personal narrative | Fred Aiken Writing

June 9, 2024

Constant Seeker, Occasional Finder

Daily writing prompt

If humans had taglines, what would yours be?

If humans had taglines, mine would probably be “Constant Seeker, Occasional Finder.” Though it kind of sounds like a horrible descriptor for an online dating profile, it also perfectly captures my restless curiosity and the rare, fleeting moments of discovery that interrupt the monotony.

I’m the person who gets lost in Wikipedia rabbit holes, clicking from one article to another until I’ve gone from medieval history to quantum physics. My bookshelf is a testament to this endless quest, filled with everything from philosophy to DIY manuals, all with their spines barely holding on for dear life. I also have way too many books on my wish list. I keep meaning to stop adding new books to it, but then I will discover one, then ten or twenty, new books I want to read, and before you know it, I have thousands of books on a wish list I will probably never have time to fully read through.

I also tend to take on various free online courses on subjects or topics that have nothing to do with my profession, but I always had a tangential curiosity about. I tell myself I’m trying to improve myself, to develop as a person. But the reality is that I’m trying to distract my ADD brain from distracting me from doing something unproductive, like watching 7 hours of Youtube videos about people and things that I could care less about. And yes, I see the irony in distracting my ADD by focusing my time and energy into learning new and different things.

Amid all the seeking, there are those moments when I stumble upon something profound—a new perspective, a solution to a lingering problem, or a piece of art that resonates. These moments are rare, but they make the constant searching worthwhile.

Sometimes, I imagine life as a series of treasure hunts, each day a new map with clues leading to hidden gems. I’m not just living; I’m on a quest, each moment filled with potential discoveries. Whether it’s a new favorite cafe or interesting cup of coffee that has gone through a new processing method (like koji anaerobically processed Colombian coffee was pretty cool), a meaningful conversation, or a sudden epiphany (though they seem to be fewer and far between the older I’ve gotten), these finds add a layer of richness to my otherwise solitary existence.

May 29, 2024

long hair, slightly care

i let my hair grow out,
but not because i wanted to,
it’s just because i cut my own hair,
partly to save money,
but mostly because it feels like a challenge,
and it gives me an opportunity to get
to know the landscape that is my head,
the grooves, the bumps,
reacquainting with old skateboarding injuries,
the surgery that had me bedridden for three months,
the time my 3rd grade crush laughed
at how big my head was when she handed out
baseball hats that were given to her for free because her uncle
was the accountant of some minor league team,
so of course i got self-conscious that my head was way too big
for my body,
which led me to start wearing clothes, in particular shirts,
that were too big for me, 
in order to give the impression
that my head isn’t all that big for my body,
that my head is reasonably proportional to the rest of me,
though when my cousin found out about what my 3rd grade crush had said about my head,
she went and punched her in the noise
before exclaiming, ‘your nose is now too flat for your face!’
all of which is to say,
i don’t like when people touch my head,
so i just go ahead and cut my own damn hair

May 18, 2024

Some Work Song Thrown in the Back of the Truck

Daily writing prompt

How do you balance work and home life?

View all responses

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.