Once, on a straight road
We walk
Offhand
We talk
Once at the corner
We bend
Offend
We mend
But we’ve laid down these eggshells
And now as we tread
They quietly crack
Pushing all that we lack
Up to the surface until
We’re back
One little corner
That joins yet another
It loops
Whoops.
Decided to take a break from being productive and useful today and stumbled upon a free creativity course. One of its exercises was to write an elastic poem (First verse has 2 words, then 4, then 6, 8, 10, then back to 8, 6, 4 and 2).
Circuit breaker
Long distance relationship maker
Our country’s effort at a lockdown
Meant to bring us all together to fight
This battle that any real Spartan would be confused by
Is that why people are so casually flirting
Skirting around the rules, and being
Proud of their weaknesses,
Bubble tea.
She’s terrible at receiving gifts.
My mother is just like her mother.
The food you bought is not that nice hor?
She looks at me, expecting me to agree with her.
Wah so expensive! And the portion so small.
The one I buy is still nicer.
Her disapproval on the things that I like
The feeling is also – not that nice.
So hard to please, she said about her mother
Always complaining about this, that or another
So it sucks to know how others feel
Because I am just like my mother.
I’d spend my mornings at the gym, have a light breakfast and then go back home and do some gardening, go bouldering, finish up my calligraphy or embroidery pieces, have some lunch and then read a book or practice the piano till dinnertime.
Then of course, we’d go travel. We’d be doing the same routine for a month in Spain, with some time spent hiking and rock climbing outdoors. Then the same in Taiwan. In Queensland.
The dream retirement.
Maybe yours looks something like this too.
Except we all know we’d more likely be waking up at 11am, surfing the web, watching Netflix, and maybe barely accomplishing one of those things.
We think that our job holds us back. If we didn’t have to have a job, we would be out there, living the dream. Maybe. But for most of us, the depressing reality is that we aren’t that organized, disciplined or motivated.
Retirement is a terrible concept. It tells us that we have to hustle for the first part of our lives, so that we can enjoy the later parts of it.
But in the later years, how many of us would have the energy and courage to do all the things we dream of when we’re young and fit and healthy?
Forget about it. It’s a trap. This is why the idea of YOLO made sense until it became kitsch.
Irresponsibility and reckless behaviour should not be disguised as freedom. Having a credit card named YOLO was probably one of the most disgusting things I could have thought of.
I think about being diagnosed with a terminal illness sometimes. What freedom! I’d be able to quit my job with that excuse and do whatever I want! I don’t have to think twice about picking up my embroidery needle while I’m doing nothing except receive treatment in the hospital.
Except that I would most probably feel like shit because of the disease and I’d probably not feel like doing anything except lie down and feel sad -oh if I could only relive my life again as a healthy person!
Morbid, I know. But this is honestly what goes through my mind every time I start hating where I’m going with my job and my career.
I’ve started living my life as if I’m semi-retired now.
We don’t have kids so we spend money on art classes, piano lessons and rock climbing sessions on ourselves. The guilt sometimes gets to me when I think about my mother’s sacrifice for my amazing privilege, but it’s not enough to make me want to quit my semi-retirement.
Every now and then, I’m gripped by the fear of not having enough to support myself when I’m older. But that fear passes when I think about how little I actually need to be happy.
I go back to reminding myself about that beauty of nothing.
There are so many advertisements about how to invest. How to grow your wealth. How to live the life of your dreams with passive income. People are afraid of missing out. We hear ‘inflation’ being thrown around and know we’re supposed to do something about it. But maybe we don’t know what, so we panic a little and try to do some research about investments, about roboadvisors, about ETFs and NFTs and what-have-yous.
And then there’s also a ton of people talking about mental wellness. Companies creating environments and having initiatives to help people cope with their mental wellbeing. All the people who are part of the Great Resignation know that life is short, they know that there’s more to life than work.
People want the dream life. Obviously. Without the hard work, without the grind. That’s why socialites like Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian were a thing. That’s why social media influencers became a thing.
People who didn’t look like they needed to grind in the office and do ugly things, to live a beautiful life. People who could make ugly things sound beautiful from a screengrab or a short caption.
So we’re drawn to the beautiful things like moths to a flame. But it burns us.Looking at their beautiful photos and feeling a little meh about our unbeautiful Thursdays.
Seeing their delicious cafe breakfasts, prepared by someone else and gorgeously plated while munching on our peanut butter and jam bread because we’re too busy, lazy, poor or cheap for anything else.
Do they live their lives in DSLR photo quality, with the washed out look that makes everything look soft and pretty? When they’re angry, are they still in focus with their teardrops shot in macro? Expectation. Meet reality. Why does it look different in full HD from our own retinas?
Moth, flame.
So we work and grind and we try to reach that level of what must be success. Beautiful things are good, ugly things are not.
But. If you’re living in Paris, the Eiffel Tower will soon get boring. The idea that you’re drinking coffee near the world’s most romantic steel tower will be lost on you.
I know. I have spent some hours of my trip to France sitting on the grass patch facing the tower. But what happens after that? It’s fascinating. The idea that you’ll go back to real life again is dreadful. But without a much less beautiful real life, that idea of sipping on your cup of fresh brew looking at the iconic frame isn’t as powerful.
When real life is walking past the Eiffel Tower everyday, or even the gorgeous Sagrada Familia, which to me is really much more epic – how dreamlike and romantic is it really?
I’m not sure what I’m rambling on about – maybe I’m just wondering how I can live my life without wants. To be satisfied and content with everything that I already have.
Because recently I’m missing the beauty of nothing.
Doing nothing, expecting nothing, wanting nothing.
That’s a beautiful success story and the most difficult to achieve for me.
Clif and I recently signed up for F45’s trial. And on Friday even though I was le tired from work and it was the first day of my period.. we went for a session.
I forgot to bring my phone, but it was a 7 minute walk and we were late so it didn’t matter. Except that it meant we couldn’t just hop on the bus back home.
This wouldn’t have been so bad. If i wasn’t attacked suddenly by debilitating stomach cramps on the walk back.
I squatted at the walkway outside PLQ clutching my stomach, every time I tried to stand I just felt like keeling over.
I have a solid Asian squat but after F45, nothing is solid anymore and I couldn’t feel my jelly legs.
Every time I stood up I felt like shit because my stomach cramps and sore abs just wanted to curl my body up into a prawn ball.
A slow simple life.
What if that was enough? What if I didn’t have to feel lazy or unaccomplished, unproductive or guilty for living a beautiful, quiet, gentle life?
What if being productive was waking up to see the sunrise and cooking a meal? Could that be okay?
If money wasn’t abundant but adequate for simple living. If restaurants were too far away to go to daily anyway. Maybe that’s okay too.
Side effects:
Today, I feel like giving up.