I Took One Hair Loss Pill and Suddenly Wanted to Be a Carpenter in Australia

The Situation (= Off My Game)

After lunch at the office, I took one hair loss pill.

(For the last six months, I’d stopped taking it — not wanting to rule out even a 0.0001% chance while we were trying for a second child.

But while my wife has been recovering from her recent surgery, I’ve taken the opening and started up again.)

Maybe it was because I hadn’t taken it in a while, or because the stuff is potent, or because a few days of it had built up in my system — but a headache started creeping in.

I must have wiped the side effects of a single pill from memory, the way I did last time. The results had been undeniable, after all..

So with the headache dragging on, I left work right on the dot, ate dinner quickly, showered the kids, and crawled into bed early with them.

What Got Me Thinking

The problem here can be explained by the things I searched for this afternoon and a conversation with my mom.

“Mom, lately I feel so restless, and I want to do something physical with my body,

and that’s got me wondering about going abroad,

I kind of want to go work overseas, just once…

A friend of mine is doing carpentry in Australia and pulling in 400,000 won a day…”

Having thoughts like this is normal for me — what’s a little disappointing is that

my thought factory burned through way more time, energy, and emotion than usual as raw materials.

I wasted hours of my precious thirties.

Reflection 1

Maybe the brain takes my mood and emotions as the center and then approaches them as logically as it possibly can..

As if to rationalize my mood, to dress it up as a logical decision,

it lined up all the upsides — the salary, year-round good weather, the glamorous life abroad —

and conjured up a full-blown hallucination..

The brain really is that frightening.

So What?: Let’s harness this toward the goal of ‘starting my own business’.

[Continued in the next post..]

Reflection 2

A thought that hit me on the commute the next morning.

When you’re off your game or feeling unwell, don’t sync that mood with your baseline mood.

So What?: 1. Mind my health carefully — when I’m sick, eat plenty and sleep plenty.

2. Don’t make any decisions in that state.

Reflection 3

Through that conversation with my mom, I was struck by how I don’t have a single hobby that exists purely for me — something I’d be excited to spend time on, something I’d think about and remember moment to moment, especially something that uses my body or my time, and that’s allowed to be unproductive.

(= Because I’m an extremely productivity- and efficiency-driven person.)

So What?: Pick back up a hobby from when I was young — the kind that thrilled me just to think about.