I don’t want to do this. But there are lots of things I don’t want to do lately, and that lack of desire has been winning out more than I’m comfortable with. I enjoy writing, and I’ve been enjoying these journals, and I feel better than I did before I wrote them once I’m done, so I’m going to get through this, and if you’re choosing to read it, I hope you do too.
Some things are fun retroactively. Working out is the best example. Running in particular. While I’m doing it, I can’t fuckin’ breathe, my legs hurt, my lungs remind me they aren’t what they used to be, and psychologically, it’s all self-criticisms and negativity, thinking back to when I used to run half marathons and how now I struggle to stumble a couple miles around the block. But as long as I do what I set out to do, even if it’s two miles whereas in the past it might have been ten, I feel good afterward. It’s fun, even. Just, it’s fun in hindsight.
Lately, I’ve been more into what I call “rollercoaster fun.” The sensory, the exciting, the immediate. Things that gratify without delay. Things that make me weaker.
It’s the marshmallow experiment. Give a four-year-old a marshmallow. Tell him if he waits to eat it until you get back, you’ll give him two marshmallows. Leave the room. See if he eats the marshmallow before you get back. Track the story of his life for twenty years.
It’s not an exact science, but the ones who end up in the ditch are typically the ones who couldn’t wait to eat the marshmallow. And lately, I’m all fucking marshmallows.
So instead, this salad of a thing that I don’t want to do.
My recent marshmallowness is a useful metaphor, because it’s making me look like the Michelin man. Past disordered eating and flawed cognitive patterns about food aside, I weigh more than I ever have, and plenty of it is extra. The number is irrelevant and sharing it would probably only make some people feel bad, but the point is that I don’t want to be as large as I am, and I don’t like being out of breath at the top of stairs, and I don’t like yadda, yadda, yadda.
I guess this is what the Stoics were harping about when it comes to discipline. One of the more famous Marcus Aurelius quotes gives a hypothetical, of a guy laying in bed who doesn’t want to get up and start his day yet. The enduring question of the passage is, “were you born to lay in bed? Does the lion lay in the grass and complain that it has to go hunt?” And writing this, I can already anticipate the cringeworthy alt-right bullshit Ben Shapiro clips that could be made with this line of thinking, but if you don’t take it in that direction, it’s useful advice. We all have duties, if not to a job or a passion, then at least to each other, and if not to each other, at least to ourselves. We can’t lay in bed all day, even if we want to. We can’t simply gratify every whim.
Don’t get me wrong, either. Today is a good day. A great one, in fact. It’s beautiful and not too hot, I have a job that is tolerable, I’ve been with Maddy for one year as of today and we are going to go out and celebrate each other later with delicious food that we can afford. I would write about it more but our relationship is a lovely privacy for both of us. On the whole, I am happy.
But there are layers to happiness. I am of the lucky that can honestly say that deep, spiritual level dismay doesn’t get to me these days. The bulk of my unhappiness is superficial and deals with things that are within my realm of control—I could make more money, I could write more, I could work out more, I could go to jiu jitsu more, so this looming belt promotion and shark tank rite of passage wouldn’t feel so fearsome.
And at another layer, one that doesn’t go so deep, part of me is unhappy with myself. I guess that’s nothing new. It’s good for me on some level to be dissatisfied—it’s part of what’s propelled me to achieve the modest things I’ve gotten done so far. Things, the big ones, feel bleak, often—things like wet bulb temperatures and the growing looming horizon haunt of climate change, the abysmal job market, poor health—and they make me feel powerless, which then makes me give away my power by seeking relief in passively harmful indulgence.
So, I’m making changes. I desperately wanted to haunt a bar last night and drink four beers in two hours and try to write lyrics. Instead, I went home and jogged and did some push-ups, and cleaned my room, and played that silly video game from 2007 again while I listened to a podcast. A night that I felt satisfied with.
And this morning I did some more push-ups, and I’ll go for a long walk on lunch, and then Maddy and I will enjoy an ambulatory golden hour.
Pleasure delayed is always greater than immediate pleasure. I just need, as the kids say, to lock in. I heard some quote somewhere last night, scrolling mindlessly at the end of the night, that war is won by people who can fight when they’re tired. That it’s about not cracking under pressure, psychic or otherwise, and remembering who you are and what you can do even when you’re uncomfortable. For the past few months, I guess I’ve forgotten—but I’ll remember soon.
I promise you that.
Eat your broccoli. Do your push-ups. This is all done. Doesn’t that feel better?
matt nilsen 