Partner asked me today if I wanted to do a one-person show. We had just watched a beautiful one-person show about ghosts and loss and intergenerational lessons. Partner asked me over a Georgian cheese boat: “Does seeing that show make you want to do a one-person show?” I told her: “No. Right now, I’m very unambitious. I’m building an apartment. I want to have a family. I’m enjoying working for [client x], [client y], and I’m interested in working with [client z]. I’ve even written a one-person show. And I like it – it’s pretty good. But not really.”
Recently, my life has been fairly boring, and that’s okay. I’ve enjoyed watching the Starcraft Brood War ASL Season 11 World Championships. I’ve enjoyed going to the gym.
If 17-year-old me could see 33-year-old me, I wonder what he’d say. In some ways he’d be disappointed: I wrote a 10-year-from-today day-in-the-life back in 2017. Now, it’s about to be 2027. I haven’t achieved most of the things on that list. I don’t really care.
A friend contacted me last week about publishing my book. I don’t feel motivated to do so. I’m fine not feeling motivated to do so.
I remember reading Tim Kreider’s Lazy: A Manifesto. On my deathbed, I won’t regret failing to close a client.
Today, Partner and I took two hours getting ready to leave the apartment. We ate sausage and peppers, inventoried lights for our apartment, lifted heavy, voyaged to a meal she had been wanting for weeks, watched a play, and then ate a cheese boat. That’s enough for today.
(Partner thinks ambition is an instrumental good: it makes one do good things. I used to have a lot of ambition. I used to do good things. Today I have less ambition. I still do good things.)
Julian Wise 