I'm back from visiting the family. Thinking back on the year. It
was a challenging one, for sure, but also felt more like "me" than
the previous years.
Being alone feels almost like I am still decompressing after
years of being pushed beyond some limit. Looking back, it feels
like I was mostly decompressing this year, but factually it wasn't
as empty as that makes it sound. I realised that after I signed
up for a yoga class and found that I was actually unable to find
time to go almost each week, having other plans in the evenings.
Strangely it seems my life is busy. It's just different kind of
busy than my life with my ex was.
The other end of the busyness scale is the (lack of) speed I have
invested into my new abode. I have almost literally bought nothing
after the trip to Ikea in the spring when I was moving in. Now I
decided to order a book shelf and a little kitchen table that can
double as a balcony table in the warm season.
It's strange to have money to do such things. After living
with a person addicted to consumerism (among other things) my
spending habits end up saving money each month without me having
to really even try. I just don't opt in to many things by default.
I find myself less spartan actually. I think it was partly due
to having to fight back her lavish style that I was maybe even
more committed to simplicity than I otherwise would have been.
I've spent on things like a music streaming service this year.
After z-lib was taken down, I bought an electronic book with DRM.
Both of these things step over some thriftiness threshold for me,
but it seems like it's fine. I think this must be because I don't
feel like I am just scraping by.
I think the last time I felt this way was when I had my first
summer job and put together the money to buy my first computer.
Money seemed abundant in those days. After that it was never
again, with paying rent, paying school books, being unemployed
etc. It always felt like there was a way to get back to abundance,
but somehow it never materialised. And yeah, now it's here just
by having 10% of the paycheck left after all the monthly expenses.
That ten percent is fleeting, of course. It takes only a mental
health crisis and one can lose such benefits. In any case, it
affords me some leverage to explore what sort of things I would
like to have in my life. These things are mostly about doing, not
having, but still, you need some money to advance up to where you
can start the doing.
Many of my inspirations this year are spin-offs of the
peregrination but in slightly different flavors. I am currently
reading about the haiku poets, and wondering about how to
integrate that into hiking or paddling. The haiku poets were all
about hiking around nature and finding their material there, so
it's not a hard match in that sense. I think it might be hard in
the sense of creating the space for it, along the way. Or maybe
not? Maybe it's the optimal setting. I am imagining spending a
long time in the nature next summer, camping and writing haikus.
Seeing some members of the family after a long time this christmas
was sad in some way. Old people who are talking about themselves
almost like they have a deathwish. Others who would have something
to give to the world before becoming too old, but are kept back by
imaginary "negative people". Then again, others who have some
goals in life even after being retired, keeping themselves exited
about something. It made it clear once again, at least for me, that
surrender is the defeat. People choose to stay put. In the case of
the old people who realistically have less options, well, some can
smile at their descent and others can't.
It is sort of funny though, that I see myself being a part of the
descent already. Not intellectually, or creatively. Not at all.
It just seems that at my age one would have a family and start to
fall down from those busy years. I never intended on having a
family, but it still feels like that cohort is pulling on me,
the ghostly spirit of the peers, to turn down with them.
As a side note, it hit me this year, something I wasn't at all
prepared to notice, that the elderly are becoming fuzzy. Somehow
I had thought of the older people like they are all there, but
just have a difficulty in communicating the all thereness to the
others, but now I see the all there is cracking all over the
place.
Maybe there is some compromise I will have to find for myself with
my future fall. I can't count on staying sharp at my sixties and
seventies, so I have to build up some routine or something while
I am still capable. Something that keeps pushing. Not as a way to
stay alive longer, but to stay lively.
Is there a point of thinking such far off things, I don't know.
I feel I have not accomplished what I am here for. I probably have
the pieces for it mostly in my hands, but I can't see yet what
is it going to be.
