There are a few things on my \u2018backlog\u2019 that I want to write about\u2014our Okinawa trip, the baseball game, the basketball game, and some fun things we\u2019ve done so far in Taiwan. It\u2019s also been two months since I left Seattle, and almost a month since Kai and I started this adventure. We\u2019ve transitioned from a vacation mindset to something that feels more like real life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The obvious post right now would be something about how fun it\u2019s been and how wonderful this experience is.
Well\u2014that\u2019s not what this post is going to be about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Don\u2019t get me wrong\u2014this trip has been fun, and it has<\/em> been a wonderful experience. There hasn\u2019t been a moment where I caught myself thinking, \u201cThis sucks\u2014I wish I hadn\u2019t done this.\u201d In fact, I highly suspect I\u2019ll 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\u2019m sure that sentiment will come through in a lot of future posts\u2014but this won\u2019t be one of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I guess the basis of this post is more of a \u201cget it out of the way\u201d kind of thing. A (hopefully brief) note about a personal flaw intersecting with my current situation, how that\u2019s showing up in some not-so-great ways\u2014and more importantly\u2014how I\u2019m trying to deal with it. So this isn\u2019t really about<\/em> the trip, but more about what\u2019s happening to me<\/em> during a trip like this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Well\u2014that changed pretty quickly. Now I actually need<\/em> to get some things done in preparation for going back to the U.S. I know myself well enough to realize that if I\u2019m 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\u2019ll be packing up and way behind on stuff back home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To fight that tendency, I\u2019ve been keeping a log (I refuse to call it a journal) of my daily activities\u2014hoping the shame of having to write a three-line day will keep me from having<\/em> a three-line day. Thirty days in, and there have been some wins. I\u2019ve noticed that while some days are still labeled \u201cL,\u201d it\u2019s not as often as I expected. It\u2019s still a struggle to stay motivated sometimes, but the act of organizing is<\/em> helping.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The second part\u2014which is a much harder struggle, and one I\u2019m definitely losing compared to before this trip\u2014is my media consumption.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Back in the U.S., I had a reasonable handle on it. Not in terms of how much<\/em> I consumed (I definitely watched my fair share of YouTube and streaming), but in terms of source<\/em>s which I consumed from. I was really careful about what I read and where I read it from, just to avoid doomscrolling. That\u2019s a real thing for me\u2014going 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\u2019ve done for myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But here in Taiwan, it\u2019s 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\u2019t have to wake up early for work, there\u2019s really nothing stopping me except my own will power (which, let\u2019s be honest, is often lacking).<\/p>\n\n\n\n This actually ties into the book I\u2019m reading\u2014A Brief History of Intelligence<\/em>\u2014which 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\u2019s like trying to fight evolutionary instincts with rationality\u2014you\u2019re going to lose more often than you win. I\u2019m still trying to figure this one out, but so far, not much luck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I don\u2019t really know how to end this, so I\u2019m just going to do it abruptly. There are a few things on my \u2018backlog\u2019 that I want to write about\u2014our Okinawa trip, the baseball game, the basketball game, and some fun things we\u2019ve done so far in Taiwan. It\u2019s also been two months since I left Seattle, and almost a month since Kai and I started this adventure. We\u2019ve transitioned from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":132,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/notblag.pixelatedalien.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/notblag.pixelatedalien.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/notblag.pixelatedalien.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/notblag.pixelatedalien.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/notblag.pixelatedalien.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/notblag.pixelatedalien.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":137,"href":"https:\/\/notblag.pixelatedalien.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133\/revisions\/137"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/notblag.pixelatedalien.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/notblag.pixelatedalien.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/notblag.pixelatedalien.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/notblag.pixelatedalien.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Organization<\/s> Motivation has never been my strongest trait. The original idea behind this trip was for me to relax and not<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The trip\u2019s been great so far\u2014but not without some struggles on my end.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"