Living alone diaries #20: childhood vacations, being a sceptic, my weird relationship with food, and working out consistently.
Twenty weeks of journal entries, twenty weeks of you guys reading my shit, wow.
That’s crazy to me, I’m so grateful.
Though I’m not pleased at the weak ass interactions on last weeks entry? Please I know as a collective we can do better.
So, if you haven’t read and clapped for entry #19, go and do so neau, or I’m afraid I’ll have to take matters into my own hands.
Anyways, how are you guys doing?
The year is speeding by, wow. I think the entity in charge of our simulation is bored, so he’s just fast-forwarding past all the bits that aren’t interesting to him.
Its basically the end of the year already, that’s crazy.
If you’re one of those people that have new year’s resolutions, how far with those? Were you able to actually keep up with them?
I’ve always been shit at those, so I haven’t had any in quite a while.
Another thing that’s coming up is my birthday; I was born on boxing day.
Its an odd date — to me — because its so late in the year, and its already surrounded by so many festivities; the day after Christmas, and a few days before new year’s.
Peak detty December stuff, really.
As a child I used to literally vibrate with excitement as the year rolled round to an end; that was the time we’d go on family vacations. Every year we’d travel abroad for two or three weeks, and be back just in time for school to resume in January.
Sometimes, when we came back some time after resumption date, and I had to go to school like a week in, I felt so elite and special walking into class and everyone was already there. There was something so delicious about it, like yeah, EYE went on vacation and I’m so special that I’m resuming late.
Thinking back on that now and its so crazy how little things like that boosted a child’s ego.
So, you can imagine how devastated I was when those trips tapered down into nothing by the time I got into secondary school, because, Nigeria.
But it makes me think about how we are just chasing after things that elevate us and make us seem “better” in the eyes of others, but aren’t too much of a departure from the norm that it makes us alien.
We want to be different and privileged and unique, but not stray too far from the herd in the grand scheme of things, because as much as we want to differentiate ourselves from the crowd, we still need other people to still see us and affirm us in our lofty positions of privilege and uniqueness.
Its crazy stuff, really.
We want to be above the masses, but without the masses, there would be no ‘above’.
Society/societal structure is such an interesting thing to me.
And I don’t think anyone is truly above it. Even religious leaders (using religion here because they frequently tout the selfless, pious narrative) place themselves on a pedestal above others; they are the most knowledgeable, the most pious, the most favoured by what ever God they preach for.
It’s so interesting dissecting these dynamics, and its why I don’t put any stock in Imams, or Popes or pastors and all of that; they’re symbolic and important to those who follow them, sure, but at the end of the day most of them are simply normal people who have used their ‘favour’ from God to uplift themselves to a position where they feel above others.
And quite a lot of them abuse this power, frequently.
Of course, there are probably a few who are actually passionate about spreading the gospel, but even those can not deny the perks of the pedestal they stand on.
The whole thing is one of the things that put me off religion and religious leaders, to be honest.
The selfishness, abuse of power, pretence (God, I hate people that pretend to be what they’re not) and business-like approach these people have towards religion is something I can never ascribe to.
Someone once told me “Salvation is personal”, and that’s one of the realest things I’ve ever heard.
Nothing memorable actually happened this week, and that’s kind of a good thing; I don’t have any particularly unpleasant occurrences to talk about.
One good thing is that I’ve been really getting back into working out again.
For a long time, I was inconsistent for a number of reasons;
Generally, I don’t eat much. I’ve always been a very picky eater as a child, and it was because I hated the texture of a lot of the food we ate at home, so I was very often forced in some way or the other to eat, and when I did eat, it was the smallest amount acceptable, just so no one could say I didn’t eat. As I grew up, I realized that a lot of the reason why I didn’t like food at home was because of how it felt in my mouth, not necessarily the tastes, it was the textures.
I don’t like liquid food, so I didn’t like soups, I don’t like food that’s mushy or too soft, because it reminds me of the innards of insects and worms, so I didn’t like stuff like eba and semo (this really should be prison snacks, a truly abhorrent meal straight from hellfire), and I absolutely hated noodles, I don’t like thick, pasty and uneven textures (stuff that has bits and pieces in it and isn’t smooth), so I didn’t like oats and cereals like fruit n fiber and Weetabix, I don’t like viscous foods, so I hated yogurt and milk. Don’t get me wrong, I still ate these things, because I had no choice and risked getting beaten or shouted at if I didn’t, but it just made the whole idea of food more of a necessity than something to actually be enjoyed.
Of course, as I grew up and learnt to cook for myself, I was able to understand why I didn’t like certain foods, and I was able to make them in ways that I liked, but there’s still a lot of things I hate eating.
Anyways, you need to eat well to have enough energy to work out effectively and repair the muscle you tear/strain during workouts, and honestly, food just isn’t that important/enjoyable to me.
The second thing is obviously my stellar mental health, I’m having a lot of days where it feels like I’m on replay. I wake up and go to work and come back and eat and sleep, I’m doing everything I should be doing, and maybe even doing them well, but I’m generally not happy/feeling good. So, working out feels like a pointless thing mostly.
These past few weeks I’ve had a lot more motivation to work out.
I realized I was working out on the same schedule someone who eats like a normal person would use, while not having nearly enough energy to actually go through with it because of said abnormal eating habits. So, I sat down and restructured my whole routine, and it’s been a lot better.
I realized I began to enjoy it more when I fixated less on how it made me look, and more on how it made me feel. When I started working out to actually feel good internally and mentally, it got a lot easier. I even made a tweet about this a few days ago, I’ll link it here, but basically, working out to look good can be great motivation to start, but for me, it wasn’t enough motivation for me to keep at it. Through the lens of feeling good as opposed to just looking good, I realized that the intensity of my workouts was what was putting me off from being truly consistent.
So, I spread the intensity out a bit more and simplified it as well.
It’s been really good so far, methinks.
Lesson: find what works for you and your reality so you can create systems than are solid, as opposed to fixating on a goal blindly and thinking sheer willpower will get you through.
Most of the time with long term desires, it won’t.
I hope you’re taking things easier this week and listening to your mind and your body as well.
See you next week.
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