SEMI-HIPPY ALERT: CONTENT INCLUDES TALK OF "FINDING ONESELF"
I am semi drunk on Pisco wine, Lucky cigarettes and life and have decided that writing a "blawg" post is absolutely necessary. This blog post will (probably) be about being in your thirties and also about "finding yourself", but it might also just be about how the English girl in my dorm room is mildly attractive and how I'm becoming increasingly attracted to girls with Chilean accents. Though tonight I talked to an Argentinian girl and found myself more or less enamored as well. So there's that.
Soooooooo supposedly we're all supposed to find ourselves at some point. Unless you live outside of a 50 miles radius of a major city, in which case you find yourself when you're 14 and become a farmer and never look back and live happily ever after. But for the rest of us we have to go through this arduous process of self-identification, and I think I find myself fully living that process right now. It probably has to do with having zero money and having taken several long rides with truck drivers in the last few days. And also with drinking wine, cooking garlic over a low flame, and watching Hebrew movies dubbed into English. There are so many factors I'm not going to try to get to the root of it, but the important part is that I'm going through it, which is the important part (errrrr).
The question is: What the fuck? Shouldn't I have embarked on this journey like 7 years ago? Why am I just going through this now? I feel like I may have been cheated out of a few years, but I also feel extremely fortunate that this is happening now and not a minute later. You see, my twenties were interesting. I consumed gross amounts of vodka and spent large amounts of time pining over girls I had talked to once or who I had never talked to at all. I traveled quite a bit, I spent money poorly, but I do not regret it. I feel like if you have the opportunity to live your twenties like that, you probably should. And like I said, I don't regret it. I'm pretty sure I don't regret it.
But now I'm 30. It's supposedly time to grow up. And I've figured out growing up means one things and one thing only: discipline. Discipline has always been a little bit of a tough one for me. Which is to say, I'm not disciplined. Granted, I can be disciplined, but it usually has to involve someone breathing over my shoulder or a classroom full of students I absolutely can't let down. Self discipline is what has proven difficult.
But with self discipline comes gratitude. With self discipline comes delayed gratification, and delayed gratification is what (I think) has the potential to make you extremely happy. You will be happier if you don't buy the pack of Skittles than if you do. You will be happier if you don't eat the whole chocolate bar. You will be happier, in short, if you deprive yourself in search of a greater good, in search of a good that actually means something for the longer term and that has the potential to make you feel good for a longer period of time. In other words, grow a beard, become a hermit, and possibly become a shepherd. If you don't find yourself in the command of a moderately large herd of goats in the next few years, you can't ever really find yourself. At least I think that might be true for me.
So my current goal is to become a bit more disciplined. I have been doing that lately by forcing it upon myself by being broke. It's easy to be disciplined when you have no other option. It's easy to not buy the candy bar when....you have no money. But it's something I need to really learn, to really ingrain. I can't just do it now when I have no money and then as soon as I have money go out and buy a bottle of coca cola and a snickers bar and smoke cigarettes until my lungs burst. It's so easy for me to just say "fuck it" and do what feels good in the moment. And I feel like there's a place for that, I really do. But I feel like there's a much bigger place for discipline, and that is something I desperately want to learn. Realizing this has made me think I might be finding myself, which has made me thinking I might be becoming a hippy, which has made me sort of loathe myself but has mostly just made me content with the fact that I've been wearing the same boxers for the last three days. Because wearing the same boxers for three days in a row, that's discipline. That's growing up. That's.....well it's mostly just disgusting.
--Wetzler
I am semi drunk on Pisco wine, Lucky cigarettes and life and have decided that writing a "blawg" post is absolutely necessary. This blog post will (probably) be about being in your thirties and also about "finding yourself", but it might also just be about how the English girl in my dorm room is mildly attractive and how I'm becoming increasingly attracted to girls with Chilean accents. Though tonight I talked to an Argentinian girl and found myself more or less enamored as well. So there's that.
Soooooooo supposedly we're all supposed to find ourselves at some point. Unless you live outside of a 50 miles radius of a major city, in which case you find yourself when you're 14 and become a farmer and never look back and live happily ever after. But for the rest of us we have to go through this arduous process of self-identification, and I think I find myself fully living that process right now. It probably has to do with having zero money and having taken several long rides with truck drivers in the last few days. And also with drinking wine, cooking garlic over a low flame, and watching Hebrew movies dubbed into English. There are so many factors I'm not going to try to get to the root of it, but the important part is that I'm going through it, which is the important part (errrrr).
The question is: What the fuck? Shouldn't I have embarked on this journey like 7 years ago? Why am I just going through this now? I feel like I may have been cheated out of a few years, but I also feel extremely fortunate that this is happening now and not a minute later. You see, my twenties were interesting. I consumed gross amounts of vodka and spent large amounts of time pining over girls I had talked to once or who I had never talked to at all. I traveled quite a bit, I spent money poorly, but I do not regret it. I feel like if you have the opportunity to live your twenties like that, you probably should. And like I said, I don't regret it. I'm pretty sure I don't regret it.
But now I'm 30. It's supposedly time to grow up. And I've figured out growing up means one things and one thing only: discipline. Discipline has always been a little bit of a tough one for me. Which is to say, I'm not disciplined. Granted, I can be disciplined, but it usually has to involve someone breathing over my shoulder or a classroom full of students I absolutely can't let down. Self discipline is what has proven difficult.
But with self discipline comes gratitude. With self discipline comes delayed gratification, and delayed gratification is what (I think) has the potential to make you extremely happy. You will be happier if you don't buy the pack of Skittles than if you do. You will be happier if you don't eat the whole chocolate bar. You will be happier, in short, if you deprive yourself in search of a greater good, in search of a good that actually means something for the longer term and that has the potential to make you feel good for a longer period of time. In other words, grow a beard, become a hermit, and possibly become a shepherd. If you don't find yourself in the command of a moderately large herd of goats in the next few years, you can't ever really find yourself. At least I think that might be true for me.
So my current goal is to become a bit more disciplined. I have been doing that lately by forcing it upon myself by being broke. It's easy to be disciplined when you have no other option. It's easy to not buy the candy bar when....you have no money. But it's something I need to really learn, to really ingrain. I can't just do it now when I have no money and then as soon as I have money go out and buy a bottle of coca cola and a snickers bar and smoke cigarettes until my lungs burst. It's so easy for me to just say "fuck it" and do what feels good in the moment. And I feel like there's a place for that, I really do. But I feel like there's a much bigger place for discipline, and that is something I desperately want to learn. Realizing this has made me think I might be finding myself, which has made me thinking I might be becoming a hippy, which has made me sort of loathe myself but has mostly just made me content with the fact that I've been wearing the same boxers for the last three days. Because wearing the same boxers for three days in a row, that's discipline. That's growing up. That's.....well it's mostly just disgusting.
--Wetzler
your blog inputs make my day
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you can be entertained by my words of anti-wisdom. How's tinder chick? How's elena? Claudia? The new apartment??????
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