Thoughts about this one life we get and how I want to spend it

This first thing that comes to mind is that I’m not spending my one life on this earth eating protein powder. It’s disgusting. 

Listen, I know the benefits of eating protein. Especially as a woman probably entering perimenopause soonish, which is a word I first heard two years ago and have heard everyday since. I’m sure I could find a better tasting protein powder too. I could probably go through a whole thing, a decision matrix until I find the perfect protein powder. But I don’t want to spend the time or money it’ll take for that. Again, just the one life. 

I’m not saying every moment we have needs to be optimized for maximum life-joy or whatever. This is not a life-maxx situation. I don’t want to sit in dentist waiting rooms or waste time in other ways, but I will. Time slips through our fingers. It’s part of the whole game. 

I’m just hoping to - planning to, maybe - stop giving away pieces of my soul, in the form of my attention, to stuff I find stupid. Don’t try to sell me supplements. Don’t try to convince me I need any more daily routines when aging is just going to happen.

A few days ago, I went to a dance party in Chicago. It’s only for women or those presenting as female, and it goes from 6pm-10pm. The tagline is “A dance party for women who have shit to do in the morning,” and it’s the greatest thing ever. I danced to music from the 80s, 90s, and 00s for 3+ hours. The next day, I was sore as hell and my knee was swollen. It was totally worth it. Net positive choice.

I was sitting in the waiting area at my son’s piano lesson, and I was struck by how much time I spend waiting at stuff. It’s the lot of a parent. We take our kids to stuff and wait while they do the thing. I tend to use the time to read or sometimes write, as did in that instance. Sometimes the activities allow for chatting with other parents, which is generally my preference since I work from home in my basement cave. My extrovert brain has gotten so starved by this that I might just be an introvert now. Can that happen? Seems like it’s happening. 

Waiting for my kids to do activities is not something that will change any time soon, but I love that they want to do these things and wouldn’t change it. What I do want to change is my own internal sense that I need to optimize my time, like there’s a right choice with what I do with those minutes or hours spent waiting. I criticize myself when I spend the time scrolling versus doing something “useful” because I do a lot of self-judgment. Maybe you know what I mean. It’s as if there’s an external metric of right and wrong when it comes to the little choices I make everyday. As if there’s a perfect set of choices, and I need to get them all right to have a successful day. Some days are worse than others. 

I think sometimes, making choices in the moment is difficult because it is human nature to look for patterns. We wonder if this current choice is the best given the other choices we’ve already made or the choices we already know we’re going to have to face later. It’s like there are levels of self-awareness. Let’s see if I can explain this. There’s living in the moment, making choices based upon what one wants to do right then, based upon how one feels at that time. Then there’s a second level that pulls back from the moment-by-moment decision making and thinks about the context. It’s the level that goes, “If I do this now, it will affect this decision in this way later,” or, “it’ll affect the rest of the family in this way.” Then there’s a level that pulls back even further that says, “this is the type of  life I want to live,” and smaller decisions either fall into place or don’t warrant stress or don’t get made. 

I live in that second level, the one that’s always plotting the next decision while making the present one. I’ve talked about this before, about trying to do what I want when I want to, but it’s difficult for me, mainly because if I did what I wanted all the time, I would not go to piano lessons and would spend money on way dumber stuff. As in all things, there needs to be a balance. I’m aiming more for the “this is the type of life I want to live” mode, hence the excising of protein powder. I should take instagram off my phone again too, but I think we all know that lasts a couple of days at best. 

Everyday is made up of thousands of choices. I think this is why I love a plan so much. Each choice feels like a weight. “Should do” versus “want to,” and having to choose in the moment constantly is overwhelming. An unseen force - parental guilt, societal expectation, internal anxiety - weights the “shoulds” a little more heavily. I'm going to choose to relinquish some of that weight. It will be on a choice by choice basis, and I will fail a lot. But this is the time we have here. I want it to be mine.