Happy New Year Part 2
It's 2025, hooray. So far this year has been good I cant lie. Yeah, it's only been a week but so far so good. I've been eating a lot healthier so far this year. I always tell myself I'll eat healthier and then that lasts for like one grocery shop's worth of food but I've changed my angle and instead of trying to make set healthy meals I've just started buying more fruit and veg and general healthy stuff like nuts and chickpeas and stuff then having healthy quick snacks of those and eating big salads sometimes instead of junk like I think now I've started eating 5 raw fruits and vegetables a day aswell as raw spinach and so on. I cut down on how much milk I consume now too opting for oat milk plus I just think it tastes better. Probably a placebo effect but I feel a lot better so far especially mentally so hey, that's good. I used to snack on crap so much but now I just grab a carrot or chop up a bell pepper. A lot cheaper!
I've been a pescatarian for over 10 years so I've always been pretty mindful of my diet when it comes to animal products but I could never get into buying super expensive vegan substitutes all the time. I prefer to just eat natural stuff, fruit, vegetables, cured fishes and sea food, eggs, leafy greens, nuts and pulses. I think it's also better for the environment.
Yesterday me and my boyfriend baked peanut butter cookies like so many cookies. We still have some batter in the freezer. We topped them with peanuts and my boyfriend also added cinnamon sugar but I didn't like how that tasted that much. We burned a batch of them, it was tragic.
Another thing that happened was: we got the bus to the market to buy some groceries and cookie ingredients. We sit at the front of the top deck and on the other side of the front is this guy watching tiktoks or something out loud so loudly. This is a common occurance on the bus though I find it so annoying like, can you not at least put some headphones on? Anyway, the reason this particularly stuck out to me is because I noticed this guy was watching a stupid transphobic brainwashing ass tiktok and it shocked me so much I literally burst out laughing with my boyfriend. It goes on for soo long then he finally scrolls to some other slop. We continue to laugh at it and say stuff out loud like "Man, some people need to learn when to log off tiktok" and other random stuff making it so obvious that we were talking about him but there's just no reaction! At some points he's rewatching the same tiktok like 3 times as if he doesn't even realise what he's doing. It's insane. I hate short form content so much it's turning everyone into zombies. I don't understand how people don't realise how much of their life they're wasting by completely dissasociating from the present moment to watch slop that they don't even remember after 5 seconds. Every single day I get more and more sick of it.
I went home for the holidays a couple weeks ago and noticed how much time my family spent not even talking to eachother and just watching tiktoks, YouTube shorts, Instagram reels, etc etc. It's ridiculous. Why does no one realise how addicted they are? I hate sounding like an enlightened being or whatever when I say stuff like this but it's just so true. I think it took me realising how much time I waste scrolling and how worthless short form content is and banning myself from it to realise how sucked into it everyone else is.
Speaking of being present, I started meditating again after a couple years of not doing it. I'm not sure why I ever stopped because I enjoy it so much and it alleviates so much of my anxiety. I feel like for my entire life I've never been able to focus very well on things I wasn't hyperfixating on and I think now with the way social media is I've never been worse with my concentration. I think I can struggle a lot from anger issues and I never notice it until it passes so I'm hoping maybe it'll overall make me more aware of how I act. I've started reading Opening the Hand of Thought by Kosho Uchiyama and I find general Zen philosophy really interesting and helps me cope with my anxiety. I feel like I don't really show myself to be an axious person until I have random bouts of acting crazy or down right delusional or when I'm under pressure but I would love to alleviate my anxieties completely. That's probably not possible and maybe will never happen but it's a goal to work to I guess. I don't care where I end up. I'm interested in doing a drop in meditation session at my local Buddhist Center but I'm pretty nervous about doing new stuff like that. It's something I think I'd have to do alone, I don't know why. I think it would just be real helpful to get some guidance in meditating so I can be better at it.
