It’s 2:16am. I was home around 1030pm, and so I was hoping to be asleep by 12noon, but look, it’s 2:16pm. I do this to myself over and over again. Let’s go through it quickly without any self-flagellation. I had a bit of work that I wanted done. I wanted to go through my word vomit summaries (done with that). And I wanted to write this. (Writing now). In between all of that, I spent a bunch of time on the Internet doing dumb things. I replied to some guy on Reddit. I watched bits and pieces of The Mummy… why was I doing that? It had to do with TV Tropes. Why was I on TV Tropes? I wanted to add a relevant link to a word vomit that I was summarizing. (A taste of power / start over was the trope, in reference to Conan The Barbarian and Iron Man).
Well, so that was a little silly. If I’m going to do something and I have a deadline I should be pushing myself to use the timer and I should be focused on the single task I have ahead of me, and nothing else. The problem is that I keep allowing myself all these little gaps, and these gaps expand into huge time sinks that eat into everything else. Well, so it goes. Not going to get angry at myself for this. Just adding this to the list of data points I have for understanding how this works. Creating a task for myself to go over all of this once the summaries are done. In the meantime I’m going to write about today’s experience and then go straight to bed with as calm and neutral a mind as possible.
My wife is in Thailand for a month, which means I have the freedom and opportunity (and responsibility) to take care of myself, and to be fully responsible for my own decisions. I can’t peg anything on her, she can’t peg anything on me. If I’m wasting hours on the Internet, it’s not because I’m waiting for her to be done in the shower– it’s all on me. And this experience right now is proving that to be true. So I can’t use her as a crutch or excuse. Great, this is a good opportunity for me to really encounter that and get to know that properly. Does it surprise me? No it doesn’t, but will it help? I think so. I have 30 more days to sort my shit out, and it’s not like “oh, somewhere in the middle of those 30 days things will get sorted out”– I have to do the sorting right now, knowing that I’ll probably fail, and go over it over and over and over.
At the very least, I’m keeping up with these vomits and summaries. I’m writing them even if I’m tired and sleepy because I have no excuse. This is my minimum commitment. Earlier today I discovered some guy who committed to his own personal 1000 words a day writing project. I asked him about it. He didn’t publish the words, I’m guessing. He told me he went on for 650+ days, and then stopped and didn’t recover. So now as a matter of personal principle of sorts, I’d like to keep my streak going, all the way. That would be really cool.
Anyway. The thing I wanted to talk about is– one of the things I’m trying to do in my wife’s absence is to meet as many friends as possible. It’s not like I’m not able to meet friends when she’s around, it’s just that it’s nicer to meet people without having to worry about making it back home in time for dinner, and/or stuff like that. I can always stay out late, but I might as well get all of this stuff out of the way at once if possible. I suppose that’s probably not the best of ideas/strategies, but at the very least I’ve reached out to a whole bunch of people, so I can start scheduling now and see how it all plays out.
So today I met a bunch of local t-shirt retailers, and it was really pleasant conversation. It was really nice to be around a smart, thoughtful, kind group of people who’re passionate about what they’re doing, and it’s nice to be a part of a different group from the usual tech/startup/marketing circles that I’m usually tied up with (out of proximity, job, etc). It makes it clearer that I should really be hanging out with more people. I went on a sort of extreme detox where I cut myself off from all my old friends (the huge shift in location had a huge part to do with it).
The more I think about it, and the more experiences I have, the clearer it’s becoming to me that living in Yishun is almost “bad for my health”. Not super literally in a physical sense (though an argument could be made…) but in a more softer, social sort of sense. I have nobody in the immediate vicinity that I like spending time with apart from my wife, and even spouses get sick of each other from time to time. I need people I can while away hours with, while working or thinking, people who have divergent interests, who are working on other things. That’s just like a sort of a human need, I feel. A third space. I haven’t had many of those that I’ve really enjoyed. It’s been really hard for me to find the right people.
I guess that’s quite heartening. I haven’t been making enough time to meet people, to meet good people. I just don’t really think very much about it, I imagine it’ll take care of itself sooner or later. But what I’m learning over and over again is that nothing important every takes care of itself. That’s adulthood, damnit, we have to plan and schedule for everything, and make sure WE make things happen.
Such is life!