Blog

Short blog posts, journal entries, and random thoughts. Topics include a mix of personal and the world at large.

Can't have everything

I read on Reddit about this guy who wants to be a competitive bodybuilder, but is lamenting his inability to hang out with his friends. In order to get lean and jacked, the guy cannot go out to eat, drink alcohol, or smoke weed. He wants to have his cake and eat it too, though honestly, who buys cake to not eat it?

What I am reading is the unwillingness to sacrifice. What you’ve heard about life is incorrect: you cannot have everything. You have to choose. The amount of effort and dedication required to be a stage-ready bodybuilder is immense. Those who go on that journey will have to forgo many things in order to achieve the goal. There are no shortcuts, you cannot have both.

It’s the wanting to have it all that leads to upset, depression, or raging against the night. People are pining for the impossible. The new parents who can’t stand to see their single friends hanging out and traveling. Sorry, the tremendous lack of sleep and non-existent social life is part of the deal. The bargain may feel Faustian, but one really can’t be resentful of their kids ruining the life they once had.

I too have felt the misery when I have to choose. For example: I love cars. I’ve been toying with buying another car to compliment the BMW M2. However, it would absolutely crater my long term financials. (I’ve already done it once.) I simply cannot keep two cars and hope to have money for other things I enjoy, such as travel, or expensive camera gear.

I can of course switch careers and get a higher-paying job, but that comes with its own trade-offs. Work-life balance would surely go to shits. Is it worth that just to feed the car enthusiast side of me?

Maybe. I don’t think there’s a wrong answer here. You make a choice, and a door opens while other doors have to close.

Always play offense

American football season is upon us, and all I can think about it to this past Super Bowl.

There I was in China on a Monday morning. Because that is how time zones work. While all my friends were gathered around the television on a Sunday afternoon back in the States, I was vacationing back home in Guangzhou. For a time I was concerned about how I was even going to watch the game. More so because our local team the San Francisco 49ers was in it. I can’t casually skip this one.

To the surprise of nobody, American football does not have a significant following in China. Besides, with an air time of 9:00 AM on a Monday morning, what working adult has time to even watch the game? Never mind finding a bar showing the broadcast. It’s way too early to be drinking, by anybody’s standards.

Lucky for me, the local sports station was showing the Super Bowl. I avoided performing many tricks to one, get by the Great Firewall of China, and two, get a not so legal stream of the broadcast.

The succinct memory I have of the game is during overtime. 49ers kicked a field goal instead of going for the touchdown. Soon as the ball sailed successfully through the uprights, I knew the game was over. You simply cannot take the safe points going up against Patrick Mahomes. Sure enough, he marched the Chiefs right down the field for a Super Bowl-winning touchdown.

The lesson is this: in life, you want to play offense. Even if it doesn’t materially increase the chances of success towards your goal, at least it minimizes regret. Because you took action, instead of reacting to what the world dishes out at you. Playing offense means leaving it all out there; there is nothing else you could have done differently.

Meanwhile, I bet the 49ers still sometimes think to themselves, “What if we went for it on 4th down during overtime, instead of kicking that field goal?”

You can't take a shortcut

Blink and you’ll miss it. My housemates’ set of twins turned a year old! Cliche to say, but it does indeed seem like just a few months ago they came home from the hospital. Those tiny little humans! Also cliche to say: when it comes to kids, the days are long, but the years are short.

I think having children is the best reminder that good results simply takes consistent effort over long periods of time. There aren’t really shortcuts when it comes to raising kids. You change their diapers and feed them milk for the nth amount of time, then they start talking and walking. There’s no hack, or top 10 tips to get your babies to grow faster. There’s only the work, day after day after day.

And unlike something like exercising or going on a diet, parents can’t exactly just stop this whole taking care of a child thing. Well, the morally sound ones, anyways.

Parenting is suppose to be hard. I think if there were this hypothetical shortcut to raising kids, those that did it before the hack was invented would be seriously resentful. The same way those who have diligently paid off their students loans are loathe to see those who didn’t get theirs forgiven by the government. Or those who lost their excess weight through diet and exercise, are hateful towards those who can now simply inject Ozempic into their bellies once a week.

Paradoxical, isn’t it? People love a shortcut (get abs in two weeks videos), but people also hate those who take shortcuts (can also be known as cheating). I think it’s positive to see that ultimately, we all know that putting in the work consistently is what makes that pot of gold at the end genuinely worth its weight.

Perfect Days

It’s rare to watch a movie and have it resonate with me so profoundly.

On a usual browse through Reddit, a user turned me onto the movie called Perfect Days. It’s a Japanese language film set in Japan, directed by a German director (Wim Wenders). The movie details the daily routine of a public toilets janitor in the Shibuya district of Tokyo. Perfect Days was nominated in the Best International Feature Film category at the 96th Academy Awards.

The main character Hirayama is a near mirror image of my proclivities. Toilet cleaner may be a mundane job, but it allows Hirayama leisure time to tend to his hobbies. Like my IT support role at a university, I put in my weekly 40 hours and never have to think about work outside it. I have great leisure to pursue hobbies such as photography, which also happens to be Hirayama’s passion. He enjoys listening to music too (on cassette tapes), which, don’t we all.

When he is on the job, though, Hirayama takes it very seriously - unlike his partner Takashi. There’s excellence to be had, high standards to achieve, even for cleaning toilets. You don’t give any less effort just because the job is low on societal perception, or the pay is horrible. I appreciate Hirayama taking immense pride in his work. Whether we’ve gave our best is something we innately know.

Hirayama is a man of routine, as am I. His workday and weekend never change. He does the same thing and goes to the same places. He wears the same clothes, too. That is all me in real life. Hirayama’s life is so routinized that he gets upset when life’s unforeseen happenstances interrupt the order. Something as simple as not having the same available seat/table at his usual restaurant. I too get upset when my usual parking spot in front of the home is taken by another.

I also get uncomfortable when my normal routine is interrupted with the necessities of social life. Don’t get me wrong: I greatly cherish my time with friends and family. However, there’s no denying that there is a trade-off. Having dim-sim on a Saturday morning means I can’t have my beloved coffee time lounging on the couch, by the window.

The key lesson of Perfect Days is there is sublime in the mundane. A mere toilet cleaner who enjoys photography can have a such a fulfilling and happy life. No matter how much we chase after novelty, most of our days are going to be the same, one after another. I think it serves us better to notice the beautiful and joy in that same boringness.

Consistency is key

There’s nothing like facing your own mortality to spur people into action. As our group of friends head into our late 30s, the returning results of an annual checkup can start to look not so good in certain areas. I myself found out I was pre-diabetic just last year. Another friend recently learned he’s got high cholesterol. Yet another friend started exercising consistently after a lifetime of not doing so. Certainly he’s received some not so good news from his doctor.

I’ve increased my workout amount since my pre-diabetic diagnosis. The friend with the cholesterol issue has also vowed to get more active. It’s truly better late than never! Honestly, late 30s are not really all that late, however self-serving that is for me to say.

The key I hope my friends come to realize is what matters most is consistency. You can have the best, most scientifically-sound exercise routine in the world, but it would result in nothing if not followed through. You know: routine. That means doing something over and over for a long period of time. Even if it’s something as simple as walking three miles a day, everyday. If someone does that consistently for a year, I bet the results would be very positive.

Anything worthwhile takes a long time. We cannot escape putting in the work. Our social-media culture has conditioned us with dopamine ADD: we want results now. So we look for shortcuts, instead of simply putting our heads to the proverbial grind stone. Just look at the popularity of Ozempic: a diabetes drug with the wondrous side-effect of rapid weight loss. We can shed the pounds without changing diet and any exercising? Sign me up! Paying $800 per month is way better than working out, which is free.

Before you quit something, ask yourself, “Have I done this for a long enough time, consistently?”

Life is so cool

It’s been a week since I’ve returned from China, and I have to say it’s been overwhelmingly positive to be back. You know how people go on vacation and then dread going back home to their normal lives? I was actual the opposite. Towards the end of my two-week stay in Guangzhou, I was beginning to miss my life here in the States. Keep in mind: I was on vacation, at the land of my birth, with family I haven’t seen since the start of the pandemic, and eating Cantonese food incomparable to anything available in America.

And yet I was looking forward to returning home!

The realization here is that my life is actually pretty good. My response to coworkers wishing me a happy return is not mere lip-service - It genuinely is good to be back living my regular, normal life. Not hating your job - and perhaps even enjoying it - is such an advantage, and a privilege.

This past week was filled with calm and contentment. It’s the first time I’ve felt such things at the end of a vacation. I can remember coming home from Japan back in 2019 and getting depressed. So wonderful was that trip that the stark contrast to my life at home was emotionally damaging (cue the meme).

I guess I’ve done well to cultivate a living that is worthwhile and satisfying. Traveling then is no longer an escape. Rather it’s a brief detour, one that will take me back to the main road soon enough. Because the main road is pretty cool to be on.

Boring is okay

What is wrong with boring? What is wrong with stasis? What is wrong with living the same day everyday?

I don't understand the people who crave novelty and change all the time. Like, I just got here, why can’t I stay here for a little longer? Newlyweds know: soon as the wedding reception is over, everybody is asking when are you two going to have babies. Okay, maybe after you return from the honeymoon. It’s as if staying married with no babies for any period is not allowed.

Everybody knows: you hit certain age milestones and the questions start coming. 20: what do you plan to do with your life - for money? 30: why aren’t you married yet? 40: where are the babies? 60: what are your retirement plans? Honestly, is it your life, or society’s life? Other people are so eager for you to follow along to what everybody else do.

If you’re still single in your 30s and not looking to match up, you’re the weird one. Your parents, who are staring at the face of mortality in a few decades, are thinking: damn, I really want some grandchildren. So they nag you to get on with your life trajectory, to settle down with a girl and start producing some babies. And if you follow along with that, I think you’re foolish. You’d be living your life at the behest of others.

If you yourself want to settle down and make babies, that’s a different story.

Run your own race. So what if it doesn’t conform to the societal norms. So what if things don’t change for a while. Life is often boring anyways. People who can’t stand to be bored are those wont to divorce their wife soon as a younger/prettier version arrives on the scene. Is that what you want?