Not to be confused with Soylent Green.

Over two years ago I heard an interview on NPR (I thought it was NPR but now I can’t find it so maybe not) with a man named Rob Rhinehart. He had been working on a formula that would replace meals and to prove it he lived off of it, without any other food, for three months.

So naturally several articles came out being like, “Why does this guy hate food?”

But it’s not that at all. The point is, you should eat delicious food, and when you can’t, you should just consume the nutrients you need. So instead of going to get crappy fast food made out of who knows what, or wasting time on making food because you feel obligated, you can enjoy food.

Soylent comes out to less than $2.50 a serving for the premade stuff (Soylent 2.0) and the powder version (Soylent 1.5) is about $1.50.

So Rob got rid of his kitchen and fridge. He drinks Soylent and when he wants good food he leaves it to the pros and goes out to eat. He said with the money he saves he can take people out to lunch and with the time he saves he can focus on other things.

Personally, I think I’ll keep the kitchen, you know, for brownies and stuff, but how cool is it to think there’s something that people on low incomes or no incomes or poor college students could live off of if they had to. I don’t know if it really is something I’d want to live off of for years and years but it’s definitely better than Ramen. So while people are like, “ew gross” or “food should look like food” I think it’s cool someone is trying to solve world hunger.

It’s like dry shampoo. You could go throw the whole effort of showering, or you could just dump some stuff on your head and you’re good to go.

It’s not just vitamins. The formula includes fats, proteins, and Omega-3s and other science stuff I’m not qualified to try and explain. 2.0 is made with Algal oil. “Produced efficiently in bioreactors rather than traditional farms to conserve enormous quantities of natural resources while providing energy and essential fatty acids.” How cool is that? There are some people who find the ingredient list alarming but I’m going to take my chances for the sake of experiment. Weird names on the ingredient list doesn’t stop me from eating Cheetos and in the nutrition world everyone just argues back and forth, somehow the same thing can cure cancer one day and give us cancer the next.

For me, personally, I’m excited to try it because I have grown to hate food. I hate that it makes my stomach hurt. I hate that it takes so much of my time. I hate that I never remember to eat breakfast and sometimes forget lunch and if I wasn’t married I’d probably forget about dinner too. I love food, but it also stresses me out. By eliminating some of the stress I think I’ll be able to enjoy food more. Food should be enjoyed not just endured.

How does it taste? Well, I wanted to get a candid reaction. So here you go in the form of two snaps:

It could be better but I like that it’s not trying to be some fancy flavor and I’m sure it’s kept their costs lower because they don’t have to offer a variety. It just is what it is, with no frills or promises of weight loss. Just something some guy made and has been living off for years now. I’m going to try adding chocolate to it and see what happens. It does have a weird after taste so I had some berries. See? I’m not forgetting about real food.

I ordered the 1.5 and the 2.0 so I’ll let you know what happens and if it makes me feel not hungry or if it kills me or whatever else might happen.

Is it the food of the future? I don’t know, I’m also going to eat lots of popcorn today because it’s national Popcorn Day.

Hello.

It’s me.

I’ve been thinking I should blog more this year than I did the one before. First, I want to sum up the key things I think I learned in 2015.

Lesson #1: Tell Fear to Take a Backseat . Resolution #1: Write More

In this lovely NPR/Ted Talk Elizabeth Gilbert talks about the Border Collie in her brain. I had felt similarly about my own brain before and it was sort of exciting to hear I’m not the only one.

If you know anything about dogs, particularly herding/working dogs it is that they need a job. When not given a job and left unattended they will destroy your house. She explains that when she is not using her brain creatively it has an effect on her relationships and mental well-being. Essentially, if you’re brain wants a job and you don’t let it do that job, it’ll take that energy and put it elsewhere.

I hate that I don’t write more. I have all these ideas in my head and they bug me. They keep bugging me because I don’t let them out and I think if I did I would have room for other ideas in my head, or I’d remember where my keys were, or I’d actually be able to turn off my brain at night and sleep without having crazy dreams about celebrities and war zones. I love to multi-task but some ideas are distracting and need to be addressed individually before they’ll go away.

The blog posts I think of and don’t write haunt me when I have a spare moment to think about them. That freaking screenplay I told everyone I would write always comes back to haunt me. People don’t forget when you tell them you’re writing a screenplay and/or let them read drafts. They’ll haunt you too with periodical, “have you finished that yet?”

So I live life in a constant state of distraction, when I could have just written the thing down and moved on.

People say coming up with an idea is the hardest part, but that’s not the case for me. It’s the actual writing that can be hard.

Writing. Is hard. It’s hard. It’s sexy, but it’s hard.

The reason it’s hard is because there is an active force that works against you when you try and create something.

Once again, Elizabeth puts it nicely,

“I think instead what you have to do is recognize that fear and creativity are conjoined twins. And what I see people doing in their lives is they’re so afraid of their fear that they end up trying to kill it. And when they kill it, they also kill their creativity because creativity is going into the uncertain, and the uncertain is always scary. And so what I’ve had to figure out how to do over the years is to create a sort of mental construct in which I make a lot of space to coexist with fear, to just say to it, hey, fear, listen, creativity and I – your conjoined twin sister – are about to go on a road trip. I understand you’ll be joining us (laughter) because you always do, but you don’t get to decide anything about this journey that we’re going on. But you can come. And I know that you’ll be in the backseat in panic but we’re going – mommy’s driving. (Laughter) And we’re going anyway. And you just take it along with you. And that seems to work for me.”

It doesn’t always manifest itself as fear. Often it’s just a block, but it comes from the same source and ain’t nobody got time for that negativity.

With the recent shootings and other turmoil going on in the world I had a moment where I had to think about what I wanted to do with my life. Legitimately. What if I died suddenly? I realized that I didn’t want to die with the stories that were inside of me. I don’t want that unfinished screenplay to haunt me when I’m a ghost myself. If I can leave behind something that makes people laugh or makes them happy in some way I want to do it.

So out-weighing my fear of doing something is the fear of not doing anything. This feeling manifest itself as quiet confidence rather than panic. There is something I can do and I need to just do that thing.

I’m lucky in the sense that I have found something that brings me great joy. Writing a screenplay/blog/whatever makes me feel the same way falling-in-love feels. It’s an cheap, easy, natural high but for whatever reason (see fear above) I ignore this great love of mine when it’s right there begging for attention. I’ve ignored it for too long and it’s destroyed my brain-couch.

I’m excited for this year because I’m giving up everything else temporarily (or maybe permanently) to focus on writing. I’ve seen clearly this year as people have responded positively to things I’ve created and I know I’m not going to be curing cancer anytime soon so I may as well contribute to society in the best way I know how. John and I have some pretty decent ideas queued up.

Oh and if I fail, then at least I know I gave it a good try instead of always having it as a thing on the side. 

If you’re resolving to write more this year too, here are some helpful tips.

If you hate writing, find what you do love. That’s also a hard thing to do, but tell fear to take a backseat.