Lazy Bum

This week I was a lazy bum and I loved it. Well maybe more of a love hate.

Didn’t work on any music at all this week. My schedule mostly comprised of working (just a little) and watching Youtube or Netflix afterwards.

Things are very up in the air at the moment when it comes to work. My manager ended up having an early delivery and left for maternity leave about a week earlier than expected. This happened right at the start of the year and I haven’t received any word as to what the next steps are.

It’s been so very long since I haven’t had a manager. As a result, the first few days—especially after coming back from OOO—I was pretty lazy. Not to mention the whole attack on the Capitol happened and I’ve been somewhat glued to the news and distracted as a result.

This year got me shook. It coincides with a point in my life where I feel like I’m shedding my youth and losing that feeling of youthful invincibility. Life—and pretty much everything else—feels a little too fragile right now.

Rona got the world doubled over. Wildfires ravaged California. Shootings doubled in NYC. The government keeps throwing curveballs. What a fugging shitshow of a year.

Even after all this resolves (what do I even mean when I say “all this”? There seems to be more and more happening day by day) I think most of us will remain changed. Too much time has passed. We will remember ourselves as the people we were pre-2020 and the people we became post-2020.

Well—as so many people are quick to remind me—it could be worse. But it feels good to complain too.

So yeah, back to this week.

Watched a lot of TV. A few more episodes of The Uncanny Counter with my parents. The K drama that I’m starting to lose interest in but will end up finishing where a bunch of people become grim reapers after near death experiences.

Watched a lot of Mythbusters clips on Youtube. RIP Grant Imahara—dead of a brain aneurysm this year at the age of 49. Made me a bit sad every to see him pop up on the show every once in a while. So much potential lost in an instant. On a separate note Mythbusters did some crazy stuff back in the day. They have an episode where they test out the Chinese water torture on one of the hosts…and it works! After an hour of water dripping on her forehead she starts freaking out—almost out of nowhere. Fascinating that the torture actually worked. Doubly fascinating that they actually greenlit and aired an episode where they torture one of the hosts.

Also watched a lot of Diners Drive-ins and Dives. What an idyllic time when Guy Fieri could just cruise across the country from joint to joint eating his heart out.

In addition to the TV I read a buncha stuff too. Finished a book called If You Lived Here You'd Be Home By Now where a Washington Post journalist moves from DC to Red Lake Falls, Minnesota. It’s the embodiment of that recurring question of what would happen if I gave up city life and moved to the middle of nowhere. It works out decently well for the author. He has the revelation that people there are not too different from the people you might meet in cities. He paints a picture of slower living, deeper community and a lot of time saved.

I still don’t think I could personally make a move like that but it’s nice to daydream. What if I moved to the middle of nowhere with a remote software salary? Would my life be fundamentally different? Would I live at a slower pace? Form deeper bonds with my community? Stop and smell the roses?

I think that at the best of my times at Berkeley I definitely felt that way and I haven’t been able to replicate that same magic since my college days. So maybe a gamble like that is worth exploring.

I. DO. NOT. KNOW.

Reminds me of that Vonnegut quote I read a few weeks back:

”Human beings have had to guess about almost everything for the past million years or so. The leading characters in our history books have been our most enthralling, and sometimes our most terrifying, guessers.”

ANYWAYS… on a final note—leaving for NYC tomorrow. Gotta get some stuff in order as my lease comes to an end. As much as I love my parents it’ll be nice having some alone time as well.