Panopticon

My wife has a small building downtown, a two up two down that's her atelier and hang out space. It means she has somewhere to go everyday, and it's a nice place.

Because I don't want to clean / decorate, or need to meet clients, I thought about renting a room in a cheap hotel to serve as an office so that I'd have somewhere to go and focus on work, rather than pottering about at home, half dressed and dragging three hours work out into six.

But it turns out that just being outside in cafes for an hour or two each day is enough, as with the world's eyes somewhat upon me there are fewer distractions, and it gets me dressed, albeit in alohas and cut-off jeans - a stereotypically unpresentable early middle-aged foreign man in the tropics.

A cheap room in a hotel looked good until I looked into my heart. I don't need an office with room service, mini-bar, cable TV and massage services on call. As I get older there is a diminishing gap between what I want and what I need, but in places my judgment is still very poor, and the best I can do is to avoid putting myself in certain situations. This is analogous to making all your good choices at the market rather than in the kitchen. Once the potato chips and beer have been purchased I'm already doomed. The simple answer is just not to let them in the house.

Working on this principle I now go to bars three or four nights week.