It’s up to us to be happy with what we have. It’s up to us to realize that all these adjustments are optional and to ignore them if they make life worse. The constant pursuit of perfection is a hamster wheel we all have to get off at some point. Hamster wheels aren’t bad, but when we mistake the churning for real progress things get messed up.
But this article? It’s really just adding one more option to your search results. All those bars, weighed against an ever present option to say “fuck it” and get the cartridge bike. You still have to decide what’s right for you. It’s not stepping off the hamster wheel. It’s welding in another rung.
You’ve identified a hole in your soul best described as consumerism. We all have it to some extent and try desperately to patch it with things. Surely once we have the right things happiness will come. And as you recognize, it’ll never actually work. But your solution is to patch it with another thing! To tell the industry that the reason you’re unhappy is they don’t make the right product.
Until you can browse that list of handlebars at peace and just pick something “good enough” it won’t matter. Cause no matter what bike you ride, it will still be you riding it. Still you wondering if maybe that other cartridge bike would suit you better, or wishing you had a regular bike so you could try a different rise.
March 10, 2022, 8:15 a.m. - blackhat
It’s up to us to be happy with what we have. It’s up to us to realize that all these adjustments are optional and to ignore them if they make life worse. The constant pursuit of perfection is a hamster wheel we all have to get off at some point. Hamster wheels aren’t bad, but when we mistake the churning for real progress things get messed up. But this article? It’s really just adding one more option to your search results. All those bars, weighed against an ever present option to say “fuck it” and get the cartridge bike. You still have to decide what’s right for you. It’s not stepping off the hamster wheel. It’s welding in another rung. You’ve identified a hole in your soul best described as consumerism. We all have it to some extent and try desperately to patch it with things. Surely once we have the right things happiness will come. And as you recognize, it’ll never actually work. But your solution is to patch it with another thing! To tell the industry that the reason you’re unhappy is they don’t make the right product. Until you can browse that list of handlebars at peace and just pick something “good enough” it won’t matter. Cause no matter what bike you ride, it will still be you riding it. Still you wondering if maybe that other cartridge bike would suit you better, or wishing you had a regular bike so you could try a different rise.