Embracing a more healthy lifestyle reveals an ugly truth: what is easily reachable and feels good is usually harmful. There’s my list:

1. alcohol;
2. sugar-heavy drinks: soda, juice;
3. convenience foods, most of them meat- or cheese-based;
4. chocolate, sweets, etc.

Want a hamburger? Pizza? Beer? Candy bars? No problem; you can get them at any petrol station at any hour. Want some carrots at 2AM? Haha! Eat grit, fucker! Being vegetarian is lame, right?

* * *

I found a 24/7 vegetable store in my neighborhood. Technically, it’s a petrol station – but they also sell a really nice variety of vegetables, grains, seeds etc. The first time I saw it – and it was at 1AM – I was so flabbergasted I stood outside for a few minutes until an employee came out to ask if I’m okay. It was simply so surprising that anything besides fast food can be sold at night that my mind couldn’t process the information.

PS. Groceries in London are open until 1-2AM. It was one of those “aha!” moments when I realized this. There’s demand – so there’s supply. Too bad it doesn’t work in Poland this way; supermarkets aside, all you can get after 6PM is basically junk food.

There’s a certain pull I feel: a feeling towards things physical. After all, why do I prefer black & white film photography over digital work? Embedded development over software development? Devices over web services? Talking over texting? Preparing my own meals over buying them? There’s a pattern in this.

Making a physical object is a craft in itself. All the effort spent on designs, ideas and plans fades in comparison with the joy and satisfaction of actually making something. It’s a simple pleasure, the same one that our ancestors felt thousands of years ago when they built their first crude tools. Over the centuries and millennia, man-made physical objects embodied quality. Maybe that’s why I find them beautiful.