A good kind of subpar

I feel uninspired, sleep poorly, eat mostly canned beans, yogurt, and a lot of avocado toast. I don’t run much anymore but I walk a lot and work out at outdoor gyms around town. It feels silly to even point this out. Walking is normal bipedal life. Too many people brag about walking a lot. Damn you, hype master Craig Mod. Maybe it's just California? My “big” ILE backpack has been getting a lot of attention lately. Nobody hauls groceries like this around here. I refuse to get a car just for this. The salesdude at the dealership asked me if I had needs or projects. I don’t. The guy looked at me confused and did a therapist-like move, searched for my eyes, locked in, and in his Louisiana accent he hit me with: “don’t put the cart before the horse, this is a shit time to buy a car, especially with no good reason.”

Every single pound of food I ate in the last 4 months I carried on my back over a mile, often uphill. It’s nothing remarkable in the grand scheme of human evolution. Or even my own life. I used to live like this when I landed in San Francisco. I feel somehow fit even though I’m not. It’s fascinatingly pointless to experiment between poor donkey and hipster minimalist. Self-care is not my forte. Foot-soak season isn’t here yet, so I got a haircut.

The barber recommended an undercut because I have a long oblong face. So now I have an undercut. That cleared my ears which have been spending at least 6h cupped in noise cancelling headphones. Less friction. Less sweat. The band sits cushy on the fluff of hair on top. The style has a life of its own. It flexes between techno weirdo and avant-garde. It looked boyish when I got it. In a few days or neglect I dressed it down to something I can bare. Next round I’ll go shorter around the bowl to lean into the edginess.

So now I look like the guys working out in the parks. Rough and not only in a sexy way. Grey sweaty hair. Spaced out and deeply present at the same time. Here, together. Grunting. Few words. The few that get out are acceptably aged bro-y camaraderie. It reminds me of that Ram Dass line: we’re all walking each other home. There’s a unique microbiome of men: Army vets, old timers, student who can’t afford the gym, trades guys, van lifers. The standard equipment is a pair of grip gloves and a water bottle. Shirts optional. You don’t need to say hi either. That contrasts with the fauna at my coworking space. Everything and everyone is neat and performatively functional. We all pay to be here. To preserve a bit of sanity by being around other people doing the same. To mot be stuck at home. I should have signed up long ago. The stupidity of the place is the point. I don’t want to be there for too long. I’m not particularly productive.

Some days I have Japanese trap music playing in my ear from 8am to 8pm. Or boring drum and bass that sets its pace in a few seconds and keeps going for far beyond my attention span. Day-long flow state or depression, I can’t tell. I need deep bass to counter percussive loneliness. My senses love it. Music feeds me these days. But when I turn the engine off and slide in bed, I’m still on. It’s a bummer but I’m a good daydreamer. I was putting myself to sleep like that as a teenager. It’s like I get to pick the movie playing.

My sister got her son diagnosed with ADHD. She definitely has some. I do. My brother is going all in once again, foot on the gas with an empty tank. My mom is always out there on the trail, her bike, or somewhere doing something. “Rest before you’ve earned it” is not my family motto. More like: live as if you already died. I’ll play video games and watch multi-season TV shows when my legs stop carrying me, or if the weather gets really bad. There’s a kind of rage de vivre in the family. Not exactly healthy, not exactly unhealthy either. We just don’t seem particularly interested in stopping. Maybe we're all high on the feeling of resurrection.

I’m writing this because apparently park workouts and walking around air-drumming isn’t how you build a life, which is annoying because it was pretty much my whole plan. Alive enough to swear on my stupid blog. It may not look good, but damn, it feels good. There’s too many contradictions at all levels to keep track of. They don’t feel as such. Gratitude and exhaustion coexist. It’s awesome and devastating.