Eye of the Beholder

It’s Noon here in Pittsburgh, and I have already walked 5.3 miles. I have long loved exercise, but all the heavier duty exercises have just ended with me getting injured. I’ve lost faith in weight lifting after recurring rotor cuff issues, and am similarly meh on distance running since my knee always ends up hurting. Walking it is.

Most of the distance I have covered so far today was en route to my latest follow-up appointment for that eye injury I had a while back. If I wanted you to read as much of this website as humanly possible, I would hyperlink the text ‘eye injury I had a while back’, and have it link to the original post I made about the eye injury. Really though, I don’t care if you read about it. If you want to, I’m sure you’ll find it.

By the way, during my injury, I snapped the pair of blue glasses I have been wearing ever since ~2017. I’ve worn no other glasses in that entire time frame, so If you’ve seen me in person since then, you’ve seen those old glasses that are now gone. Sometimes it’s things like your glasses breaking that really make you feel that time is flying. My life was so completely different when I first started wearing those.

Humorously, the last ‘picture’ of me in those glasses isn’t even a picture, per se - it’s this family portrait, which we commissioned an artist to make of our family.

We also have a physical version of this piece. By the time I looked at this for the first time, my accident had already happened, and these blue glasses were a thing of the past. I love this portrait by the way, independent of all this eye-wear commentary.

Here are my new glasses; we’ll see how long I wear these for. This picture also demonstrates that from afar and behind a large pair of glasses, my eye injury can be very not-noticeable.

Anyway, like I was saying, the followup for my eye injury was today. The doctor in charge of my injury is a professor at the University of Pittsburgh medical school. As such, I walked to - and through - Pitt’s campus to get to my appointment. It’s an enjoyable walk. I find that it’s usually enjoyable to walk through a college campus. It feels hopeful. The buildings are nice, and remind me of a time when I had a reason to go inside nice, fancy, ornate buildings. There’s nice staircases, and grassy laws, and random sculptures. There are no sculptures in front of my grocery store.

It’s grounding to see the college kids. I oscillate between thinking back to when I was their age, and thinking, ‘holy fuck, I am so happy I am not 20 years old right now.” For every year younger than I am a person is, I have that much more respect that they’re still managing to live life. While I wouldn’t say there was a wealth of opportunity to establish a career when I was 22, at least the internet was still kind of young. There was still some stuff you could sort of get paid for. Every year that goes by, that list of things get shorter, and shorter, and shorter.

But, I am trying to stay in a positive headspace more often. That is one of my recent goals. I am avoiding the news at all costs. So, instead of thinking about the economic impossibility of being 20 years old right now, I try to just take in the scene. It’s 70 degrees out. I overhear two young women talking about a party they are choosing to not attend this weekend. I remember how much I, too, love not attending parties I am invited to. Ah, youth.

Anyway, I get to the doctor. It has been 2 months since the accident. He’s happy with how the eye is healing, but suspects I will need to go under the knife a second time to tweak how the whole thing is coming together. There’s a pocket that has formed where my eye would normally end. You can kind of see what I am talking about here:

If this makes you a little queasy, be thankful I waited 2 months before posting any pictures related to this…

The skin is still too freshly worked on to do anything with now though, so I’ll be back in another six weeks. I walk back home.

I do this 5 mile round trip walk with no headphones on. My media consumption is way, way down. I don’t watch things on Youtube anymore. I’m not watching the people I know on Twitch right now. Severance ended. I am not playing any video games (whether speedrunning or casually). I’ve been reading an occasional book, but nothing right now. I avoid Reddit as much as I can so as to consume as little news as I can. My Discord use is dwindling. I use no other social media. I buy as close to nothing as possible. I’ve been off of pot for close to 90 days now.

In sum, I have been turning to external sources for escapism less and less. I think the tumultuous nature of the world and the United States in particular has upended my ability to peacefully escape into technology and make-believe. I am in a period of seeing-through media in a way that makes enjoying it impossible. I have been here before; this is what my most despondent days working in ‘business’ felt like.

Here’s the thing about using escapism less and less though: eventually, it looks a lot like sitting and doing nothing. Not escaping means being here, and being here - once you’ve worked through the natural fear and discomfort with being alive in the present moment - is actually pretty boring.

BUT, in turn, here’s the thing about sitting and doing nothing: that is very, very close to what people call meditating. If you add a dose of focus and a sprig of intentionality, you’re doing it.

Most readers of this blog probably know that I love Thich Nhat Hanh. He was a huge advocate of meditation, as all Buddhist monks are, but also of walking meditation.

“Those of us who can walk on the earth, who can walk in freedom, should do it. If we rush from one place to another, without practicing walking meditation, it is such a waste. What is walking for? Walking is for nothing. It’s just for walking. That is our ultimate aim—walking in the spring breeze. We have to walk so that we have happiness, so that we can be a free person. We have to let go of everything, and not seek or long or search for anything. There is enough for us to be happy.”

So, walking has kind of been my thing lately. From March 15 up until today, I am averaging 5.0 miles a day. My high is 11 miles, on a nice day last weekend. One thing that I’ve noticed with walking is that I am never less happy after a walk than I was before the walk started. That is very much why I have started walking. For all my good fortune, health, family and freedom, I am seldom happy. Really, it makes sense. Life is full of suffering, and moments of happiness are fleeting. You cannot be happy all the time. But, by fostering mindfulness and being in touch with the present moment, we can water the seeds of happiness that are already inside of us. Walking around is one way I really enjoy doing that.

If you had asked me when I was 22, how I would like to just walk around outside all day and not have to work in corporate hell, I would have been indescribably ELATED about that proposition. I surely would have traded you my left leg for this hypothetical life. Call me Robbie peg leg, I don’t give a fuck. It would absolutely beat corporate hell. Actually, forget about 22. If you had asked me this any day of my entire 20s I would have been just as elated.

Well, now that IS what I am doing. I am determined to enjoy it.