Sleep

Stereotypes are generally pretty bad. Like universally I would say it's not very good to promote stereotypes because they are usually racist or sexist or otherwise pretty evil. That being said, today I have been thinking about a new stereotype that I am surprised doesn't already exist. My stereotype is that of the late riser. The opposite of the early bird. I genuinely think that there needs to be a lot more societal pressure to encourage healthy sleep habits. I say this as someone who has for my entire life struggled with sleep. For literally as long as I can remember I have never been a morning person. This is a cutesy label I suppose that normalizes and excuses a bad habit. Then as soon as I had the agency to set my own bedtime things got really bad and for the most part have never gotten better. I don't think I have maintained a consistent, eight hours of sleep per night sleep schedule since maybe grade 9? Even while working a full time job. At one of my jobs I was actually able to graph my clock in times (see below). Ideally it would be a flat line but no, not for me. For me I have a consistent almost perfectly linear line. Despite this utter failure to show up to work reliably, nobody ever made any serious comment on it. So that being said I think this qualifies me to speak on the topic of bad sleep schedules.

There are a lot of behaviours that society has deemed unacceptable. If you have bad hygiene for example, people might not say anything to your face but you will be ridiculed for it. Despite a lot of recent efforts the same is true for problems with addiction, homelessness, teen pregnancy, etc. There is stigma, shame, and just general negativity associated with these things, and I will not go into whether or not it is valid. I think the reason society rejects these things is that they place a lot of strain on other people. Families, relationships, employers, are all affected by the "failures" of an individual. This is where poor sleep habits differ. Typically poor sleep habits exclusively impact the individual. It kind of puts into perspective that the reason people are so opposed to the other behaviours mentioned is not out of care for another person, but instead out of selfishness. Maybe this is obvious. A weird quirk of poor sleep habits is that, despite their destructive impacts, they get glorified in a lot of situations. Think of the start up founder, the office worker that goes above and beyond. On the other side of the spectrum, the partier, or rave goer. In these contexts being up late, getting few hours of sleep is a badge of honour. In my own experience I have never tried to hide my poor sleep schedule. Being a university student, I think this is probably the most accepted environment for this kind of thing. Most people are either in the same position or are willing to laugh without much serious thought when I joke about my situation.

I want to feel shame. Society has made a very strong effort to ensure that no one feels ashamed over poor habits or traits and yeah in most of those situations I agree. But not this. It feels backwards and almost like an obsolete way of thinking but I really do think people like me deserve to be ostricized for this. If I was met with pure, vitriolic digust, maybe I would change. Is external motivation what's missing? Lets be clear I have a lot of personal motivation to clean up my act. It's not a very pleasent feeling to wake up and the sun has already set. I cannot count the amount of classes I have slept through. When I have any kind of appointment or exam or lab I need to pray that I can flip my sleep schedule around on a whim. It's not just about waking up late either, you can wake up early and still have horrible sleep habits. Going to work on 4 hours of sleep is a miserable feeling. All of this is horrible and should be reason enough to fix things but clearly for me it isn't. I want to face social consequences. I want 1920s political satire cartoon caricitures of the late riser. It needs to be disgusting, a complete slob. I don't want fairness or accuracy, I want motivation.

There definitely are extenuating circumstances with this topic and I understand this. Those are not what I'm referring to. If you work a night shift this is completely acceptable. If you have actual medical conditions affecting your sleep of course I am not advocating for your ridicule. This is meant to target the individual who stays up late with no purpose beyond scrolling, or watching youtube, or playing videogames, or whatever other thing it may be. This kind of person should be tarred and feathered in the street.

New Year New Stuff I Guess

Alright this one is going to be a lot less focused on one singular topic, the topic for this one is topics. I have not updated this website in almost 3 weeks which is much worse considering I have effectively had no responsibilities for the past 2 weeks. It was Christmas, I finished exams and everything and the only thing I feel like I really did was spend one day recording a 1-minute cover of a song. This is ok though I guess. I would have liked to do a lot more, specifically play the drums more but it is increasingly hard to do that with my entire family in the house. I yearn so badly for my own drumming space (see What is a Home post). Anyway some things that have been on my mind as of late. Seriously considering getting an e-reader. I don't even read books, I think after the iPod and PSP I'm just addicted to buying junk. Although maybe I would read more if I had an e-reader... I already pirate all my media, maybe that's what's holding me back with books. I could always read PDFs on my computer but that's stupid I want a little device with a quaint e-ink screen to lull me to sleep (it is 2:42am as I write this). So yeah e-reader is on my radar. I'm looking at older Sony ones that have no wi-fi connectivity and no touch screen. Ok next up, I have found a new niche business idea that I would like to pursue. Add this to the list of things I want to do with my life. I almost don't even want to say what it is because there's only three companies in Canada that do it and I don't want to create more competition for myself. Ok fine. Historical Windows. Yeah it sounds boring and stupid, you (the reader) probably wouldn't even like it. I have this weird fixation with historical carpentry and I think a lot of it is just that I want to have a cool ornate house with lots of fancy millwork. Back to windows though, from what I can tell there is a serious need for historical wood framed windows and something called a sash. People that live in historical or heritage homes need to buy windows that are historically accurate I believe. Same for businesses. Institutions like universities too. And of course regular people that want nicer looking windows. Next on the list. Treeplanting. I'm starting to sort out what my year could look like. This is much more manageable than trying to figure out what the rest of my life will look like. I applied to a fulltime new-grad engineering government job and it would be great if I got that... but... but I think I want to spend 2 months in the British Colombia wilderness planting trees for 11 hours a day instead. I feel like anyone that goes on to do anything worthwhile has some kind of journey. Maybe this could be the start of that for me. I've been reading a lot about it, really I need to start applying to jobs right now. Anyway I think it would be really cool to do that, then spend the second half of the summer just hanging out in BC. Ok another thing that sorta ties back into the Treeplanting thing possibly. I feel like my free time in the bush camp would be a really good opportunity to read and learn stuff. Something I really need to learn and actually understand is music theory. I have been doing instruments for 6 years and I cannot read sheet music. I do not know the circle of fifths. I do not know what different modes are. I think I need to just get a big book that explains all this stuff and if I use whatever free time I have to read it, I fear I may actually learn something. Alright so onto life after treeplanting. Presumably I will be done school so it's not like I have anything I need to be doing. Sometime in the fall I think I want to do some kind of Europe trip. I kinda just thought of this today so I'm not really sure where I would go or for how long but it would be cool to go to a lot of places. Lastly, I have just consulted my notes app on my phone and it says "Watch Sopranos". I will do this.

My Future

I do not have an addictive personality. I've known this. I've never had any problems with substances or become reliant on anything like that. What I do have, which I have only just put to words, is an obsessive personality. I think I have a tendency to obsess over things in a way that you wouldn't consider normal, but also not an addiction. One example of this is my keen obsession with my own future. I think it makes sense to be interested in your own future. It feels pretty reasonable to me, but then I often see people that make me think it's not such a universal thing. I guess this obsession has been ramping up as I get closer and closer to graduating. Spiraling isn't the right word because I don't feel negative about anything, but something about the rate that I am coming up with new dreams and aspirations does feel at least a little bit manic. I don't see this as a bad thing. I would rather pursue any of these weird lifestyles/pathways than end up working in an office for the next 30 years. I think that's the only outcome I would consider failure. I think it's easy to disregard this kind of thinking as naive and immature but I don't think I'm stupid. I feel like I am about to get off this train that left the station literally the moment I was born. I have had no ability to change course or even get off but now after 22 years I'm reaching the first stop. I could stay on board and get the corporate job and get married and buy a house and all the things that everyone else would like to see me do for their own weird sense of pride, but I want to get off the train. I want to stretch my legs and breathe fresh air. There is no certainty getting off the train but there is agency and there is the ability to live a life by me for me. I cannot do everything I want to do. The best I can hope for is that the things I decide to do provide me with fulfillment, and if they don't, at least allow me to move on to try the next thing. I do not judge anyone for staying on the train, a sentiment which does not feel mutual. I can only assume this reaction is an expression of jealousy or admiration. They just can't make sense of it because it goes against all the principles taught on the train. It does feel very strange to me, the sort of unspoken rigidity of western corporate life. There's no way all of these people want the same thing out of life. And there's even less way that the thing they want is a 60 hour work week in an office doing work that provides no tangible benefit to anyone. I think that this, along with having kids, for a lot of people represents a failure to achieve individual fulfillment. Obviously I am not saying everyone that has a job and has kids has failed in life, but I do think it represents a lot of people. What I'm getting at is that instead of trying to achieve things that come from within, they pursue externally motivated goals. Goals constructed by the western neoliberal society we live in. Metrics by which they can comfortably consider their life a success. Money, property, marriage, kids. Just ignore the wife that resents him and the kids that hate them both. He was never able to figure out what mattered to him, but he can still sleep soundly at night. His life was a success. This was the trains destination.

TAGABOW Concert

I'm writing this at 3:58AM. Tonight I travelled a cumulative 7 hours to Toronto and back. Today began at about 3:00pm when I woke up and checked googled maps to see how I'd be getting to the venue. No trains running on lakeshore west today... After eating 6 slices of Little Caesars stuffed crust pepperoni pizza, I was out the door. One of my friends would be joining me on this trek. It took us 4 hours and 3 different transit services to get there. The first thing we did after getting in was look at the merch table. I've been really good about not buying any clothes in the last few months so I decided to splurge. This is definitely the right word considering one t-shirt was $50. There were about 5 different options to pick from and I chose the first one that jumped out to me. However in hindsight there were a couple different options I maybe should've considered instead. I got some raspberry sour at the bar and then they started letting everyone into the actual venue towards the back of the building. TAGABOW (They are Gutting a Body of Water) typically play in the middle of the room, not on the stage. I was excited to see if they would do this at this venue. I've been here before and it's a pretty small room so I wasn't sure if it would happen. We walked into the sparsely filled room and sure enough a makeshift stage was built in the middle of the room, holding a drumset and mic stands. To be honest I wasn't sure if there were going to be any openers but nevertheless, I told my friend that we should stay near the middle stage, as opposed to the one at the back of the room. After a bit of a wait the first band got on the back stage. They were called Snoozer and they weren't really anything that special. They had one song that opened with a harmonics-y riff which sounded cool. Otherwise they were a pretty typical shoegaze alt-rock kinda thing with songs that didn't really captivate me. It felt like a lot of the time their songs were one new chord or bass note change away from being really cool but that just never came. Second opener was called Hooky. Initially I thought they were really cool sounding. Live guitarist/autotuned (non-derogatory) vocalist, with a live dj that was doing a lot of super cool stuff that I don't really know how to explain. Unfortunately every song they played ended up sounding the exact same. The gimmick grew stale. I did actually check them out on Spotify and they genuinely sound really good on there. I think 2 people is just not enough to do their songs justice in a live setting. Ok so then TAGABOW gets on stage. Keep in mind I am literally as close as you can possibly be (I'm lying there was a girl who was like 5'0 in front of me but practically speaking nothing was between me and Doug). The band was genuinely within arms reach. So then they started playing aaaaaand nevermind someone passed out as soon as they started. So then they started playing for real this time. Save for a few technical issues that Doug seemed pretty frustrated by, it was perfect. They played all the songs that I could've ever asked to hear live. For some reason I seemingly forgot how much I loved this band until they started playing. I've been into them for a couple years but last year I really went heavy on Destiny XL. Hearing them play Violence I, two feet from my face really exemplified how meaningful this music has been for me. To top it off, the last song they played (no encore btw) was one that I specificly told my friend I really wanted to hear. The Chase. It's my favourite song off their new album Lotto and it was so sick to hear live. Genuinely the worst part of this show was that it had to end. I seriously could have stood there and listened to their entire discograpy. Instead of that, we walked out of the venue and began our 3 hour trek home. Overall, extremely good concert that more than made up for the commute.

What is a Home?

Recently I went to my parents house for the weekend. One night while I was there I had a conversation with my mom. I'm not sure how the topic came up but we ended up talking about the kinds of houses that we would want to live in. We then spent the next hour looking at real estate listings all over Ontario, which is a hobby we share. After this I went to the basement where I continued thinking about what my dream house would look like. Frustratingly, my dream house is not a house that gets built anymore, depsite being ubiquitous in the past century. I want brick exterior walls, wood panelling. Ornate (relatively speaking) interior finishes and millwork, etc. These houses exist of course, just at a price point that seems exceptionally far beyond anything I could afford in my lifetime. One possible solution I thought of was to build a house myself. Next thing I know, I was watching videos explaining tudor wood panels, historical wood carving, and deciphering the "narrative" of a home. It seemed incredibly diffcult, but despite this I could not shake the thought that if it was possible for someone to build a house 200 years ago, why shouldn't it be for me? At this point I started thinking about what a house meant to me. Afterall building a house using historial methods seems very extreme. I think the predominant societal view now is that the house is a financial investment. One that does not (or at least should not) depreciate in value. I think this is completely insane and delusional. So given that I do not agree with this investment view, what does a house mean to me? I think for generations far older than myself, a house was viewed as a first step towards accomplishing subsequent milestones in life. Things like marriage, and kids. The house served as a space for building a family. While I think this is a valid view, I am not at a point in my life where I am trying to build a family. There are also many people that never aspire for this, yet the home is still important to them. After a little bit of reflecting this is what I realized. There's a lot of public discourse regarding a decline of third spaces, I'm sure we've all heard about this. I think what's been happening at the same time is a decline in the quality of first spaces. If a third space is where one can explore the world externally, the first space is where one can explore within. This internal exploration can take many forms. Something as simple as decoration is in my opinion very important to the individual. Decoration can provide connection between the world and the self. Additionally, I feel that hobbies provide significant value to my life. I have personally always been very into creative hobbies where I get to make things. A frequent barrier I have encountered is that sometimes these things are loud, or they take up lots of space, or are otherwise deemed disturbances. Without a private space that I am truly free to customize, my interest, hobbies, passions, the things that matter the most to me, far more than a career, become limited. These limitations on my hobbies by extension become limitations on my expression of self. Today I watched a video of an 87 year old artist showing his studio space where he has lived for 58 years. He never had a wife, he never had kids, but what he did have was a space that he owned, a space that he valued for the freedom it provided, and for the expression it allowed. I think on some level the soul demands a space to grow, and a space to express said growth. This is what a home means to me.

Relationship with Technology

This topic is consuming me at the moment. I made this website as a reaction to my own dissatifaction with the way information is circulated now. I admittedly have some pretty radical views regarding the ownership of the digital world but I'm going to tone it down for this post. Social media as it exists now is pretty much one of the most harmful psychological weapons in all of human history. I think what I find very upsetting about this is that most people understand this but accept it with an apathetic malaise. I think the tipping point for me was learning that doomscrolling is causing actual real observable changes to brain function. My personal view is that funny video feed is not worth permanent brain damage. On Halloween of this year I deleted TikTok and Instagram from my phone. In my experience most people are extremely opposed to doing this. What I have found so far is that we make it appear much more difficult in our heads. I have not redownloaded either of those apps. What I did do instead however, was develop an extreme reliance on the YouTube app. The weeks following my deletion of TikTok and Instagram, saw my phone screentime jump back up solely due to YouTube. Once again, in my head the idea of deleting YouTube seemed to be an impossible task. I made justifications that watching longer form videos was at least an improvement over short form content. Ironically it ended up being a YouTube video that gave me the will to "Dumbify" my iPhone. The process for this essentially just involves deleting every app you can, and removing almost any app you can't delete, from the homepage. I also set my phone screen to black and white. I did all of this about 5 days ago and it has been interesting to observe the ways that I am adapting or rather, coping. I still use my phone before bed, only now it is texting or reading Wikipedia pages. I feel like I am using my laptop more as well. I still watch YouTube, albeit I have downloaded browser extensions to make it less convenient. Still I feel like these are only marginal improvements. If anything, this process has revealed how greatly my life revolves around technology. I am effectively playing Whack-A-Mole with different platforms and the methods I use to access them. I still feel like an addict.

Relationship with Technology II

In my dissatisfaction with the current state of things, I started looking to past technologies. Though the belief that consumer technology is harmful has existed forever, it feels that right now the association of techology with evil is greater than ever before. Really what I'm getting at here is I bought an iPod. I actually did this a couple years ago, but my interest in it became renewed after deleting social media. I ordered a lot of parts off of AliExpress and when they all arrived I managed to upgrade the battery, and the storage. I've slowly been acquiring a digital library of music, locally on my computer as MP3s, rather than streamed playlists. I am honestly really happy with it and I feel like this has inspired my next purchase. As part of dumbifying my iPhone, I deleted all my games. Not that I played many games on my phone to begin with. Anyway, to address this mobile gaming shaped hole in my heart, I ordered a Sony PSP from Japan. Sidenote: I have become a sucker for Ebay auctions. Ebay auctions and AliExpress are an extremely potent combo. So yes, I again ordered several parts off of AliExpress to upgrade the device, and address some flaws with it. Currently I am waiting for everything to arrive but I am excited for this. Now you may think "What's the point of replacing all of the functions of your phone with separate devices that do the same thing?". The following may sound stupid, but it's because using these extra devices makes it less convenient. Less convenient to play games, less convenient to listen to music. The same reason I deleted YouTube from my phone, only to use it on my laptop. You may be thinking "but listening to music is not bad for you". I agree to an extent. However when it becomes a habit, or something we stop thinking about, I fear that it has a similar effect to mindless scrolling. The purpose of making these things slightly less convenient, is to promote intentionality with how I spend my time, or even how my brain activity is allocated. I would rather be someone that can go about their day just fine without music, than be someone that needs a constant stream of stimulating music to make it through the day.