twenty one and a half candles
when i turned twenty-one i wrote this post about a few habits and goals i wanted to set for myself. things i wanted to start doing, things i wanted to continue doing, etc. coming back and reading this post after a while has struck some chords with me. not necessarily bad ones, but rather i see the reasoning behind some of these decisions i made and how i approached them. instead of starting off with what i plan to do, let's see whats been going good and what else can be done:
no weed, alcohol, etc | a large portion of this goal was motivated by a sense of losing control in my life. to be honest, i think that every birthday i've had always brings with it a sort of grief - grief for the things i haven't done, griefs for the things i miss, grief for the future i see ahead. in my eyes, i think setting this goal was more me grasping for an ounce of control in my life during a tough time more than anything. reading it back i knew it was tough living when i pulled out this:
i think i may be more of my mother's son than i realize, i've started her habit of getting home and having a beer after a long day at work. its scary to see how much i'm like her.
to be honest, i still see my resemblance to her, but in other ways now. i did see a fair share of drinks back in january while i was in portugal, no excuse for that, but i came back pretty headstrong about not touching alcohol. of course, at times, i'll have a beer or some free seltzer passed out on the street when i'm with a friend, but otherwise i tend to not even have the inclination to drink anymore. in terms of the weed situation, i don't touch it often. apart from the occasional walk with my neighbor/childhood friend, i don't find much joy in balling up. looking back, i felt it was a very juvenile goal born out of the desire to have control over my life rather than the desire to "be healthier". regardless i'm glad to have moved on from those crutches. i think everything is good in moderation, and i think i have made a moderate approach towards this "goal".
in a similar kind of stride, i did also quit the diet coke. i think i'm two months off any sodas in general, but specifically diet coke was the one that i had a problem with. every man needs his sweet treat, but i see now that i was overdoing it. its the same shit as vaping. you start it to quit smoking but then you realize its also shit and nowhere near as good as just not doing either. instead of healing my lungs i am healing my pancreas and gut microbiome, and you know what, i have never needed one more than i do right now. despite quitting it i crave sometimes for the caramel undertones paired with the carbonation. maybe life is about denying yourself in a bid to regain control? who knows??? i don't.
get a tattoo | this is a flop. still thinking on this. my mom says i can get one and that i'm an adult who can "think for myself" but i don't trust her opinion of me for one moment. mind you this is the same woman who dropped and broke her phone then proceeded to cry because she had to go a day without a replacement. needless to say, i still need to gather ideas for what i want. i want a big thigh piece on my right leg one day, i'm sure of that. i also think forearm and arm tattoos look really sexy when done right. who knows. maybe one day.
continue blogging | i mean, ask the audience, i am here typing to you all... am i not? so i've been continuing with the blogging. the frequency of my posts has gone down, yes, but in it's place i think i've lost the fear that comes with starting to write for the first time. i mean, i've had this blog for more than a year now, but i think the past few months have really pushed me to lose the ego associated with writing publicly and instead just type and type. i did turn off the analytics for this blog a while back, and i've gone ahead and also hidden the upvote counts for posts. i'm not interested in seeing them anymore nor am i interested in finding some big community in this. i reach out to kayla and misu from time to time, maybe some other people, but otherwise i am okay. at the end of the day, i began this blog for a sense of control in my life, and i did think i managed to do that pretty well. i still enjoy writing, but i think at times we are too scared to do it out of fear of screaming into the void and hearing nothing back. you just have to do it man, lose the ego and fun will come. (now that i say this, i realize how this is applicable to many facets of life.)
less short form content | i'll start right away by saying that i still am on social media and continue to use it. most of my instagram reels dosage occurs while i'm on the streetcar or waiting in a line. i try not to resort to grabbing for my phone when i get bored. the important part of this being that i try. sometimes i think the annoyance i have with this goal has been the fact that it's not just asking me to kick it out of my life completely, but rather find a way to fill that gap, which i've been struggling with. weekends are especially brutal, and i find myself grasping for something to pull me out of that boredom, which often ends up being a few minutes scrolling reels until i get sick of it again. the typical
fifteen thousand steps a day | okay i lied, sometimes i am too lazy to do all those steps, however i've been average twelve thousand steps a day for the past year. so i'm doing something right atleast. life is draining, and despite my love for walks sometimes i need a day where i go for a shorter walk and come home to sleep. maybe i am cheating myself. i don't know. health benefits from this have been really nice though. i am not a very big gym enjoyer apart from occasional weights, so having this consistent cardio everyday has me chilling, i have my daily routes and tend to follow them pretty strictly, i say hi to the people in my neighborhood, maybe get a coffee too. can a man ask for more?
another quote to end the post. in honor of my favorite book this season of my life - leopard skin hat by french author anne serre
they had a whole season of polite conversations. fanny would call round, bound up the five flights of stairs, sit herself down in the yellow armchair, the narrator in the red, and the conversation would begin. again, he would have liked to have switched places. he thought it was a bad sign - for her, for the pair of them - that she was always in the yellow armchair and he in the red, as if they were in the kind of setting where your place is marked out in advance - a doctor's surgery, a psychoanalyst's consulting room, the boss' office - and where it would be madness for the employee to sit in the director's chair, a provocation for the patient to plonk herself down in the analyst's seat. but there was nothing (or almost nothing_ to be done about it. before he had even though about it, the places were taken, and were he to point to the red armchair, she would say: "no, i'm fine here" (in the yellow armchair), and were he to take the yellow armchair, she would somehow arrange matters so that the red armchair was instantly transformed into the yellow armchair.