Hello again,
And happy Easter. I didn’t give anything up for Lent this year, which is a slightly strange choice for me because I think I sort of love arbitrary self-deprivation. I’ve always gone in for meaningless, self-imposed rules and confected routines. I grew up Catholic, which is part of it. Every religion is like this to an extent, but that one is basically organised entirely around slightly perplexing, if not downright confusing, rituals. If you’re not Catholic you’d see what I mean if you went to Mass, in terms of the sitting down and standing up elements of Mass in particular.
Something will happen, for example a bell will ring, and then everyone will kneel down and pray, and you won’t know exactly why they are doing this except that they are responding to that cue. The rhyme or reason to it is hard to discern, even if you kind of know how it works.
I like the slightly random structure of it a lot. Yes I grew up with it and that’s probably part of it, that I find it comforting or whatever. But I also think it just suits my personality.
I’m always interested in how different kinds of people respond to routine, which is basically just a set of arbitrary rules designed to make the days feel more consistent. It’s not a very glamorous thing to admit but I am definitely in the “one of those people who basically clings to routines and fake rules to function” category. Actually probably at the far end of that category.
I have basically no willpower (or none in a day to day sense anyway) so really the only way I can make (half-way) decent choices or get anything done is by abiding by arbitrary rules.
A good example of this is when I was thinking of cutting down on the amount of meat I eat. Ideally I would eat meat once or twice a month and I was trying to instigate this. I tried eating none for a month to begin this change, and then realised if I wanted to cut down I would just have to give it up entirely.
The thing I am good at, in terms of will power, is I can follow a blanket rule which requires no thinking from me extremely well. So, in a way, I am incredibly self-disciplined, but it has to be under a very particular set of conditions. The minute a decision enters the equation it all just falls apart. With the meat thing, for example, I realised that if I had to decide, constantly, which night of the month was my one meat night then I would probably end up eating it for almost every meal. The only way for me to eat less of it was just to make a rule that says never.
I never took up smoking because I knew I wouldn’t ever be able to stop. If I have a bad habit I can’t shake it. I bite my nails constantly because there is no rule I can design which will prevent me from doing so, what with them being attached to my hands.
It’s the same with work routines. I am freelance so theoretically I could work on a totally different daily schedule every day. I could socialise during the day and make it up in the evenings and so on. (An option which people seem to think is a perk of freelancing but which, I have to say, puts the fear of God into me.) In reality I work the exact same day every day. I start at the same time and end at basically the same time and sit at the same desk and often eat the exact same meal for lunch for months at a time. I run for an hour at the same time almost every day because if I didn’t stick to such a regular routine I know I would probably never run at all.
I know this sounds like the most boring lifestyle a person could possibly have, especially given the fact it is all completely my choice. No manager is decreeing that I have to do this, I’ve designed it all myself.
I do often think it would be nice (actually more often I think it would be cooler) to be the other way. To be the kind of person who starts work at 8 one day and 11 the next, who would easily stick to eating meat on special occasions, who doesn’t bite their nails simply because they have decided to stop doing so. Basically a person who isn’t at the whims of bad habits and poor self control. I often think of the fact that my boyfriend decided he would give up smoking when he turned 27 and just did it. And that he now occasionally smokes one or two cigarettes on a night out and this doesn’t then spiral into an entire packet, or smoking during the day on the balcony.
But then I’ll hear someone talk about being freelance, lying in bed beside a breakfast tray at 11am, wearing a dressing gown while they send their emails and it absolutely does just put the fear of God into me.
I’m just not one of those people. And at least I know that about myself, which is… Well, it’s something.
Till next time! xxxxxxxxxxx
Here are some pre-order links for Lazy City if you are minded to order, for the UK and the US. Pre-orders tell shops that people are interested in and excited about the book which helps the book a lot.
Also I will be reading an extract of Lazy City at Paul Johnathan’s night (details on this great poster) on Thursday 27th April. Come if you are in London, I think it will be really fun.
Some Things I Liked Recently
Nigel Slater’s house, which just doesn’t look like I expected it to at all. I thought it would be nice, obviously, but I had more of a like “Camden bohemian” vibe in mind, say with spider plants and red curtains and a broken piano, and it’s basically the opposite of that.
This essay on a book about anti-humanism by Mark O’Connell which contains this brilliant passage
“I learned that its author is surprisingly bullish on cannibalism as both radical queer praxis—as “queer in its collapse of subject and object and food and sex”—and as a sustainable alternative to livestock farming."