Routine

One thing that becomes more and more inescapably obvious to me as I grow older is that routine is inevitable. No matter how hard I try to keep life fresh and interesting, it's just too much work to keep finding things that keep you interested on a non-routine level. So after a few weeks, I find a routine where ever I am, doing whatever I do there. A few weeks after that, the routine starts to denigrate into the least common denominator routine, which usually involves sitting around watching tv or staring at the internet, or both. This is the worst possible routine, time flies by me, I'm bored, I never do anything productive, I slowly fall asleep. Eventually something happens, I move somewhere else, I find something else to do, or I just find some will power. In any case, eventually the sleeper awakens, the cycle repeats itself, I have a few good weeks, and a month or two later I'm back where I started.

I've always believed that the key to life is to avoid routine of any kind. Life is longer and happier that way, everything is always fresh. But my goodness is it exhausting. So as I said at the beginning, I think routine is inescapable for me. Perhaps I should focus on making the routine I fall into as positive as possible. Some of my routines are positive. My camp routine is usually good. My sophomore summer routine of swimming every day and running every night, that was a good thing. Even my freshman year routine of going to tea at Sanborn and doing work for the same hour every day was pretty brilliant.

There's lots of things I'd like to get into my routine, but I'm just not sure how to do it. I'll just give it a go, I suppose.

I'm lazy

What do most people fantasize about? Winning the lottery? Do women really spend as much time thinking about their wedding as television makes it seem? Dating a supermodel? I don't know.

I certainly still dream about winning the lottery. And the supermodel thing.... And the wedding thing. But my main dream is this: I wish I wasn't lazy. Don't get me wrong, I love being lazy on some level. I sure don't want to be ambitious or do a bunch of school work for some meaningless grade. Or any of the crap like that.
But I spend most of my life just sitting around doing nothing. And if nothing gets in the way I'd spend pretty much all my time sitting in my room watching tv and "surfing the internet," which I do in a more systematic and serious manner than anyone I've ever met. Every once in a while I'll actually get into something and get excited and do something for a while. but then that dies off after two or three days. I wish I could actually do stuff regularly and be a good person. maybe get some exercise, do some reading, maybe actually do some school work when it's interesting. I wish I could even write a simple 3 paragraphs without stopping to clip my toenails... but whatever it needed to be done.
The thing is, I still think of the future as if one of these days I'm going to snap out of it and be energetic and useful and it'll be great.
I think I'll learn Esperanto and start running 3 miles a day and maybe even figure out how to do tai chi. Or maybe I'll just watch a few more episodes of Scrubs and read about those things on wikipedia.

I'm a bit of a foodie. An amateur foodie, really. But I really enjoy foods of all variety. In fact, I've worked for years on making myself like every food. If it's a food and someone, somewhere, thinks it's good, well then so do I. The foods I hated the most growing up, pickles and tomatoes, are now nearly my favorite thing. Coffee is my final frontier. I'm working on it and getting good progress done. Tim Horton is a good man for this sort of thing. Not that there's a Tim Horton's in London. Although there is one in Afghanistan.

I only have two rules regarding food:
1. If it's a normal object that's fried, I need to try it. Fried pickles are good. Fried Oreos are alright. Fried Twinkies are absolutely phenomenal. Seriously if you ever have a chance to eat a freshly fried Twinkie, you'd better do it. Oh, I almost forgot deep fried mars bars. Very Good.

2. If it's an animal that I haven't eaten before, I need to try it. I know I've written about this before, so I won't bore you with all my past accomplishments. But today I had an ostrich burger that was extremely good. And best of all, the store sold the best variety of meats I've ever seen. Kangaroo, Zebra, Wildebeest. Problem was they were only cooking the ostrich today, but as soon as I get a kitchen I can use, I'm totally cooking up some zebra. I am so excited about this. Oh, and I found a stand with hare and rabbit and pigeon. Wild pigeon, no less. Only 2 pounds for a wild pigeon. I could just kill a pigeon myself, but the plucking is probably not worth 2 pounds to me.

I'm not much of a tourist. You know, that guy who gets out his guidebook and goes to museums and churches and finds that statue of Peter Pan that they have in Hyde Park for whatever reason. I'm just not tourist guy, as Jim Rome would say. I hate Jim Rome. I've spent too much time in foreign cities to bother being a tourist, I live here, why should I bother with that nonsense?

Still, I'm in a foreign city and don't have much to do yet, so what do I do? Well mostly I just walk around. There is nothing so invigorating as a nice 4 hour stroll through the streets and parks of London. I also spend quite a bit of time sitting on benches watching the world go by. I always feel like I look a little crazy doing it, but it's fun.

You see, there's only 4 kinds of people who sit on benches alone:
1. The cell phone typists, poking away at some sort of "text message," which I don't get.
2. Old People. These people have life figured out. It's a pleasant way to while away the day.
3. Bums. They sort of have it figured out, they're just hanging out doing whatever. But they usually look pretty depressed. That's the problem with bums, it's hard to enjoy being lazy when you're hungry.
4. Smokers. These are the people who really have life figured out. Taking any excuse to take a few minutes off, sitting pensively.

My problem is that I'm not one of these people. I have a cell phone, but have nothing to say to anyone on it. I won't be old for some time. I'm not a bum yet, though in some senses I'm moving in that direction. I would probably take up smoking if it wasn't so damned expensive. Do you have any idea how much a pack of cigarettes costs in this country?

These Brits are interesting folk

The thing I like most about being in London is the signs. These Brits have such a wonderfully broad way of saying everything. The best example I have is the sign: No Parking, Gate in Constant Use. Yes, constant use. All the time, always. They say everything like this. I couldn't love it more. And, I saw a sign for Wrestlemania on the back of a bus. Fantastic.

Haslam.

Life Update

I realize that most anyone who would read this would know me and what I'm doing with myself, but there may be a few stragglers who don't ever actually talk to me and are a little behind on things. Well I graduated from college a few months ago. And now I'm in a town called London, which is in southeast England. I'm at the London School of Economics getting a Masters for the next year or so, and after that we'll see.

Isn't it amazing how the we'll see is the most important thing in life? Not to you, probably more important to you what I'm actually doing, but to me, I don't care what I'm doing, really. Inconsequential. There is always the dream of tomorrow. Anyway, my current dream is that after I get this here Masters degree, I'll take a year or so and do some traveling, some roaming, some hoboing. But don't want to dream too much of that yet, I'm in London, which is pretty damn good for now.

My return to public life.

So I'm feeling inspired again, after over a year off. To put it another way, Haslam is back. I'm relaunching right here, right now, today. I'm going to try to put up all the rest of my life's work as Haslam as a pdf file or something soon. Don't hold your breath, if you're reading this, you've probably read it all anyway, or at least all that you're willing to read.

Things are going to be rather different this time, though. I'm older and wiser now, not as brash and flippant as I used to be. So I may write things that are a little more down to earth now, perhaps a little more personal than the old Haslam stuff. Which is partly to say that it couldn't possibly be less, but partly I really do want to actually say things about myself this time around, perhaps reveal to you, dear reader, and little bit about who and what I actually am. (I don't mean that you don't know who I am in real life, I just mean that you don't know who I am, deep down in the cockles of my heart. Maybe even below the cockles. Maybe in the liver, maybe in the kidneys, maybe even in the colon, we don't know.

Life update and archives will be up soon.