I have a dear friend who thinks that basically all money a person makes above a million dollars should be taxed away. “How could anyone need more than a million dollars?” she asks. I currently think this is absurd.
And yet, as a child, I fantasized about winning Who Wants to Be A Millionaire?. You were set for life, I thought, if you won.
And in some sense, that’s still true. I am a millionaire, now. I got lucky. I could retire to Vietnam. I would have to give up my community, proximity to loved ones, connection. I would have to give up a sense of importance, of being close to the levers that control humanity’s fate, and my small, egotistical hope that I help nudge those levers towards a better future. But I could.
Of course, I will not.
I was visiting Sydney recently and found myself, unsurprisingly, discussing housing costs with the locals. “Ah, you want a house in this nice, walkable neighborhood?” they said. “Easily $2 million.” I was surprised. That’s what houses in the Bay cost! I think of San Francisco as the most expensive city.
The prices are rising everywhere. As Paul Graham said, cities are sirens, calling out to the ambitious. They flock to the cities, they build, they make money. Prices go up.
(You can tell I am not an economist and have only the most rudimentary understanding here. Also, I want to be clear that I don’t think this relationship is tight — some people are lucky, some are not. And there are systemic forces that make it more difficult for certain groups of people to build and make money than others.)
Cost of living is high, and I find I am on the treadmill of success worse than I expected I would be. Each year I become accustomed to new luxury goods. Fine dining and tasty cocktails. Living in gorgeous houses with high ceilings, wood floors, and skylights that let the light stream in. This year: flying at least premium economy on long-haul flights! I don’t want to go back.
It doesn’t help that we compare ourselves, mostly, to the peers immediately around us. In my work, I am a small fish in a very, very big pond. But I am a huge fish compared to the rest of the world, and it’s easy to forget that. Like maybe I’m a dolphin, but I hang out with the whales.
We are all ridiculous spenders, to the vast majority of the world. The dolphins and the whales.
We’re all giving away ludicrous amounts of our income too. Many are donating 50%, some more. It’s not everything over a million. But still, it’s a lot. I wonder how many people would choose to donate that much, if they had it. You always think you would, but then you start looking at property prices and thinking about how you could buy a house for your loved ones. How many close friends and family do you have? At least three people, perhaps, to whom you would love to gift a house? Parent, sibling, spouse? How nice of a house? A $2 million nice house? That’s $6 million, and that’s not even an especially nice house in the Bay. So you have, say, $10 million, then — are you going to give away half?
Perhaps many would. I don’t know!
All of this is just lead-up, the associative thoughts that come as I start to think about why, over the last few years, I have become nigh dependent on DoorDash. DoorDash is expensive. It’s one of these lifestyle shifts that’s easy to get sucked into, as you experience the glory of a tech salary. At first once or twice a week. Then more. Your time feels so valuable. After all, you are no longer money-constrained; you are time-constrained. If you could just work, work, an extra thirty minutes, an extra hour, while someone cooks and brings you food, squeeze in that last task... Soon it’s every day.
I am trying to tear myself away. Reduce the dependency. I am currently doing “no DoorDash for a month.”
I used to cook a lot. I’d listen to my D&D shows while I cooked, slow and spacious. Not in any fancy way, just an “I want to eat wholesome homemade food” way. Try a new recipe here and there, learn which spices taste decent together.
Why go back to that? Go back to this chore that costs time, that other people groan about doing?
- I like homecooked food. I get sick of all the salt and oil from eating out all the time.
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Relatedly, I think home cooked food is typically healthier. (At least, the way I used to cook.1)
- Sub-point: all the microplastics I’m consuming from the hot takeaway containers the food comes in seem probably bad?
- I get bored with the same options available — you find the 5-10 restaurants you like, and then... that’s all you’re ever eating.
- I miss the incredible opportunity for community & connection that cooking offers.
I want to write next: Food is intimate. Yet I’ve outsourced it. I don’t like the alienation.
But I’m not sure that’s true? There are many, many things I’m happy to be alienated from. I’m glad I don’t have to walk to the river to collect water — am I alienated from water? I’m glad I don’t have to clean out chamber pots by hand — am I alienated from the body and home? I’m glad I don’t have to spend hours bent over, yanking potatoes from the ground — am I alienated from... food?
I wonder if “alienated” is just a negatively connotated word for “distant”?
And distance is something to be wary of. We forget to appropriately value things that are distant from us. People on the other side of the world. Animals that are distant from our own looks and behaviors. Activities we never partake in.
When I wrote the chamber pot line above, some part of me was like “but! Maybe it still is good to clean a toilet once in a while?” I was raised doing chores around the house (including cleaning toilets, joy). I struggle with this a bit when I think about raising my own children. I could afford cleaners. Will they grow up never knowing how to do their own dishes, how to vacuum or dust or clean a bathroom? There’s something that feels wrong about that, like not teaching them how to read or not taking them to play outdoors or...
It’s all so contingent. I feel my particular place in history, how I have been shaped. Spinning wool into yarn, not a chore worth learning, unless it excites them. But vacuuming!
Maybe the deeper thing I want is: while humans still need to do these kinds of labor, we all appropriately respect and value the time & effort that is put in to these labors. And one way of tapping into appropriate level of respect and value is to try to do the thing yourself. You respect musicians more after trying to play an instrument and realizing how long it takes to reach their skill. You respect interior decorators more after you attempt to put up your first piece of wallpaper. You respect movers more when you’ve tried to move on your own.
You can’t do this for everything, but fortunately, humans are good at generalizing. Occasional lived experience is often a helpful refresher.
So perhaps none of this “no DoorDash” desire is really about my current alienation from food. I think I’d be happy to be mostly distant from food production, if it were in fact a healthy home-cooked meal I was receiving via DoorDash each evening. If this were the state of the world, then my reasons (1) and (2) above for cooking myself would disappear. Although if they were gone, I think (3) and (4) would still be a strong, compelling reasons to cook, at least occasionally, for me. Of course, some people value novelty in food much less than me, and some people would want to lean into other activities for deep connection with community.
I’m remembering in high school a book that I read that really helped shift the way I relate to literature. It was called How to Read Literature Like A Professor, and for poor, literal little me, it was very helpful in understanding that yes, stories were much richer experiences than a simple surface-level reading would indicate, and teachers were not in fact full of bullshit when they talked about “symbolism.” I loved it. One of the chapters was about food. The author pointed out that the act of eating with others is an intimate, vulnerable experience, and therefore often a moment of rich meaning in stories.
I think what I want to say here is: while of course there are many other ways to connect with community, I do think there is something particularly special about sharing in the making and eating of food together. (At least to me!) It is one of our long human traditions, connecting us to millennia of ancestors. (Similar to making and dancing to music together!) And I love that it’s both intensely culturally rich, and very idiosyncratic — every family and individual has their own rituals, their own preferences. E.g., my family ate homecooked meals together almost every night for my entire childhood. When we gathered with relatives, it was often around large meals and potlucks.
You all know this about food. But I think it’s part of why DoorDash feels aesthetically a bit off to me. I didn’t grow up religious — there wasn’t a lot that was sacred, in my family. Home-cooked meals were perhaps one of the ways we came closest to that feeling of sacred.
I wrote this post largely because I wasn’t quite sure why I made the decision to cold turkey quit DoorDash (at least for a month!), and I wanted to better understand myself. I notice I’m a bit proud of it all:
- I like that I followed my gut without having my explicit reasons clearly analyzed yet, and I like the level of trust I have in myself
- I feel some sense of teasing defiance towards my partner, who didn’t think I was serious when I originally talked about quitting DoorDash (but he supports my aspirations)
- I feel some fondness in seeing in myself this trait that was also in my Dad — the ability to just decide you’re going to change your life in some way, and then do that
- I appreciate the reflections that have come out of this decision, on alienation and why home cooking feels important to me
Wish me luck with the rest of the month. <3