November 20th 2017
Alternating Raw and Cooked Food
It has now been over a month that I’ve been allowing myself some cooked food containing animal products. At home I’ve been eating quasi all raw except for quinoa. I’ve been eating out about three times a week for the last month. I was able to eat some red meat and seafood. My favorite restaurant for the month has been Mumbai, preparing to perfection some northern Indian dishes. I truly have been enjoying every bite of their food. Since eating more traditionally cooked food, I’ve been always feeling good the next day. I even think that having some animal origin food and Indian spices have been boosting my overall energy levels.
A Call from my Body
After a month of eating traditionally cooked food outside of home, as of yesterday my body is telling me to come back to a more vegetarian and raw diet. I am going to reduce the amount of times I eat out, and prepare more raw vegetarian food at home. I am going to stay away from dairy products and cereals. At Mumbai I’ve been eating a lot of their delicious “Naan” bread, and their rice with safran. On my way home I was slowly getting into the habit of having some “gelato” made with cow milk. I did not experience any negative symptoms during the entire month except for one night I had a burger after dinner. Now I think it’s time to increase my raw food intake, and spend less money on eating out. I am curious to see if I am going to have any cravings for cooked and comforting food. My capacity to listen to my body has been helping me tremendously lately. As if my body is telling me what to do next, in order for the machine to keep functioning at its best continuously.
On a similar note, I have been improving considerably in listening to my body to know when to work hard, and when to stop working and go to bed. Not forcing myself too much when I feel tired at night has been having great returns on my productivity the next day. With my payed job obviously, I can not stop until work is done, but with the rest of my working hours I have the flexibility to manage my efforts the way I want to.
Facebook-Fast
Couple days a ago I started a Facebook fast. I want to stay away from the addictive platform for few days. When I first joined Facebook in early 2006, not many around me seemed to use it. Then it started to become popular and fun from 2007 to 2011. During that period I was mostly interacting with people I actually knew. In early 2011 I started to feel that my social life was going through a virtualization process. I would hangout and see less my friends in person, and interact more with them online. At one point it felt like people in my social circle started to become more self-conscious of what they were posting on the platform. As far as I am concerned, I used to post a lot until 2011. As my friend base grew, I started to realize that depending on what I was posting, a good portion of my network did not have enough information on the the context of the post. Thus, from the perspective of the majority of my network, my postings could be seen as totally irrelevant. I almost don’t post on my personal Facebook page anymore. I still use the platform. It gives me a sense of being in touch with my friends. For the most part, I think it’s an illusion, since I don’t really interact with most of my Facebook friends directly anymore.
I also use Facebook to share my music project Black Sea Storm and support other artists. I do question if it really helps my project or not. Since I haven’t been playing shows for several years now, the web has become my sole outlet to share what I create. Facebook gives me an opportunity of letting people know about a new release, or a new blog-post on my website. Today I see my relationship with Facebook mostly as a bad habit. I feel like I am locked into it because there are aspects of it which seem still useful to me. That said, features like the news feed remind me of electronic cigarettes. You don’t know when it starts, you don’t know when it ends. I start feeling brain dead if I scroll that thing down for too long. Each time I leave Facebook, I have this feeling of actually being even more distant from my friends, mixed with the feeling of missing out on something fun that is going on somewhere else. I know that all of this is a constructed reality, and I am probably not missing out that much, since I am highly enjoying the life I am having at the moment in Argentina. If I were to post everyday a picture from my current life here, in this beautiful city, it would probably trigger similar feelings to someone else, somewhere else.
How do I try to manage my Facebook usage better?
As of many things in life, I think Facebook also follows the famous 80/20 rule. As far as I am concerned it’s overall 20% positive and 80% negative. The catch remains in the fact that, in order to take advantage of the good 20%, I need to cope with the 80% which I believe has a negative effect on my psyche and overall productivity. On a daily basis I try to delay my first connection to Facebook as much as I can. Then I try to go in and out with an approach I call commando style interventions, which consists of checking my messages, and not spend more than 5 minutes on the news feed. Login out from the platform, before returning to work on a productive task is very important for me. I also use Safari for my unproductive activities, and Firefox for the ones of productive nature. This creates a sort of a mental barrier. I know that when I am on Safari I am mostly goofing around on the web, and when I am on Firefox I am attempting to produce something that has value. For now I want to stay away from Facebook altogether for a few days. I’ve done it before. It was mostly beneficial, except for responding to personal messages from real friends, and I also once missed an event that meant a lot to me. It was the 20th year anniversary of our graduation from junior high. My junior high years in Versoix Switzerland were exceptional. I had so much fun during the three years I attended the C.O. Colombières. During my Facebook fast I had forgotten that the event was coming up, and since I wasn’t connecting to the platform I totally missed it.
The Good Thing About Facebook.
Eleven year of being on the platform allowed me to see the regression in the quality of my social life. It actually has been serving me as a sort of a metric to observe the changes in behavior when it comes to social life. I think social media transformed my social life for the worst. More than the platforms themselves, it’s mostly the way, we as a society, tend to use them that seems problematic to me. I find the pressure of being connected all the time to the web hard to bear. When our attention is predominantly focused on the virtual exchange of information, it becomes more difficult to enjoy the non-virtual world, and truly be creative. That’s why I decided to not have a phone plan in Argentina. It has almost been a year I’ve been living here, and I don’t have a cell-phone plan. It saves me a ton of money, and I enjoy the time I spend in the city way more. Less I am online, more I want to read, write, and make music.
Moving out of my Current Place
A relatively major event on a personal level for my healthier living attempt is about to occur. My landlord did not want to renew my lease. Someone else is offering him way more money than my current rent. I am going to have to find a new place to live. If I am unable to find an apartment in Belgrano, my access to organic products, going to various parks around here for sunbathing, jogging, and bike riding are going to be affected. The positive side of things, is that in all places I lived in Buenos Aires I was able to create a healthy routine with what I had access to. The first apartment I lived in was almost a luxury one, with a sauna and a gym. I used the facilities almost daily. This helped me a lot to boost my healthy practices on this journey. For a three month period, I rented a room in Villa Crespo. The living situation wasn’t as glamorous as it was in the first apartment , but I had access to sunlight from dusk to dawn. The apartment was like a tower, and had a balcony on which I could enjoy my raw food. My most challenging fasts on an emotional level occurred while I was living in Villa Crespo. I was also able to use my bike a lot. Moving to Belgrano as I mentioned earlier allowed me to have access to organic produce, to sunlight, and fresh air, thank to all beautiful parks we have around here.
Adapting, and Making Continuous Progress
At this point I don’t know where I’ll be moving next, but I am sure that I will be able to figure things out and adapt once again. My goal is to reduce my expenses so I can breakeven by only working 20 to 25 hours a week. This situation allows me to invest some of my time towards my music, my blogs, and still have enough time to live a healthier life, where I can take the time to prepare my own food, exercise, sunbath, and rest. It is important for me to have time to invest in myself so I can keep being productive and augment the value of my contribution to this world. This is something I had not fully understood earlier in life. I thought I needed to work work work in order to succeed with my goals, and offer a certain value to the world surrounding me. Working is important, but if I don’t invest in myself to leverage my efforts by acquiring new skills and improving the ones I already have, I won’t be taking full advantage of my potential. The same with my investment for a healthy living. If I don’t invest in being healthier, at one point my body is going to be performing with lower efficiency. With my current lifestyle, I am able to work, make progress with things that matter to me, and at the same time, I am improving my overall well-being. I am very close to a financial break-even with this life-style, which is already a source of pride for me. Now my goal is to be able to earn a bit more than what I spend, and keep investing my time in activities that are giving me joy and a sense that I am moving forward.
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I AM NOT A HEALTH PROFESSIONAL. I would like to make it very clear that I am only sharing my own experience on this website, and have no intention to give any specific advice on health. Please read the disclaimer section for more information.
