i just want to to stay home and do nothing
Every weekend that i don't go out for a bike ride, i feel like perhaps i wasted the weekend.
The amount of free time modern workers are granted might be generous compared to what we got during the industrial age, or to the lives of slaves before that, but it's still fucking inhumane to expect people to spend 5 out of every 7 days for 45 years straight focused entirely on their jobs. And don't give me any of that "after work" bullshit, because if you take your work even remotely seriously then your brain will never be able to completely relax "after work" unless you drown it in booze, in which case you just shot yourself in the foot for weekend relaxation due to the compounded strain drugs put on the body.
Not like weekend "relaxation" is worth a damn anyway, not when half of Saturday is spent recovering from 5 days of stress and half of Sunday is spent dreading the next iteration.
Goddamnit i fucking hate work so much.
There's never enough free time when you are full-time employed. Never.
Alas, i have signed on to sticking out this job (or one that pays at least as much) for at least 2 of the next 3 years so that i have a strong enough work history and salary to qualify for permanent residence. This is struggle i am putting in the bank to pay for the future right to live peacefully in a country that is warm, free, developed and affordable. I have spent my entire adult life (minus two blissful, pre-Brexit years in Europe and one pandemic year in Canada) as an immigrant, but this is the first time i am putting in the work for real. No family sponsorship shortcut. No direct path to permanent residence. Constantly gotta be on my best behavior. Being a migrant might be a choice i brought upon myself, but that doesn't make it any easier. People who were privileged enough to be born with citizenship of a country they're content to spend their entire lives in tend to be quite oblivious to how tough it is for those of us who weren't so fortunate.
But, then, people are oblivious, period. The best post i read on ONTD recently was this morning when some boring white rapper decided to put UAE on his shit list due to their government's support for the RSF militia that has been responsible for all the usual rape and pillage and murder you'd expect from paramilitaries funded by rich, corrupt scumbags. And it's like, about fucking time someone talked about the war crimes happening outside of Ukraine and Palestine. This stuff isn't top secret, it's right there on the current events wiki portal (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events). All you gotta do is visit every now and then and read the armed conflicts section to be reminded of the terrible violence being unleashed around the world.
That said, contrary to the lies of cynical politicians hoping to harness xenophobia to their own benefit, most people are nice and most of the world is nice. It's not a constant Mad Max bloodbath everywhere outside of your local neighborhood. But on a planet with 200 countries, 8 billion people and 150 million square kilometers of land, at any point in time there's always going to be some chunks of it that really suck. And there's always going to be powerful assholes who are up to their elbows in making it suck.
As a powerless peon and a nice person, what can you do? Well, you can create shit lists. But due to the interdependence of the world's economies and ecosystems, inevitably those shit lists will become untenable. You can't boycot all of the things. Which is why i am still posting on LiveJournal (despite my Russia shit list) and going to psytrance events (despite my Israel shit list). When my shit lists hit the fan of reality, they turn into an excrement-scented air of awareness. They're a whiff of mindfulness around how many countries' governments are complicit in hideous crimes and a breath of consciousness that whispers exactly to what extent i am supporting that. Of course it's much easier to avoid flying on any airline that goes through Dubai than it is to live without a single gadget built with components out of Dongguan. YMMV.
I'm not sure how i went off on that tangent when i started this post trying to make an excuse for myself to spend the whole day in bed.
It's not even raining. I have no excuse. I just don't wanna.
I have been watching One Piece (slowly) and the Water 7 story arc is awesome. It's a spy story set in a fantastical version of Venice. This cartoon about how a stretchy pirate and his gang of misfits beat up bad guys continues to be surprisingly entertaining.
I have been learning more Japanese from watching One Piece (and Shōgun, and Tokyo Vice) than i have been learning Chinese from living in a country where it's the fucking lingua franca. Taiwan continues to be a bad place to learn Chinese, at least beyond the awkward intermediate level i've been stuck at since leaving China 4 years ago.
Last night i started playing a Taiwanese visual novel to try improve my reading speed of traditional characters and get more familiar with turns of phrase in the Taiwanese version of Mandarin. It is very slow going. I do understand and recognize many of the characters, but it only takes a few unfamiliar ones to trip you up, and by the time you deciphered that line of dialog you lost where you were in the greater story. It's like trying to read a book when you are tired and keep zoning out and re-reading the same line again and again. I'm not sure if it's actually helpful. It's definitely not as enjoyable as reading a translation.
And it also feels like another waste of time, because i know i need to sink hours into it to improve, but when i hardly have any free hours available then time spent improving my Chinese is time not spent going on a bike ride or maybe writing music or listening to music or engaging in other hobbies that i feel like i've been neglecting.
Time, there's no time, there's never enough time. Life is too short, youth is wasted on the young, etc etc. I wish i didn't have to spend so much of my life working, because then i wouldn't feel so guilty every time i "wasted" some of my free time doing hobby A when hobby B might have felt like a better use of it.
Is this my new hobby? Fretting over hobbies?
Okay, fine, i'll own it. Worrying about not having enough time to do what i want to do is lower stakes than worrying about the shit i am paid to worry about in my job, so maybe this low key anxiety over nothing is a way to crank down the work stress.
Still, i do wish i had enough time to crank it down to zero.
Last week i finally did the full circle i've wanted to do for 2 years, from my house in central Taipei to a fishing harbor in Taoyuan then along the coastal freeway to Bali and back home along the river. It's about 100km all up, i think. Bike held up, with a few rattles and creaks.
Looking at my selfies, it reminds me how happy i feel when i go out on a long adventure.
I need a vacation...
The amount of free time modern workers are granted might be generous compared to what we got during the industrial age, or to the lives of slaves before that, but it's still fucking inhumane to expect people to spend 5 out of every 7 days for 45 years straight focused entirely on their jobs. And don't give me any of that "after work" bullshit, because if you take your work even remotely seriously then your brain will never be able to completely relax "after work" unless you drown it in booze, in which case you just shot yourself in the foot for weekend relaxation due to the compounded strain drugs put on the body.
Not like weekend "relaxation" is worth a damn anyway, not when half of Saturday is spent recovering from 5 days of stress and half of Sunday is spent dreading the next iteration.
Goddamnit i fucking hate work so much.
There's never enough free time when you are full-time employed. Never.
Alas, i have signed on to sticking out this job (or one that pays at least as much) for at least 2 of the next 3 years so that i have a strong enough work history and salary to qualify for permanent residence. This is struggle i am putting in the bank to pay for the future right to live peacefully in a country that is warm, free, developed and affordable. I have spent my entire adult life (minus two blissful, pre-Brexit years in Europe and one pandemic year in Canada) as an immigrant, but this is the first time i am putting in the work for real. No family sponsorship shortcut. No direct path to permanent residence. Constantly gotta be on my best behavior. Being a migrant might be a choice i brought upon myself, but that doesn't make it any easier. People who were privileged enough to be born with citizenship of a country they're content to spend their entire lives in tend to be quite oblivious to how tough it is for those of us who weren't so fortunate.
But, then, people are oblivious, period. The best post i read on ONTD recently was this morning when some boring white rapper decided to put UAE on his shit list due to their government's support for the RSF militia that has been responsible for all the usual rape and pillage and murder you'd expect from paramilitaries funded by rich, corrupt scumbags. And it's like, about fucking time someone talked about the war crimes happening outside of Ukraine and Palestine. This stuff isn't top secret, it's right there on the current events wiki portal (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events). All you gotta do is visit every now and then and read the armed conflicts section to be reminded of the terrible violence being unleashed around the world.
That said, contrary to the lies of cynical politicians hoping to harness xenophobia to their own benefit, most people are nice and most of the world is nice. It's not a constant Mad Max bloodbath everywhere outside of your local neighborhood. But on a planet with 200 countries, 8 billion people and 150 million square kilometers of land, at any point in time there's always going to be some chunks of it that really suck. And there's always going to be powerful assholes who are up to their elbows in making it suck.
As a powerless peon and a nice person, what can you do? Well, you can create shit lists. But due to the interdependence of the world's economies and ecosystems, inevitably those shit lists will become untenable. You can't boycot all of the things. Which is why i am still posting on LiveJournal (despite my Russia shit list) and going to psytrance events (despite my Israel shit list). When my shit lists hit the fan of reality, they turn into an excrement-scented air of awareness. They're a whiff of mindfulness around how many countries' governments are complicit in hideous crimes and a breath of consciousness that whispers exactly to what extent i am supporting that. Of course it's much easier to avoid flying on any airline that goes through Dubai than it is to live without a single gadget built with components out of Dongguan. YMMV.
I'm not sure how i went off on that tangent when i started this post trying to make an excuse for myself to spend the whole day in bed.
It's not even raining. I have no excuse. I just don't wanna.
I have been watching One Piece (slowly) and the Water 7 story arc is awesome. It's a spy story set in a fantastical version of Venice. This cartoon about how a stretchy pirate and his gang of misfits beat up bad guys continues to be surprisingly entertaining.
I have been learning more Japanese from watching One Piece (and Shōgun, and Tokyo Vice) than i have been learning Chinese from living in a country where it's the fucking lingua franca. Taiwan continues to be a bad place to learn Chinese, at least beyond the awkward intermediate level i've been stuck at since leaving China 4 years ago.
Last night i started playing a Taiwanese visual novel to try improve my reading speed of traditional characters and get more familiar with turns of phrase in the Taiwanese version of Mandarin. It is very slow going. I do understand and recognize many of the characters, but it only takes a few unfamiliar ones to trip you up, and by the time you deciphered that line of dialog you lost where you were in the greater story. It's like trying to read a book when you are tired and keep zoning out and re-reading the same line again and again. I'm not sure if it's actually helpful. It's definitely not as enjoyable as reading a translation.
And it also feels like another waste of time, because i know i need to sink hours into it to improve, but when i hardly have any free hours available then time spent improving my Chinese is time not spent going on a bike ride or maybe writing music or listening to music or engaging in other hobbies that i feel like i've been neglecting.
Time, there's no time, there's never enough time. Life is too short, youth is wasted on the young, etc etc. I wish i didn't have to spend so much of my life working, because then i wouldn't feel so guilty every time i "wasted" some of my free time doing hobby A when hobby B might have felt like a better use of it.
Is this my new hobby? Fretting over hobbies?
Okay, fine, i'll own it. Worrying about not having enough time to do what i want to do is lower stakes than worrying about the shit i am paid to worry about in my job, so maybe this low key anxiety over nothing is a way to crank down the work stress.
Still, i do wish i had enough time to crank it down to zero.
Last week i finally did the full circle i've wanted to do for 2 years, from my house in central Taipei to a fishing harbor in Taoyuan then along the coastal freeway to Bali and back home along the river. It's about 100km all up, i think. Bike held up, with a few rattles and creaks.
Looking at my selfies, it reminds me how happy i feel when i go out on a long adventure.
I need a vacation...