some days the most i can accomplish is getting out of bed and making some peanut butter toast,
though just because i didn't build a rocket to mars,
or input data into a spreadsheet,
or keep my duolingo streak,
or sit on a golden toilet seat,
that doesn't mean the day was a bust,
since i at least wrote this dumb poem
that sounded a lot cooler in my head before i wrote it down
None whatsoever. I sometimes like to think that I have a strategy to maintain my health, but I’d be lying. I’m horrible at maintaining anything resembling a diet or consistent exercise routine. If anything, the one thing I do fairly well and consistently is walk every day for thirty minutes during my lunch break. And, not to brag, but I am pretty consistent with eating three meals a day rather than starve myself for some ghastly reason.
But my gastrointestinal engorging would probably be classified as unhealthy. Not terribly unhealthy. But I’m sure most, like 9 out of 10, would agree that I need to eat more vegetables. Not fruits. I eat plenty of fruits. Perhaps too many fruits. I have a horrible sweet tooth, and fruits, if anything, are the one thing I do not need to be convinced to eat more of.
It’s mostly just a lot of processed type of foods, though, that I would imagine a dietician would tsk-tsk me into guilt and shame until I stopped. I did attempt to do that whole literary exercise of reading the packaging labels of the foods and beverages I consume, but I find the whole exercise terribly boring, terribly laborious, like the food labels were written by Herman Melville and the sole purpose of food labels are to bore me into submission or, more than likely, bore me into hunger, especially since I am very quick and prone to be at my hungriest during the day when I am also at my bored-est.
I did go through a period of purchasing quite a few pieces of home gym exercise equipment, like a treadmill and a weight lifting bench and a pull-up bar. But alas, I feel as if the dead skin flotsam has a better exercise than I, and I often find myself apologizing to the exercise equipment for their state of un-use as if it were some sort of abandoned child left out in the elements to fend for itself.
I would probably classify myself as being a perpetual starter of diets and exercise routines, but in terms of any sort of long-term strategies, well, that I unfortunately tend to fall rather flat on my face due to the lack of upper-body strength I have in my mid-thirties.
Though I suppose I’m not all too bummed about my lack of physical health. In a way, I guess I’ve devoted the time and energy I should have been exercising and eating right to more so doing the things and activities that I enjoy most, like reading, playing chess, and watching movies. And eating a lot of ice cream. Perhaps a unhealthy amount. But considering my general practitioner hasn’t said anything about it during my annual physicals, I guess I’m alright.
So, I guess one could say that I have bit of the old cognitive-smognitive sort of health. The ole happy-and-I-know-it so I occasionally-clap-along-to-the-tune-in-my-head sort of health. What I’m saying is, my strategy to maintain my health and well-being is to never listen to an advertisement, spend virtually no time on social media, and try in every possible way to do the exact polar opposite of what Elon Musk would do each and every day. And that, in short, makes for good livin’.
I’ve gone through several iterations of work-home balances. Unfortunately, growing up in the States, it was ingrained within me that in order to achieve some semblance of happiness and worth within society that I needed to accumulate things, e.g. cars, house, phone, random stuff in storage that only comes out once every year or so, and the only way to accumulate these coveted things was by working. Or so the theory goes.
So, throughout my twenties when I got out of college I worked incredibly hard. I worked multiple jobs, sometimes 3 or 4 at a time. I used to work from 5am till well past 10pm. I had little to no social life, which wasn’t all that bad because even if I hadn’t been working, I doubt I would have been all that social since I’m incredibly introverted and do not like conversing with people generally. But I was constantly stressed. I felt like I wasn’t doing anything right.
But the goal was to always reach a point where I would work incredibly long, but hopefully efficient, amount of time, and then I would get to retire, or at least reach a point of financial independence where money was something of an afterthought. And if all went well, then I would be able to retire much sooner than my mid-to-late sixties. Ideally, maybe even in my forties, but I wasn’t completely unrealistic and was at least shooting for my late fifties so I could enjoy the last 20-30 years of remaining of my life to do whatever I pleased.
Though, like I said, I was always stressed. I was miserable. I pulled away from my wife, from my parents, from my siblings, and anyone and everyone that cared for me. I told myself that I was working so hard and so much in order to improve my station in life. I was at the brink of completely losing everyone around me before I realized that my constant state of working all of the time and never taking time to actually live was destroying whatever sort of future I imagine I could lead at the end of the working rainbow.
So, I pulled back. I took one job with regular hours doing something that I don’t need to stress about (a common mantra in the coffee industry from barista to roaster to importer is ‘it’s just coffee‘), and I’ve rediscovered hobbies and interests I once had, like reading, writing, and playing chess, along with a handful of interests I didn’t know I had, like sewing and learning a new language.
I think the biggest challenge and realization that I needed to make about developing a healthy work-life balance was understanding that jobs and careers and anything to do with making money, unless it’s a passion, is not the end-all be-all of life. It’s just a way of sustaining oneself, and as long as what I do at work provides enough for me to live off of and save a little bit for when I do reach a point where I no longer need to work, then I’m good. I don’t need to overexert myself to the point of exhaustion because the only thing that will lead to is failing relationships and a deteriorating mental state.
Some of the biggest regrets I’ve made in life were confusing working with living, and listening to individual and societal voices that rewarded that mentality of constantly pushing myself to physical and mental exhaustion rather than taking time off and reorienting my priorities around the people and activities that I enjoy doing.
Fred Aiken Writing 