My father got me to make my own lunches by giving me peanut butter & jelly every day from age 3 until I cracked in 3rd grade at which point he told me if I wanted something else I could make it myself. I'd been making my own breakfast by the time I was 4; by the time I was 12 I was making my own dinners, too. I never ate PB&J ever again. FUCK PB&J. There are people who buy timeshares because they don't want to think about vacation. They're not wrong, they've just arrived at a vastly different set of priorities than myself. My roommate down in LA eats nothing but Soylent and random overpriced bullshit hipster garbage from trendy restaurants, often two entrees at a time. That's fine, too, so long as I don't have to imitate him. I live with two women who can't eat wheat. When I'm not home I eat pizza and greek and pasta and other things that nobody at home will share with me. Holy fuck Where's that new pinching fingers emoji when you need it. “Jealousy,” he concluded. “I think it’s jealousy.” Maybe we have so little in common with our office-mates that our jokes and humor are the absolute basest.Amanda Respers, the yearlong eater of salads, says that “we bring a little bit of home when we eat lunch at work,”
But in my mind, eating the same thing for lunch each day represents a sober reckoning with the fundamental sameness of office life. It seems like an honest admission that life will have some drudgery in it—so accept that and find joy elsewhere instead of forcing a little bit of novelty into a Tupperware and dragging it along on your commute.
But I am probably overthinking this.
“Maybe [they did so] just out of good humor, or maybe guilt that they’re not eating as healthy—that they’re eating a greasy burger or something—or going out and spending $15 for a lunch when mine only cost 80 cents.”
I eat soup and salad for lunch almost every day (and definitely every day I am in the office). The soup can be any soup. I can buy from work or I can bring my own that I’ve made. Salads, being harder to keep fresh without multiple compartments to separate ingredients, I buy at work — they’re subsidized as part of our eating well program. I find it’s a way to maintain a routine while also providing opportunity for great variety, should I want it. And most importantly, it helps ensure my poops are wonderful.
I take my salads to work in a mason jar. I put dressing on the bottom and pour some chick peas in so they poke above the dressing and than what ever vegetables I have on those. If I have a protein it goes on top of the vegetables, than greens and croutons or shaved hard cheese or whatever I don't want getting slimed. I take the jar out a half hour before I'm going to eat if it's an oil dressing to let it become a liquid than turn it upside down a few min before I'm going to eat. Shake, stir and eat. You need a long fork or a bowl. I ate more salads at work after I started doing this. I don't pack it in like this (I want room to stir) but you get the idea.
I think this is key: I'm so far away from desiring a routine that if it weren't for my daughter's school schedule I wouldn't know what day it was without looking. There's nothing in my life that lends itself to a routine; when I am working my start times vary between 7am and 10pm. There are times when I wish I had a little more? but I don't even like being in the same place five days a week unless it's home.I find it’s a way to maintain a routine
Hmm. For a very long time I felt I had no consistency in my life. It was self-imposed and due to driving by the seat of my desires, to mix metaphors. I got my work done week to week and so on, but could I make it to a pre-determined event on a given day at a given time? Unpredictable. Which means that basically, no, I couldn't. My day to day and moment to moment desires were encouraging me down a less healthy path a majority of every minute. I had to learn fucking off didn't actually feel good. But when you're in a loop of funk and "hey, I'd rather do nothing[AKA I'd rather sleep/drug/drink] than leave the house or shower or change my clothes despite it being the 5th day in a row that i haven't done any of that," it's hard to realize that "actually doing things" is the better path. It was a life of resisting doing things for...what? Nothing. To feel defeated at the end of each day anyway. Personally, I felt I needed more consistency in my life, and less 48-hour-all-nighters backed with day-and-a-half-long sleep sessions. I was really tired of living my life according to the day or hour's or moment's whim. So for me, it was an improvement to impose routine and rigor. But it's not for everyone -- from the outside, I was extremely functional before, without routine, so I can't even (and wouldn't) try to take a place of 'authority' or 'righteousness' and claim it 'saved my life' or anything, ha. It just made me feel better about myself to force myself to leave the house to go to work, to eat healthy food, to take a shower every day, and so on. I had to realize it might be a thing of forcing myself...but ultimately, in the long run, it would feel better. It was about trading the single moment in my vision for the whole week. Or month. Or year. One day I might go back to having less routine. But for me, it wasn't healthy to give in to the desires of the moment, as half the time those desires were, let's be honest: drinking, doing drugs, or generally fucking off however I knew how and could get away with so long as I hit my deadlines and turned my work in on time.