logic of difficulty

In an effort to increase productivity and spend my time left on this mortal coil wisely, I’ve been experimenting with making certain things difficult. Not good things, of course, such as ritual, spirituality, creative expression, or spending time with people whose company I enjoy; the things I’m trying to make difficult are detrimental and wasteful activities such as watching internet videos, eating when I’m not hungry, and spending more money than necessary on transportation.

To avoid getting lost down a YouTube rabbit hole, I tether my laptop to the internet via my mobile phone instead of using house WiFi. Due to the limited amount of mobile data my plan provides, watching internet videos is out of the question. When zoning out to the latest trending vidz threatens to eat into my allotment of wireless gigabytes, staying on task and hammering out the paragraphs becomes the path of less resistance.

To avoid stuffing my face between meals, I buy most of my food dry, raw, or in bulk, which means I have to prepare something before it’s ready for consumption. With the exception of the odd carrot or apple, this has allowed me to drastically cut down on spells of random munching, given that I can’t just eat one cookie after the other while standing in front of the kitchen cupboard but have to bake a batch first, from a box.

To avoid wasting time driving around out of laziness or spending money unnecessarily on a gym membership, I bicycle or walk nearly everywhere I go. Bicycling and walking, as well as a daily hatha yoga practice, sets of burpies, and regular disc-golf outings, fulfil most of my upper and lower body workout demands without monetary expenditure. (Plus, these activities contribute little to my overall carbon footprint, which I estimate to be roughly 9 tons of CO2 a year.) Since getting access to a car or a gym is difficult, I resort to the options at my ready and immediate disposal.

By making that which I want to do easy, and that which I want to avoid doing hard, I find myself living a more productive and active life than I ever did watching TV or driving around in a slave’s chariot.

americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan

in Kuala Lumpur

I landed in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, around 9 in the evening. Mine was a short layover, for my next flight left the next day around 11 in the morning. After logging into the airport wireless network I looked at a few maps of the surrounding area, read some city review websites, and decided to ride the train into town instead of sleeping on a bench somewhere in the airport.

I emerged into what looked like a settlement for people from subcontinental India, most of whom had already closed up shop. After familiarizing myself with the landmarks near the station and memorizing the time-schedule for early trains back to the airport, I started walking toward the tallest and brightest thing I could see - the twin Petronas towers. I had neither cell-phone coverage nor a physical map and mainly relied on gut feelings when deciding which way would most quickly help me reach my goal. After a few hours I was close enough to the towers that I could take a full-screen picture of them, two glittering white phalluses that dominated the skyline even from a couple of miles away.

My backpack was getting heavy, my feet were tired, and at that point it was nearly 4 a.m. The walk back seemed far shorter than the walk out, of course, and I took a couple of different streets - just to shake things up. The sun had risen by the time I felt like I was near the train station again, and the buildings I had committed to memory looked far different in the light of day, but I eventually got on a train that took me back to the airport.

The airplane took off and as we were flying over the city I was shocked to see how far I had actually walked during the previous night, covering most of the distance between KL Sentral station (Brickfields) the Bukit Nanas station, near the Petronas towers. Sleep soon beckoned, however, and I gladly slipped into Morpheus’s tender embrace, happy that I had seen a bit of KL, at night.

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥

on BOTG

One of the best ways to visit, I've found, is fully self-powered, with Boots On The Ground. (The term is officially military, which debates and frets over putting BOTG, in places like Lybia, Mali, Taiwan, where costs are increasing and missions drag on.) To explore a city or province or state, leave at home your guidebook and put trust in Fate, for She'll lesson burden and worry and cost, so long as you do not mind getting real lost. To me this is one of the foundation stones, for conquering places like Bangkok or Rome: to blunder and stumble and get turned around yet all the while putting those boots on the ground. I know of no method more fine or complete, than combing the ramparts and alleys and streets, for seeing a region, its intrigues and flavors, for finding small treasures and meeting the neighbors. This past-time is vigorous, healthy, and free, it gets the blood flowing yet shelters the knees, it shows one the flowers and rivers and trees, please come now and join in our splendid BOTG.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥

on charging Pickett

Twice now we have made the Pickett's Charge, once both ways and at night, today in the original direction, once through some patches of poisoned weeds, today walking on a mowed path. We well-fed, well-shod, well-rested modern persons can hardly imagine having to make this walk into volleys of hostile fire, tired from days of marching, and weak from chronic starvation. Hats off to the brave and hardy persons who walked it under orders, through clouds of black and choking smoke, into the bared teeth of their brothers and cousins and friends, they who fought for a cause that was already on its knees, who brought the fight to the bosom of their northern aggressors. Huzzah.

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

on getting fancy

This morning, on the way to anatomy class, I jumped onto a Jersey barrier upon my (loaned) bicycle in an attempt to avoid having to ride in the busy street around a bit of construction blocking the pedestrian path. Immediately upon mounting the concrete structure I lost my balance, fell over onto a spot of muddy grass to the right (i.e. not into vehicular traffic), tore open a finger-knuckle on my right hand, and badly bent the front wheel of the purple-and-blue women's bicycle I have been riding for the past week. Undaunted, I turned around and walked the mangled velocipede back to my hostel, turned back around, and walked the 2.3 miles to class.

Oh the plans I had to repair the front wheel, to tune the spokes by hand, myself, whilst sitting in a nice park and whistling away my sorrows. Anyone who has ever attempted to tune the spokes of a badly-bent bicycle wheel will know how frustrating, infuriating, and all but hopeless it is to try and do this type of work freehand, by eye and feel alone; I spent more than three hours trying to do it myself as well as trying to find a bicycle shop in Houston Texas open past six in the evening, both to no avail. Now, it is after ten p.m., the wheel is still bent (thought not nearly as badly as it was this morning,) I am exhausted in will, spirit, and body, and not only is my time gone but I will be out roughly $35 for a new wheel or a few bucks less for a quick tuning job, adding those to the 3+ hours I already spent (at $20/hr, ), and I'm almost out a c-note with nothing to show for it but my all-too-apparent frustration. One of these times I'll remember to just take the bike to a shop and pay someone else to tune the spokes rather than working myself into a lather trying to do it myself. Oh brother, phew, and mahalo.

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥