I have fruit and oats every morning. Greens and beans at night. I drink my coffee black. I do not eat sweets. I do not eat dairy. I already quit drinking booze. What's left? Skip lunch.
So i did. And now i don't have a ring around my waist any more. My pants will last longer too. Perhaps i will eat lunch once or twice a week as a treat now. Whatever is sustainable.
But the conversation came up at work. "Why aren't you eating lunch any more? Don't you get hungry?"
And it's like. Yes. Yes, for fuck's sake, of course i get hungry. I get hungry, and i deal with it. It's like in the winter people ask me "don't you get cold?" because i do not own any winter clothes and arrive in the office wet and shivering. The answer is yes. Yes i do get cold. I get cold, and it sucks, and i deal with it. And yes, before you ask, those tattoos fucking hurt too.
Being wet, cold, hungry, in pain... Choosing to temporarily suffer these discomforts is not some kind of heroic martyrdom, it's just part of being a grown-ass human with the privilege to choose. Some people don't get the choice. But most people do, and they choose their immediate comfort over future consequences, sadly sometimes consequences that ripple out beyond their immediate person. It's not my place to judge others, but it is my freedom to choose for myself.
And that's a thought i have been having sometimes when i ponder why i have nothing to write about in LiveJournal, not even this week's Friday Five which asked about my bucket list. I work 40something hours per week. I am exhausted when i get home. All of Saturday i am sleeping in, washing clothes, doing groceries, recovering from the week. Sunday, perhaps, i get the time to do something i want to do. And then, often, i do nothing. Why is that?
Each month i spend around us$750 on everything - rent, food, transport, the whole lot. I could afford a second home in Kaohsiung and take the bullet train down there every weekend. I could be dining at Michelin star restaurants. I could buy a car and cruise scenic mountain roads that i'll never visit on a public bicycle. Or... well, the least i could do is just get lunch from the old lady who makes a $2 bowl of noodle that makes my heart smile, right?
And that's the kicker. The reason i don't do these things is not because i am a bitter, unhappy soul who cannot find joy in even the most humble pleasure. I do enjoy things. I didn't forget. There is so much stuff i still love to do. I just consciously choose moderation a lot of the time nowadays. I haven't become boring, i've just become less desperate to fill my life with excitement and passion and drama and all of the things. I am quite okay with being quite okay. And i'd rather like my life - and the life of all humans - to continue being quite okay for a long time. So i make decisions with that in mind.
Although... at times i do wonder if they are the right decisions. Why shouldn't i just go out and do whatever strikes my fancy?
I suppose one reason is i'd have to quit my job, and then i would lose my residence in this country, and ultimately that limits my freedom again. Gosh, freedom really is the most important thing to me, huh? Even the freedom to do nothing. To do nothing, right here, in "exotic" Taipei. Hmm.
Maybe i am just depressed after all.
I suppose the tedium is something i could be thankful for. For a not insignificant chunk of my adult life, i was a total basket case. Erratic moods. Flights of fancy that had me soaring the highest highs before dropping back to crushing, near-suicidal depression. I spent years in talk therapy, going to psychiatrists, taking psychiatric meds, hormone replacement therapy... for over a decade i was constantly battling my own emotions, and struggling to contain their impact on the people around me, sometimes people i cared very deeply about.
And then... it stopped. I don't know what the trigger was. Perhaps it was because i went through a period of being a crystal meth addict and the drug abuse destroyed the part of my brain capable of feeling things. Perhaps it was deciding to leave the dream of being some perfect facsimile of a woman behind and abandoning hormone replacement therapy, leaving me chemically neuter. Perhaps it was simply old age and the fatigue that accompanies it. Getting to a point where i accepted that it was never going to get any better than what i had already seen, but it also was never going to get any worse, so why not just keep rolling along?
About 10 years ago i made a conscious decision to opt out of the whole concept of having a partner. I no longer feel ashamed to admit that for me solitary activities really are much more enjoyable than doing the same things with someone else. I am not a misanthrope. I love people. But to me what makes society so marvellous is exactly the fact that it enables us to live freely. Individuals no longer need to tie their destiny to the family unit, band or village. We can go forth and prosper. That's an awesome thing.
I remember an ex telling me that she understood how important freedom was to me. I can no longer remember the context of the conversation being before or after we split, but i remember the sentiment because it really struck me that someone else actually really got that about me. And it might even have been the time i first really got it about myself too.
When i was young and stupid i thought freedom meant libertarianism - each man for himself, and nobody owe anybody else anything. It's a comforting philosophy for someone growing up with some degree of privilege, because you can imagine that the reason why other people struggle and you don't is simply because they didn't work hard enough. But once you get a bit older and see that lots of people work very hard and never reap any rewards, and other people do fuck all and coast to the top, you realize libertarianism is bunk. People cannot have freedom unless they have opportunities, and some are born with far more opportunities than others. So now i understand freedom to mean creating a society in which as many people as possible have the same opportunities.
Of course, people still are responsible for taking them, or not.
This year i have made several small changes in my life, partly for health reasons, partly for carbon footprint reasons. Early in the year i decided to cycle to and from work every day, rain or shine. A bit later i decided to cook dinner every night with fresh greens bought from local farmers, not frozen ones sourced from who knows where. I quit drinking a few months ago. And, also a few months ago, i stopped eating lunch.
This Thursday i had a bunch of meetings scheduled for the evening, due to overlap with the European timezones, so i went out at got some fried rice from the Guangdong-style diner round the corner from the office. I realized, as i sat there munching away happily, that i do really love getting lunch. It's not just the food itself, but it's also being out of the office, even if just for 15 minutes. It's exchanging a few words of Chinese. It's seeing those shop owners, whose jobs are much harder and much less lucrative than my own, toil away because that's just what they do. Make the same fried rice for 40 years. Feed the community. It's real. I fucking like getting lunch, goddamnit! So why did i quit?
Because i was getting fat.
I mean, i don't really have a measurement of fatness. I don't own scales. What i do own is a single pair of pants. Actually two pairs of pants, but they are the exact same brand and model, because when i found one that fit, i bought two. They are the only pants i own. I wear them to work. I wear them at home. I wear them when i travel. I will keep on wearing them until they fall apart and i have to buy a new pair. I do not own sweat pants. I do not own pyjama pants. I own one pants, and if i get fat, i will know, because my pants will leave a ring around my waist.
Weight gain isn't rocket science. If your body consumes more calories than it burns, it stores the unused energy in a goopy mess around your waist. I spend 8 or 9 hours at work every day. I already cycle there and back. Once i am home, i am emotionally drained. I do not want a time-consuming exercise routine. So the only other option is to eat less. During the week i already eat pretty simply. I have fruit and oats every morning. Greens and beans at night. I drink my coffee black. I do not eat sweets. I do not eat dairy. I already quit drinking booze. What's left? Skip lunch.
So i did. And now i don't have a ring around my waist any more. My pants will last longer too. Perhaps i will eat lunch once or twice a week as a treat now. Whatever is sustainable.
But the conversation came up at work. "Why aren't you eating lunch any more? Don't you get hungry?"
And it's like. Yes. Yes, for fuck's sake, of course i get hungry. I get hungry, and i deal with it. It's like in the winter people ask me "don't you get cold?" because i do not own any winter clothes and arrive in the office wet and shivering. The answer is yes. Yes i do get cold. I get cold, and it sucks, and i deal with it. And yes, before you ask, those tattoos fucking hurt too.
Being wet, cold, hungry, in pain... Choosing to temporarily suffer these discomforts is not some kind of heroic martyrdom, it's just part of being a grown-ass human with the privilege to choose. Some people don't get the choice. But most people do, and they choose their immediate comfort over future consequences, sadly sometimes consequences that ripple out beyond their immediate person. It's not my place to judge others, but it is my freedom to choose for myself.
And that's a thought i have been having sometimes when i ponder why i have nothing to write about in LiveJournal, not even this week's Friday Five which asked about my bucket list. I work 40something hours per week. I am exhausted when i get home. All of Saturday i am sleeping in, washing clothes, doing groceries, recovering from the week. Sunday, perhaps, i get the time to do something i want to do. And then, often, i do nothing. Why is that?
Each month i spend around us$750 on everything - rent, food, transport, the whole lot. I could afford a second home in Kaohsiung and take the bullet train down there every weekend. I could be dining at Michelin star restaurants. I could buy a car and cruise scenic mountain roads that i'll never visit on a public bicycle. Or... well, the least i could do is just get lunch from the old lady who makes a $2 bowl of noodle that makes my heart smile, right?
And that's the kicker. The reason i don't do these things is not because i am a bitter, unhappy soul who cannot find joy in even the most humble pleasure. I do enjoy things. I didn't forget. There is so much stuff i still love to do. I just consciously choose moderation a lot of the time nowadays. I haven't become boring, i've just become less desperate to fill my life with excitement and passion and drama and all of the things. I am quite okay with being quite okay. And i'd rather like my life - and the life of all humans - to continue being quite okay for a long time. So i make decisions with that in mind.
Although... at times i do wonder if they are the right decisions. Why shouldn't i just go out and do whatever strikes my fancy?
I suppose one reason is i'd have to quit my job, and then i would lose my residence in this country, and ultimately that limits my freedom again. Gosh, freedom really is the most important thing to me, huh? Even the freedom to do nothing. To do nothing, right here, in "exotic" Taipei. Hmm.
Maybe i am just depressed after all.