August 26, 2024

We had a celebration of sorts on Saturday evening wherein we had a few friends over. It was to celebrate my 50th birthday which happens to be in 3 days from now. There was no cake, but there was catered bengali food and lots to drink. It turns out that whomever we invited arrived with their entire brood- which is unusual as kins tend to have their own eco-system. For my own part, I did not really want a celebration. I find friends as I have come to define them today , rather transitory- and mostly for no fault of theirs. Every time I interact with someone as a “family”, I immediately feel some stress. For one thing, I do not know if it will be fun on a sustainable manner- but more so, I am never sure if we will not fall out at some point. Most of the falling out has nothing to do with me, but I am always the suffering party. And it is hard to explain to someone who does not suffer as much. To avoid this, I tend to be wary of committing too deeply to relationships. I have my set of few close friends, whom I try to keep at a family-agnostic level as much as possible. The rest are people who’s company I enjoy but I always have one foot out the door. This makes life easier on the one hand and far more difficult on the other. It is something I need to work on- where I stop looking at relationships as a collective responsibility at the family level. Equally though, this has to be reciprocated by the other party- which is an even rarer case. Again, no judgements. These are not easy waters. And so- when the thought of celebrating my birthday comes around, I feel as if the people around me celebrating it don’t actually care about me. The reason I feel this way is that I don’t actually care about them. It is a chore for me, it isnt something that fills me with energy. Perhaps it would be different if I celebrated it with my parents- because there I know that they do care about me. I don’t know why I ended up this way- wherein I am always arm’s length with 99% of my stakeholders. I cant imagine that this is a good thing. As I turn 50, it is one of the things that I will try to address. Which is to say, be better friends to people, and hope that it turns out to be worth the while.In any case, since I enjoy my own company well enough, I don’t think this is an absolute necessity. On the other hand, one does need friends- even the most introverted of our ilk. And this is because sometimes one’s own company is not available in spirit, when you need it the most. I don’t know how else to explain it.

Aside of relationships, and possibly of much greater importance is health. I really want to start doing some basic weight training on days I don’t swim. I am told this is quite essential if you want to remain functional in the next decade or two. I feel reasonable pleased with my swimming regimen which I have cultivated into a habit over a couple of years if not more. It is not as regular as I would like- but it is something. It does need to be supplemented though. It will be a real pain- but I now see that every pain becomes part of the machine as we know it.

The other area I want to look at is my diet. I have been toying with vegetarianism- or atleast giving up red meat. Unless my vitals require me to do otherwise I will probably just try to limit intake here instead of eliminate completely. And one of the reasons for this is that I really want to try and consume close to 70g of Protein a day. This is really hard to do in any case. With a plant based diet, it is nigh impossible without resorting to somewhat alien habits like eating whey and taking protein supplements. The only supplement I am taking is my Aurvedic tonic- to keep me from catching those beastly viral and bacterial infections. I don’t want any more supplements. Which means I need to eat lots of nuts, legumes, meat,yoghut, quinoa. eggs and fish. And I can get some minor quantities also from whole wheat, rice and potatoes. And this is basically it. But with two meals a day it is hard to achieve this. With three meals it is slightly easier. If I can put away an omelette with two eggs or a poha with 16 peanuts- I can get around 12-14 gms off the get go. Then during lunch I need to consume chicken and fish in 100gm quantities. This can get me, with other sides to around 25gms. It leaves me 30g to achieve during dinner. It is a monster goal to get by dinner time. I have to figure out the lunch part- make it as protein heavy as possible. All this from Friday- the 30^th of August!