It’s 253am on November 22nd 2018. I was having trouble sleeping and so I got out of bed. Usually when I get out of bed because I can’t sleep, I get on my phone. This time, I’m on my iPad.
I bought my iPad because I wanted to practice drawing. And yet… having gotten it, I haven’t been drawing. This is a common motif in my life that I’m getting very tired of. I don’t want to beat myself over it. I just want to understand it, and work through it.
The thought that got me out of bed was “the tyranny of coherence”. I’ve completed 75% of my word vomit project. It started out a little rambly and random, and then over time it began to develop a certain coherence. It started to become a list of directives that I was issuing myself – reminders to review my notes, reminders to take care of myself – my body, my emotional well-being. Reminders to get stuff done, to focus, to not sweat the small stuff, to take care of my relationships. I’ve basically written multiple books worth of self-directives in there at this point. And there’s room for a few more books in the remaining 250,000 words. And somehow… I don’t feel very excited about that. There’s something boring about it. It feels stale and repetitive, like I’m going through the motions. And I don’t want to be going through the motions. I want to be challenging myself, I want to be having fun, I want to explore new ground.
So I find myself thinking… I need to get a little incoherent. I need to break the mold. What does that look like? I’m walking around my house and thinking… there’s so much stuff here. I never thoughto f myself as someone who has any interest in accumulating stuff. And yet, stuff just happens, doesn’t it? I remember writing a post in 2013 about my house when I first moved in. It was completely bare and empty. A bunch of things have changed. Thunder is rumbling in the distance, and there’s a wind blowing. My front door is rattling slightly, and I can hear the wind whistling a low hum through something or another. I’m sitting at a table we bought this year, on a bench we bought this year.
What’s on the table? I have an empty bottle of water. I have three packs of cigarettes, and an ash tray – a porcelain(?) one. There are a couple of stray tissues, packets of ketchup. I just got rid of a bunch of that junk. Some of my wife’s jewelry is on the table. There’s a cloth coaster. The table itself has gotten scratched all over by my cats, which my wife and I found quite upsetting since it’s so new – but we’re probably going to get used to it. That’s the thing about things, isn’t it? You get used to them. I have a wallet that I bought shortly after I started work, way back in 2013. It’s served me really well, and it’s still in surprisingly good condition, considering I bought it for something like S$120.
I’m currently typing this out with the iPad keyboard that my wife and I both share. It’s one of those things, I think, where it’s much better if each person has one of their own, because the switching cost of sharing – even though it’s tiny – is enough to be a blocker that keeps you from using it. At least, that’s my personal experience. We should get a second iPad keyboard. And maybe a second iPad case, too, just so we don’t have to consult each other every time we want to switch things up.
There are a couple of binder clips – we have netting that we hang in front of our windows, like curtains, and we use the clips to secure them in place to keep our cats from getting out onto the ledge outside our window. It’s funny, it’s a sort of security theater – it doesn’t really stop them. There’s this tedious game my cats play with me sometimes where they climb out just outside the window and stare at me until I grab them or chase them back inside. I wonder why they do it. Who knows, cats are weird.
I have a bank statement for one of my credit cards, which came along with an ad for their referral program. It’s so interesting to contrast the language in bank’s marketing, with the legalese in the bill – “if the minimum payment is not received by the due date, a late payment charge of S$90 will be levied” and so on.
I have a regular tissue box. I’ve been thinking that it would be nice to get one of those aesthetic tissue box covers. I’ll probably get one from Little India. I should drop by Little India again sometime now that Deepavali is over and the crowds should be mostly gone.
I never planned to be a cat owner. It just sort of happened. There was an adorable, smart-looking cat that followed me and my wife almost all the way to our home, and… we catnapped it. I do feel some guilt about it. But it’s been almost 5 years now, and I think we can confidently say that we’ve given him a loving home that he enjoys, and he’s probably safer, healthier and happier with us than he would’ve been on the streets. Street cats don’t last this long, I think. And since we owned one cat, one of our tenants (we used to rent) thought it would be a good idea to bring home a scared, tiny kitten she found in a drain at Kallang Pudding Road. And so now we have two cats. We’ve had two cats for a pretty long time. They have an interesting friendship that has itself changed over the years. And it’s been interesting to witness and observe how different they are. They have different personalities, habits, behaviors. And similarities, too – they both nap all the bloody time. I mention the cats because they have such a significant impact on the way our home looks. We keep cardboard boxes around for longer than we need them, partially because they seem to have such a good time in them. One of the boxes is getting progressively scratched up, chewed up and spat out into lots of little pieces – which is annoying to have to clean up, but it’s probably preferable to our cat scratching up our furniture.
I bought a scratching post for the cats (I think it was like S$20) and they don’t use it. Part of the reason why is because it slips. Maybe I should get a non-slip mat for it. Or maybe I should just think “well, I tried” and get rid of it. Either way, it’s a traffic-cone looking thing in my living room taking up space.
I have a t-shirt from a marketing talk that I gave. I just took it out of it’s plastic wrapper to see if it feels nice. It does feel nice! I wasn’t expecting that. I just put it in the wash.
I have some speakers that a friend gave to me, that I’ve just been holding on to. I don’t know what I’m doing with it. I also have an old speaker that I used to use. I have a ratty old classical guitar that I’ve been thinking of getting new strings for, or really, outright replacing.
I have a couple of chairs that come with the dining table that are quite nice, though my cats have been ripping them up a little. I do like that they add some color to my living room. Same is true for a boxy red chair that I have. But I don’t sit in it much. I should figure out why that is.
// I’ve decided to stop here and go to bed. But I thought this was good. I should do this more.