There are a few things on my ‘backlog’ that I want to write about—our Okinawa trip, the baseball game, the basketball game, and some fun things we’ve done so far in Taiwan. It’s also been two months since I left Seattle, and almost a month since Kai and I started this adventure. We’ve transitioned from a vacation mindset to something that feels more like real life.
The obvious post right now would be something about how fun it’s been and how wonderful this experience is.
Well—that’s not what this post is going to be about.
Don’t get me wrong—this trip has been fun, and it has been a wonderful experience. There hasn’t been a moment where I caught myself thinking, “This sucks—I wish I hadn’t done this.” In fact, I highly suspect I’ll want to do this again with a future Kai. It might not be in Taiwan, but somewhere else we can share another adventure together. I’m sure that sentiment will come through in a lot of future posts—but this won’t be one of them.
I guess the basis of this post is more of a “get it out of the way” kind of thing. A (hopefully brief) note about a personal flaw intersecting with my current situation, how that’s showing up in some not-so-great ways—and more importantly—how I’m trying to deal with it. So this isn’t really about the trip, but more about what’s happening to me during a trip like this.
Organization Motivation has never been my strongest trait. The original idea behind this trip was for me to relax and not feel the need to be motivated to do anything. I could afford to work through my video game backlog, nap in the middle of the day, and just generally not accomplish anything for three months.
Well—that changed pretty quickly. Now I actually need to get some things done in preparation for going back to the U.S. I know myself well enough to realize that if I’m not careful, these three months will completely slip by. Days will blur into each other in a lazy haze, and the next thing I know, I’ll be packing up and way behind on stuff back home.
To fight that tendency, I’ve been keeping a log (I refuse to call it a journal) of my daily activities—hoping the shame of having to write a three-line day will keep me from having a three-line day. Thirty days in, and there have been some wins. I’ve noticed that while some days are still labeled “L,” it’s not as often as I expected. It’s still a struggle to stay motivated sometimes, but the act of organizing is helping.
The second part—which is a much harder struggle, and one I’m definitely losing compared to before this trip—is my media consumption.
Back in the U.S., I had a reasonable handle on it. Not in terms of how much I consumed (I definitely watched my fair share of YouTube and streaming), but in terms of sources which I consumed from. I was really careful about what I read and where I read it from, just to avoid doomscrolling. That’s a real thing for me—going down the Reddit front page rabbit hole can actually impact my mental health, and cutting that and social media channels off has been one of the best things I’ve done for myself.
But here in Taiwan, it’s been hard to keep that in check. There have been nights where I stay up for hours scrolling through random rabbit holes for no good reason. And since I don’t have to wake up early for work, there’s really nothing stopping me except my own will power (which, let’s be honest, is often lacking).
This actually ties into the book I’m reading—A Brief History of Intelligence—which talks about how evolution has made us vulnerable to the exact kind of stimuli that social media and websites use to capture our attention. It’s like trying to fight evolutionary instincts with rationality—you’re going to lose more often than you win. I’m still trying to figure this one out, but so far, not much luck.
I don’t really know how to end this, so I’m just going to do it abruptly.
The trip’s been great so far—but not without some struggles on my end.