A Day in My Life

I must admit. Despite my efforts to live according to Jordan Peterson’s Twelve Rules for Life, I sometimes slip. For those who may not know, JP is a genius – a professor, psychologist, writer, and lecturer extraordinaire. One of his rules is to clean up your room. Sounds elementary, does it not, old boy? However, it’s packed with profundity. He elaborates. Before you begin trying to change the world (which could potentially make matters only worse), start with the small things, things you can change without potentially harming others.

In other words, dust your furniture before you picket Walmart. Look. I get it. Walmart has either absorbed or bankrupted tons of five and dime stores, forced ma and pa shops to retire early, and killed a bzillion department and variety stores across the country. That’s what the cutthroats call competition. Granted. But Walmart meanwhile pays its employees poorly and cares only about satisfying its shareholders.

Like the banks during the 2008 government bailouts, Walmart is too big to fail now. Yes. Walmart is subsidized by the government. While donating millions to charities to reap the tax deductions, and while guaranteed a safety net in the form of ole Uncle Sam’s ready checkbook backed by the Federal reserve and our tax dollars, Walmart pays its employees what a teen on a scooter would struggle to live on. Many of its employees, who can’t survive on such wages, utilize the government food stamps program they’re eligible for. And don’t get me started on Amazon.

But even if you clean your whole room, move on to your entire apartment or house, spreading that involvement, as JP suggests, to your family, friends, neighborhood, and community, I don’t believe, short of a revolution, we can reduce, much less eliminate, the corruption, kickbacks, and bribery between government and big corporations no matter how many riots or peaceful protests we participate in or sponsor. Call me a fatalist in this one regard, but the swamp is overrun with alligators. And the alligators have bigger guns.

Besides, we’ll always have idiots electing fellow idiots to rule us like tyrants. I try to ignore all that and focus on my fellow man. The individual. The trick is figuring out how to help in a more immediate way without getting arrested. I am a practical anarchist after all.

What keeps my anarchist tendencies subdued and exclusively theoretical, however, is that despite my contempt, nay, my abhorrence, for government, Dennis Prager, who is by no means an anarchist, said something that has never left me. While pointing to his chest: “The problems in this world begin here.”

Of course Mr. Prager wasn’t suggesting that he was personally responsible for all the problems in the world. It’s a metaphorical, symbolic gesture. We, each of us, are the reason for unease, unrest, and the evil, yes, the evil in this world. It’s far more practical, far more productive, though far more difficult, for me to look inward at my own imperfections, my own selfishness, before calling out the sins of others. Nonetheless, it’s the only way civilization will survive.

Jordan Peterson cites a play called “The Cocktail Party” by T.S. Elliot. A woman tells a psychologist about her unhappiness. She tells the shrink she hopes her suffering is her own fault. The therapist asks why. She says because if it’s the world, she’s doomed. She can’t change the world. But she can change herself.

If we extrapolate my vision for the country and follow its inevitable conclusion, it’s the novel Animal Farm all over again. I’d never want to bring about such mayhem, let alone the subsequent return to what we already have in America. “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

Fortunately, I’m happy. Often delighted. Grateful, even. Frequently blissful. Occasionally euphoric. While I’m not entirely content, certainly not always, contentment can be a trap. It can induce apathy, make you soft. Instead, I’m still driven, hungry. Apart from my occupation, I keep myself busy pursuing passion projects, autodidactic causes, even hobbies as if they’re avocations.

Nevertheless, in honor of that personal pledge to myself about improving my own circumstances before demanding change from the rest of the world, this past Veterans Day, I cleaned out my car.

I know. Sounds trivial. And irrelevant. But we must start somewhere. At least a year had elapsed, and the trash had piled all the way from the floorboard to the seats. In the process, I filled up two tall kitchen sized trash bags and found my umbrella!

This ten-minute job gave me time to ponder something C.S. Lewis wrote. That’s right. I’m a walking treasure trove of insight. Step right up, folks! Now citing Incredible Quotes by Great Thinkers. Paraphrasing, and I’ll probably butcher the idea, life should imitate art. In other words, live the best version of your life, live as if your actions are influencing others. Okay. Now I’m just extrapolating Lewis’ idea. Fair enough.

But let’s keep going. What deeds would you perform? What is, after all, art in its purest form? Which actions are most noble? Wouldn’t you pull over to help someone whose car broke down? Would you not hand a homeless person a sandwich? Would you not, when confronted, tell the truth?

With that in mind, I wondered what my life would look like in review over the course of these past, say, five years. What would I confess to my priest? What had I accomplished? I earned and saved some money. Check. I progressed further into my language learning lessons. Check. I severed ties from a friend of over 30 years who during that time had never learned how to be a friend. A painful check. But what did I do beyond setting up a monthly pittance to charity or making a few small donations toward an otherwise free service I already utilize?

Sure. Over the past five years, I lost some weight, read some good books, bought some nicer clothes. And sneakers. Mustn’t forget sneakers. I didn’t sit still, didn’t waste the past five years playing video games. Fine. But how can I not only make my life better but improve the lives of people around me as well? On second thought, I just noticed my vehicle registration sticker has expired.

Speaking of life imitating art, I recently watched my favorite Korean nymph on YouTube (with whom I’m secretly in love) as she figuratively led her subscribers by the hand throughout her vlogging day. First rising from her bed in a cute, apricot onesie, she reminded me, stretching her arms, of flower petals unfolding. After her morning yoga routine, she broke her fast by eating what is fit for only fairies or wood elves. Her walk through a Korean shopping mall, with minimal makeup apart from the smear of violet glitter along her eyelids, inspired awe from the lens.

Call my writing bruised, smug, pretentious, hyperbolic, prose aubergine. I care not. Label me an ingratiating simp with my cloak at the ready should a damsel require this errant knight to facilitate her walk over a water puddle, my lady, but the simile that makes me smile broadest is her as a breathing sculpture of artisanship, pedestal or no.

Whether under the artificial light of the fluorescent bulb or basking in the brilliant sun, a sheen slips in and out of her black hair like the gloss on her matching black leather jacket and jodhpurs. The tender but unflinching eye at home among her plants and paintings, the lean look of confidence in public amid pedestrians and street vendors, she’d be as at home strutting along a fashion runway as seated at the feasting table among the Olympian gods. She, my dear reader, is the epitome of life imitating art.

I recently clicked on her live YouTube stream as she intermittently performed yoga while responding to comments being posted in real time by fellow simps. I took the opportunity to type. “Hey, beautiful! So how many men have proposed to you today?” As she read it aloud, her smile intensified the brightness level of my monitor by two hundred percent. Then she laughed long and softly.

Eventually, she wound down her day in a bath far too censored by bubbles, porcelain, and meticulous editing, but I saw enough to confirm my suspicions. Asian women, unlike Western women, generally don’t deface their flesh with tattoos like a vandal would a wall. The East’s long and rich history is steeped in time-honored traditions, conventions, class, discretion, propriety. Rarely will you find their beautiful skin forever stained with what I pejoratively refer to as body graffiti.

Analyze the following as you see fit, but her YouTube vlog got me thinking about how I’d catalogue my day to my readers exclusively via the printed word. Obviously, the two mediums are wholly different. Nor would my day intrigue the same audience. Nor am I quite as sexy as she. Come to think of it, the whole enterprise would be as droll as watching me brew coffee, which, incidentally, would typify one of my many yawn-inducing activities. That and seated at my desktop to browse the web, read, and write, while listening to music over my Bluetooth, none of which makes for visually inspiring or stimulating content.

Alas. Our interests, the Korean nymph and me, diverge at dawn and wind down at the end of the evening in different hemispheres. Nonetheless, I thought I’d try my hand at chronicling my daily routine for the illumination or amusement of others.

Rushing now. I awake super early, drive to the gym in the dark, spend an hour at a brisk walk on the treadmill with no one there apart from the gym staff, during which I watch – on my phone and with earbuds – Netflix’s Japanese reality show Terrace House with the Japanese subtitles on. This is to improve my listening and reading comprehension of the Japanese language.

I return home just as dawn begins its chase where I shower with Dr. Squatch’s soap (more about this in a future blog post entitled Upgrading One’s Life).

After which I dress in my olive thermals and Pikachu house slippers and brew (you guessed it) a pot of coffee. Then I lie abed, sometimes with my miniature dry board and a marker, and go over one or two of my three language-learning apps (LingoDeer, Doulingo, Busuu) on my phone, studying various scripts or alphabets or grammar lessons – Korean, Japanese, Spanish, Mandarin, even a bit of French if I’m feeling frisky. On rare occasion, Latin.

No. I’m not a polyglot. No. I’m not fluent. Just intrigued, in some sense inextricably so. In another sense, my study is entirely calculated. By that I mean I’ve discovered that such study engenders greater insight into grammar and diction. Consider, if you’re taught a different way to conjugate (or agglutinate) a verb, or a new way to express an idea with entirely different symbols or word arrangement, you gain not only a newfound appreciation for your native language but an insight into how language best functions and how ideas are most effectively conveyed. You thereby gain a deeper understanding of practical communication, which, in turn, lends itself to better writing. That’s my working theory anyway.

After either reading from one of half a dozen books on my Kindle app while listening to music on either Spotify or Pandora, or working on a chapter for my new manuscript, I eventually dress to run a few errands.

On my way to buy more sneakers, it dawns on me that I haven’t had a massage in twelve years. I head over to a massage therapy spa in town and approach the receptionist. “Hi there.”

She’s a young woman and, judging from the naked left hand, single. Her voice is almost inaudible. “What can we do for you?”

I tell her I’d like to set up an appointment for a massage, but I stipulate, “Can I ask a huge favor, though?”

She produces a lilting, staccato-like hum; a nondescript interrogative, as if she can’t decide whether to unseal her lips to say, “Huh?”

“It’s just that I haven’t had a massage in ages. I don’t really know the protocols. Is it too much to ask that my masseuse not be a man?”

She looks nonplussed. “Well, we usually pair female associates with female clients, but I can ask. Is there any particular reason?”    

“I just don’t want a man touching me.”

“I see.”

“I’m a little homophobic.”

She tilts her head and narrows her brows. “A little? But isn’t it either one or the other? I mean, you either are or you aren’t, right?”

“Not for me. I’m probably about thirty-five percent homophobic, to be fair.”

She grins. “Thirty-five percent? How do you figure that?”

“Well, I recently, accidentally, came across a photo of two men kissing. They were good looking men, too. But I was instantly nauseated. I nearly lost my lunch. It’s a gut reaction. I can’t help it.”

Now the receptionist is smiling.

“Whereas watching two or more women – being intimate with one another is – what’s the word?”

The receptionist was sitting forward with her elbows on the desk and her chin on her palms. “Exciting?”

I couldn’t help but smile. “That’s a safer adjective than the one I was going to use, yes.”

At a client’s warehouse, I’m approached by a gentleman who knows my boss. He asks me to give his regards and we get to talking. The gentleman’s arthritis recently flared again, and I thought, “Health? The topic is health? This is down there with mortgages and sports and whether it looks like rain. Beam me up, Scotty!” Instead, I expressed what I thought was an appropriate level of concern for a mere acquaintance who wants to get the hell out of there.

I suddenly, not for the first time, wished I lived in a world with more interesting people, those who enjoyed talking about important stuff. Ideas about truth and honor and God and literature and psychology and music and languages. But I’m stuck in a world with people who rarely deal in the abstract, who are uncomfortable conceptualizing things, who can’t see beyond their immediate surrounds. They’re far more at home with the tangible, the tactile, physical, material world. Materialists! Can’t stand them.

Later that afternoon, at another warehouse of another of our clients, I say hello to a few of the employees. They’re all guys. One asks me whether I’ve seen any good movies at the theatre now that they’re reopening. I take the opportunity to tell a perverse joke I heard and reworked from a highly offensive British comedian. I enjoy amusing and sometimes even shocking acquaintances if I can get away with it. “Not really,” I say. “I quit going to the cinema long before the whole COVID thing.”

“Oh, yeah?”

I assume a serious expression. “The last time I went to see a movie was with my sister. I can’t remember the name of the movie. But the gratuitous sex was out of control. Eventually, everyone in the theatre had to turn around and tell my sister and me to stop.”

Mark Twain called this grotesque humor, laughing at what gives us unease, at what we feel guilty laughing about. The employee’s reaction encapsulated this conflict. Brows shaped into a V. Knees bent so that he partly crouched. The whites of his eyes overly exposed. A forearm over his mouth to muffle the laughter. Like Dracula without the cape in the throes of hysterics. Not as satisfying from my end as watching a woman laugh, especially when she throws back her head as if in ecstasy. But that’s probably any hetero male, amateur comedian’s secret desire.

After work, for the twenty minutes I spend eating dinner at the dinner table, I might watch twenty minutes of YouTube on my laptop. Once I plunge the dishes into the hot water in the sink and notice my windows darkening, I might write a few hundred words toward a blog post I’m drafting, such as this one, for example, until my mental energy wanes. Then I’ll brush my teeth and set my laptop on my bed to play an ASMR video on YouTube quietly in the background while I roll over and fall asleep.

And this, gentle reader, is where we close out A Day in My Life. Me unconsciously shaping translucent Zzz to drift upwards and be minced into confetti by the ceiling fan. The laptop plays on its back behind me. The soothing whisper of some sweet young woman purrs as she pretends to apply shaving cream to the bottom half of the camera lens. This no doubt represents my beard in this barber shop role play point of view scenario, a scenario I neither participate in nor witness but whose audio I have vaguely incorporated into my dream.

Yet at some point the barber dissolves, and the gorgeous Korean nymph I secretly love appears. Her face leans in inches from mine. She grins playfully, and I see a flash of metal. She sports a thin, unobtrusive ring running parallel to the natural grooves of her bottom lip. As she speaks, the metal kisses her top lip, just below what the anatomically savvy call Cupid’s bow. Over and over, she repeats, again and again, one of the few phrases, slowly and softly, I know in Korean: “안녕히 주무세요,” (annyeonghi jumuseyo; good night).