It's just a car

I find that I am far calmer when I am driving not my own car. That is not to say I am more careless when driving other people’s cars. I still drive defensively, and avoid the assholes on the road as best possible. (Because the best way to win a fight is to not get in one in the first place.) But for some reason, I am more amped up when I am driving my BMW M2. It’s skin in the game: when the car is bought with your own money, you are wont to stress more about its condition.

Conversely, when something is borrowed, people tend to treat it worse. The fastest car in the world is a rental car. At my workplace, you should see the state of some of the laptops we get in return from users. They treat the computers with utter carelessness. I want to say they wouldn’t treat their own laptops like that, but I have to wonder. How a person do anything is how they do everything.

I have to say, it is nice to drive around with less stress. Perhaps I should lease a new car every three years, though that is a hefty price to pay for a slight increase in peace of mind on the road. Not sure about that one.

Because outside of rent, the automobile is our second largest expense. Spending unnecessarily high on cars is how people fall behind in personal finances. I would know. People talk of cutting back on the three dollar daily coffee (it’s probably six dollars now with inflation) in order to get ahead, and it is stupid. The much bigger lever is the car. You can have all the Starbucks you want when you are not spending hundreds (even thousand) of dollars on transportation per month.

You know what also would lower my stress while driving my own car? Not owning such a “nice” car in the first place. I might as well turn in my car enthusiast card in now…

Lunch time.

The really small stuff

What I’ve tried to do lately is not procrastinate on the small things. To take care of the small niggles and matters soon as they pop up. Simple things like refilling the soap bottle right as I noticed it’s running low, or cutting up the cardboard and throwing it into recycling soon as I receive a package. I have to say the effort is worth it, because the future me is not rueing the present me for not having done the simple task already.

Try not to make the future you hate the present you.

I guess I’ve always been somewhat okay in that regard, proactively handle things as they come instead of putting it off further down the line. What I’m talking about here then is the really small tasks, the ones that takes no effort ignore. It’s no pain to leave that coffee mug unwashed until I come back from work. But when I do return in the evening, I do hate seeing that mug still in the sink, wondering why I haven’t washed it already.

Preparation is key here: to get as much done as possible so that I’m not piling on stress for my future self. Again, I’m talking about the small stuff: checking the tire pressure on the BMW M2 on schedule, or filling it up with gas soon as I notice the gauge is low (instead of waiting for the next drive). The future me is going to appreciate getting into a car with an already full tank of gas, and proper tire pressures.

Because the small annoyances of life that’s easily ignorable, like a squeaky door hinge begging for a blast of WD40, will compound into something significant if you don’t get it fixed. What’s better? Fixing the squeak right now, or having to listen to it every single day indefinitely? Easy choice to be sure, but in action it can be surprisingly difficult to not procrastinate. So that’s what I’m working on lately.

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Very Titanic.

A house is not a home

Hate crimes and attacks targeting the Asian American community are very much in the news lately. The worst of which occurred last week, when a lunatic shot up a few massage parlors in Atlanta, killing eight people. The entire community is on edge, lacking a sense of safety when we step outside of our homes. You always have to be on alert, a certain amount of underlying stress that shouldn’t be there in a civilized society.

As someone who grew up in the south-eastern side of San Francisco, I am innately familiar with that specific kind of stress. It only takes a few muggings for the young me to realize I need street smarts to walk around my neighborhood. The five senses are always tuned in to the surroundings, always on alert for anything - or anyone - untoward. You relax for one moment, and the next thing you know, you’re getting robbed of your iPod (remember those?) violently. I still have the scar on my chin. 

The subconscious trauma never leaves, so long as I never the left the neighborhood. Even as the crime rate fall as the years advanced, I could never relax in that corner of the city. Surely that’s the same feeling felt by Asian Americans presently, especially our elders. I can attest it’s the worst not being able to feel safe walking around your home neighborhood. Is there even an area of San Francisco where an Asian person can feel completely at ease? I am not so sure.

One of the reasons I love traveling to Asia is because the aforementioned type of stress simply does not exist. In major cities of Asia, I can walk anywhere, at anytime, and feel absolutely safe. The lack of stressor is so freeing, a sense of calm that I miss dearly every time I step off the plane back onto American soil. Safety - isn’t that what living in the first world is about? 

Never mind the fact that gun violence and gun deaths are uniquely American. The problem is both structural and cultural. 

I understand and empathize greatly with the trauma and anxiety that Asian Americans are feeling these days. I don’t have much of the answers, but one of them has to be that perpetrators of crime need to be persecuted to the fullest extent. There has to be stiff penalty for doing harm to others. Robbery may only be of material loss, but I speak from experience: the mental harm can last for a very long time. 

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House of Cesar.

Tough week

How can it be a “short week” - due to the holiday on Monday - and yet it still feels interminable? The stress from work that I wrote about last week has not abated, though not that I expected it to. In the grand scheme of things, I should be happy that I am still employed, and free of the coronavirus.

And indeed it’s been a rather joyous week. The Biden inauguration signals a return of competence to the executive branch, putting an end to four years of Trump craziness. My littler brother - in some trouble with the law - found out he won’t have to serve time in prison during his sentencing hearing. An absolute act of mercy by the judge. Hopefully my brother can truly begin to turn his life around from the transgression. His debt to society will be paid, just not in a jail cell.

I shouldn’t let the burden of work overshadow such happy events, but it’s tough.

What I really want to do this weekend is take the M2 out for long drives. Problem is, we are still in a stay-at-home lockdown situation. While the chances of me contracting the virus is very slim - it’s just me alone in a car; what happens if I get into a heavy accident? I’d be taking up a precious ICU bed from a hospital system that’s already running dangerously low. Besides, I’ve heard that people who live near the mountain roads are quite sick of us enthusiasts blasting through them in our fast sports cars. The BMW badge screams douche, doesn’t it?

The vaccine can’t be proliferated fast enough. I’ve signed up for San Francisco’s COVID vaccine notification. Working in education, and having to physically go to work, means I’m in the tier just after the initial one. Difficult to say when Phase 1B Tier 1 will get our shots, but I’m optimistic it will be soon (we have a competent federal response now, remember). I eagerly await the email.

Until then, I’m staying put at home. Seeing my friend utterly struggle with COVID symptoms have reaffirmed my thinking that the risk of going outside is not worth the momentary rewards.

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Morning rays at the playground.

I am stressed

“Is it stressful? Or do you just talk fast?”

And just like that, I regained some perspective. I was indeed stressed. A big thank you to the customer for asking. It was a packed day at work, with many items on the schedule. I felt the entire weight of it on my shoulders, that it was up to me to make sure it gets done. So perhaps I wasn’t paying full attention to each customer, merely trying to get through all of it to the end of the work day.

My reply was meek: “Probably a bit of both.” I do tend to talk quickly.

No matter how much training you do, stress can still creep up on you. No amount of sleeping the proper hours, eating the correct foods, exercising regularly, and studying philosophy, can prevent it. Doing those things only lessens the impact and severity when the stress does hit. A year ago I would surely have fallen apart.

After that interaction, I was able to slow myself down. Temporarily detaching from the situation - thanks the kindness of that customer - allowed for the realization that it has been a rather stressful day. I should have been able to see that for myself without external input. But, if it was that easy, my face wouldn’t still be breaking out in stress pimples, even as I’m well into my 30s.

Improvement comes incrementally: the ability to handle stress only comes with more doing and more experience. Unless I choose the life of an aesthetic monk living in the woods (sounds great, actually), stress is going to be a part of everyday life for the rest of time. I’ll be better at it as I go along.

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A piece of cake.

Walking to work

One of the major reasons for my recent move to a new place is for its utter proximity to work. Instead of a 45-minute multi bus ride or a 20-minute car ride (relying on others to ferry me), I can now walk to work. And I’ve timed it, too: about three songs’ worth, going at a leisurely pace. Living this close to work truly has no downsides: walking is tremendous for your health, and the time that would otherwise be squandered towards a long commute, you get that back to use productively (or not) within the day.

Being able to walk to work takes stress off me that I didn’t even know existed. Not having to do the whole song and dance of getting ready and watching the clock just so I wouldn’t miss the bus and be late is such a luxury, one that is worth the extra money I am spending on housing costs. At the end of the work day, I am not dreading a slogging commute home or fighting with the crowds on a bus. I can now take my time and stroll back home slowly, taking in the glowing sky of the setting sun, and smelling the freshness of the air. In 10 minutes, I would arrive at home, calm and unbothered.

This have obviously spoiled me for life: I am going to try my damnedest to not have a long commute ever again. To waste up to two hours of my day stuck in traffic or on public transport just feels wrong, no matter how many insightful podcast episodes I consume along the way. It is indeed a privilege that I am able to move home like this and be this close to work; the circumstance of others aren’t so convenient. If I had to buy a house right now, there is no way I’d be able to afford a one anywhere near my current place of employment.

Every single workday, I’d be stuck in a car for hours like so many out there, resigned to the malaise of San Francisco Bay Area traffic. A day in the future might come where I may indeed have to do that, but as I’ve said, I’m going to try really hard to avoid such a situation. In the meantime, I’m going to really enjoy living so close to work.

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