Some Thoughts on Life
Perhaps the routine life is what should be sought
March was a long month. A great one, but long all the same. I am now one year older than when it started, have a new job, and own (well pay the bank to live in) a house. Therefore, there has been little time to sit down and think, let alone write. Below are a few of the thoughts that have had a chance to percolate in my overstuffed brain. They are a bit disjointed and not fleshed out, but that’s what comes with the territory, I guess. It is possible that I will pick these back up in more detail, but my current life is a bit too prohibitive to do so right now.
To that end, it is likely that I will be switching from a long essay every month to several small posts between Missing Pages episodes. Oftentimes, my ideas for essays are half-baked and not exactly cohesive. I also don’t have quite as much time to to do the research for a full length essay, but I usually have thought enough about a topic to warrant 400-600 words. I am still adjusting to life with a child and this feels like it will likely be easier to do. If I find that a topic requires far more detail, then I will post a longer essay, but those will be far more sporadic. With this change, I will also be able to post more often, likely once a week. The podcast episodes will resume as normal, as that is the main purpose of this newsletter.
Without further ado, here are some of my disjointed thoughts from March…
Fast food. Drive-through coffee. Protein bars. Audio books. Costco. America is obsessed with efficiency. More specifically, obsessed with saving time. I’m an engineer in my day job, so I am no stranger to optimization. Optimizing for weight, energy, size, performance, cost, and, of course, time, is the name of the game. The trade-offs and compromises that are necessary to release a product are the reason many promising ideas don’t make it past that point. Outside of my career, I have always tried to instill some efficiency in my own life. This is much harder, though paradoxically much more important, now that I have a child to take care of. I love planning my day, prepping meals, high-protein snacks, eating while working, listening to audio books at 1.2x speed, and Starbucks. I don’t have a problem with this though. I find enjoyment in all of these and wouldn’t abandon any of them outright. But, whenever I indulge in these activities I feel like I’m missing something. Like I am not getting the full breadth of experience. Like I’m feeding one of those pocket pet games to make it smile. I often have to force myself to slow down. Taste the coffee. Read the words on the page more slowly. Eat whatever is in the fridge. Be bored and let my mind wander. The spice of life is the inefficiencies. It is that which separates us from robots; it keeps us from losing our humanity.
I have worried for many years in my life that I am wasting my time. I dreaded my birthday as it was a reminder of all of the things that I did not get done in the previous 365 days. I played video games when I could have learned a skill. I scrolled Twitter instead of reading a book. I watched YouTube videos about being productive instead of doing something productive. In short, I was addicted to dopamine. I won’t deny that I still am, but I have been able to manage that addiction (or at least recognize it) over the past few years. I have found in recognizing this and adjusting for it grants me the opportunity to actualize the progress I sought. That is not the only reason for this. My current stage of life usually involves much more progress than in subsequent stages. In each of the past few years I have progressed some part of my life either in my career, personal life, or family life. But this is likely to stop now. There is a worry buried deep in my mind that that dread I felt previously will re-emerge in the coming years. But, the progress I have made outside of normal life events will likely satiate this. My podcast and these essays will act as a sort of bar to denote yearly progress. Beyond that, I’m sure my child’s advancement each year will cover some of that need. Perhaps as some sort of reverse projection (injection?). I think, in the long run, it is much more likely that I will accept that progress is not my purpose in life. Life has much greater meaning than meeting personal goals. Maybe all I need is a family that is safe, healthy, and happy, a job that allows for that. Maybe that’s the true American dream.
In the past few years, since the world was turned upside down in 2020, there has been a growing identity crisis in America. It seems that the threads that have held the myriad peoples that call themselves Americans have frayed, unraveled, and severed. Politics is more insular than it has been for over a century and the collective ideals have become tenuous. Sports have prioritized spectacle and profits to keep eyes from flitting elsewhere. Online content has become shorter and more disjointed. Knowledge remains surface level for ease of recall, rather than true understanding. This sounds dire, but I still have a good feeling about the future. Collective experiences have begun to resurface. Human interactions face-to-face rather than over a screen have brought people together. From Taylor Swift concerts to Barbenheimer to the coronation of Charles III. These unifying events have seemed to fill more time than the division caused by protests and strikes. People seem to have a much lower tolerance for the very-online types. People seem to be, largely avoiding the edges of intellectual spaces for the most part. People want normality to re-emerge. The past few years have only exacerbated that desire. My hope is that this transition to normality is successful. Though, I don’t want this normality to blanket over the cause of the abnormalities. I want society to be boring again, but I would hate for this to lead us right back to where we were.