“habitual diversion of the mind to purely imaginative activity or entertainment as an escape from reality or routine” -Merriam Webster

This is another continuation of my series of posts reflecting on hobbies, work, joy and relaxation. I realized that one important aspect was missing as a major theme: escapism. The obsession and mental occupation that (for me) comes with a difficult task at work, a new hobby, a good (audio) book, series or video game. The drive to get through the mundane parts of the day to get back to the thing that feels like I could do it forever. The taste of dopamine in the back of my mouth while I find ways to engage in the thing while I should be doing something else. Listening to podcasts about it in the car, searching information while I’m on the toilet, making spreadsheets. Planning ways in which I can manage to spend a whole day overindulging in just that one thing. Until I suddenly snap out of it, somewhere between two weeks or a month in.

I reflect on these topics a lot because they are a large part of my mental energy budget. They have the potential to give me a lot of energy or cost me a lot of energy. I have this (probably wrong) idea that I can figure out how my brain works in definitive terms and then act accordingly and live a happy and balanced life. Writing it out, I realize how moronic that is. Happy people probably do not have to make an active, quasi-scientific and constant effort to be happy. And if I found a recipe to guide all my life choices, I would probably refuse to do so, because I would get bored or rebellious.

In my last post, I talked about how I envy my sister for being able to stick to knitting socks as a hobby (she since informed me that she has widened her knitting portfolio). How this gives her joy and I strive for this simplicity. I framed this mostly as a dichotomy between simplicity and clutter, both mentally and physically. Between focus and indulgence of whims. Mastery and consumption. But I think I did not quite manage to express the strife for a predictable source of constant escape, a reliable dopamine button (that is not drugs). Of course, I would venture a guess that my sister does not knit for the dopamine hit. Neither do athletes follow stringent routines for the constant dopamine. Or Swiss watchmakers, or Jiro, who dreams of Sushi. They probably either get a different, deeper kind of fulfillment from their craft, or just get paid and outsiders romanticize their dedication. In any case, I feel like this yearning for a deep fulfillment through commitment but instead escaping through satisfying short term cravings is a pretty common human condition. For a deep dive investigating the difference between yearning and craving, I recommend the incredibly entertaining ContraPoints video essay on Twilight (which is really about life and love in general).

The hole that needs to be filled, the yearning for happiness, the hunger for purpose can not be satisfied by distractions, dopamine and escapism. Maybe these are in fact taking me further away from enlightenment, as a very rough Western interpretation of Eastern philosophy might suggest. Or maybe this hole can not be filled and having a little fun on the way to inescapable death is the whole point; a more capitalist, post-modernist worldview.

Anyway, what I originally wanted to write about, before I got rudely distracted by morose, existential shades of mundane things, as I do: I started heart pressure medicine a month ago or so. This, obviously, derailed me a bit. Obviously because I’m easily derailed, not because one should be derailed by taking medicine and getting better. I immediately saw it as a personal failure that I did not have a healthy blood pressure at my age (mid-30’s). I always was very unhappy with my body and weight and previously obsessed about weight loss and maintenance through eating habits. I never enjoyed exercise, and only ever regularly exercised in short bursts. For the last ten years, I attempted to leave those feelings behind me, enjoy food (which I really do), live my life and tolerate, maybe even love, my body as it is. But the blood pressure meds and my doctor’s suggestion that I might benefit from weight control meds immediately threw me back. I started cutting calories and (a first for me) regular cardio workouts. I’m tracking my steps and my calorie, protein and water intake, I measure my blood pressure at home, my heart rate and my running progress.

No real conclusions on this yet, but a couple of observations: Although the inciting incident was better health, this feels like another dopamine machine, and ultimately like it’s undoing a lot of mental work to combat my insecurities. Right now, exercising extreme control makes me quite happy, but it makes me happy in the same way World of Warcraft and Hearthstone did. It feels like drugs. I think, like textbook eating disorders, this need for control and giving in to it might also be a plaster over my general anxiety. So that’s not great. On the other hand, I think I might be on the path to dropping the BP meds again, which is genuinely and unequivocally good. And I finally get why people like running, which is also good. I’m proud that I don’t spend money on Ozempic or Wegovy to eat a deficit, but I also think that people who do are probably on to something. They don’t have to grapple with the instrumentalized self-hate that fuels me, even though it is in service of better health. I’m worried that my new eating habits will impact my daughter’s view of food, although I try to be very aware of what she sees and hears about food and my tracking and I don’t say no when she offers me Christmas cookies.

I also started playing Old School Runescape (OSRS) and wanted to take a weekend-long break from knotting friendship bracelets (November’s obsession) to give knitting another shot. Of course I promptly abandoned the bracelets and am convinced I will knit a sweater in the near future (I won’t). So I am currently in my personal happy space. I have things that I genuinely want to do whenever I have a sliver of free time and the only challenge is to juggle knitting and OSRS without loosing track of one or the other. My mind is occupied and successfully diverted to escape from reality and routine.