 Those of you who read my blog will know that this year I have somewhat of a interesting resolution kind of thing that I'm doing, and that is I am not going to go to any restaurants this year. And I've decided that for a couple different reasons. The main reason, you might think it's some kind of absurd asceticism, like I'm just depriving myself of something for like some spiritual reason, and that's actually very much not the case. I just have to say that over the past, I mean definitely in the past like two years, okay, things have gotten so expensive and so annoying. I find myself every time I'm going to a restaurant, I am just constantly, even if I'm not complaining about it, I'm like, oh my goodness, I wish I could go back to when I was a teenager and I could pay five dollars to be full. I wish we could still have five dollar footlongs. I wish I could buy two pounds of Chinese food for five bucks, but you can't anymore, to get like a basic entree at any restaurant. It's at least like fifteen dollars, and that's like a girly entree that's only gonna fill up like little kids, okay? In order to be absolutely full when I go to a restaurant, I have to basically pay at least 25, sometimes 30 bucks, okay? That's just how I look at things. Aside from that, I'm never satisfied. So if I'm never satisfied by restaurants, and it's been that way since, you know, thanks to President Brandon and Inflation over the past two years, why should I just go to restaurants expecting this disappointment? Especially when I go with other people, and everyone is like low-key complaining about how much of a rip-off it is. Why should I go to a restaurant? That's what I'm thinking about. So I'm not going to. I'm gonna solve this, I'm gonna solve this problem by just not going to one. And it's already been like halfway through January, and I have to say that it's already been a resounding success. Or it doesn't feel like, I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything, but I've been doing a mental tally of how much money I've saved, and I think it's actually between 100 and 200 bucks, which, you know, normally I think of myself as very minimalist. I would never spend that much on restaurants anyway, but I think I just had like more opportunities to go to restaurants and stuff like that. So either way, I've saved a good deal of money. In fact, even more than I expected. And firstly, I want to talk about some of the windfall benefits of this, okay? Because firstly, saving money, well really, it's not about saving money. It's about saving disappointment, okay? I'm avoiding disappointment. I don't mind spending money for something that's worth the money. But whenever I get a check, and I'm like, wow, they just ripped me off. This is so awkward. I can't believe I have to pay that. That's something I want to avoid. But either way, so I have been saving money. I have been saving disappointment. I think also there are some other things contributing to why I wanted to do this as a kind of a resolution thing. One is like, I want to be more thoughtful of like when I purchase things and when I eat, which I mean usually I think of myself as pretty like continent in terms of, I don't know, impulse control. I like to think I'm very continent. But I think it's easier to just avoid it altogether and avoid like the kind of temptation. And also like when I'm doing stuff like traveling or you know, making trips to different towns to do chores or whatever. I'd like to just kind of, like I'd like to have to plan around that. I'd like to have to say, okay, I'm gonna have my food ready. I know what I'm gonna eat. I'm not just gonna like impulsively decide when I'm there what I'm gonna do, okay? So that I think is my thinking. It encourages me to like plan for trips better. This weekend I'm actually going on a trip where normally I would be stopping at restaurants and stuff like that. Even stopping at restaurants alone. I've complained about that. Like I there's something it's like bowling alone. Like one of the most pathetic looking things is when people are at someone is at a restaurant alone. And I always hated being that guy, especially when I'm traveling because that's usually when I did it. But so I'm gonna plan around that, prepare food beforehand, and just think about when and how I'm gonna eat. And worse comes to worse. If I ever need, if I'm on a trip and I need to eat something, I will go literally to the grocery store and get something that I can prepare in whatever means possible, right? I'm pretty serious about this. And the blog post and an email of people when I put out this blog post saying I was gonna do this. Some people emailed me saying, bro, are you gonna stop at a deli? Are you gonna stop at a coffee shop? Are you gonna stop at the gas station? No, no, no, no, no, of course not. And I'm definitely not, especially with a gas station. Like I'm not gonna replace restaurants with something even worse than a restaurant. Like that's just ridiculous. Like it's not about getting rid of convenience because like you want to make yourself suffer. It's about getting rid of convenience so you think more about the stuff that you're doing in your life and you have to like plan it, you know what I mean? And one of the other little benefits, little windfall benefit that I've had of this, I'm kind of walking backwards because I think this looks better than this. Like in terms of the lighting, I don't know. It's very vain, but I'm gonna do it. I just like it. One of the windfall benefits that I didn't expect is actually, you know, I realize there are some times when let's say I'm doing work at my house and oh, I kind of need to do this chore. I could drive into town, I could drive 20 minutes to this city and do this and pick up this at the store. And while I'm there, I guess I'll go to a restaurant, right? Just kind of accidentally. Well, I realized that a lot of times I don't really need to make all those separate drives to cities, you know what I mean? I could wait a day or two and do a bunch of things in one big trip, right? And what I realized is when I cut out the idea of going to restaurants, I did less unnecessary trips because my brain was actually just rationalizing. I really just was bored and didn't want to make food for myself, so I wanted to go to a restaurant. So I'm not just cutting out restaurants, I'm actually saving a lot of gas money I didn't realize because it seems I guess I was like just kind of impulsively saving for that as well. Anyway, so those are the kind of benefits I'm talking about. Again, saving money, saving disappointment, but also kind of thinking more about the kind of stuff that I'm doing in my life. Now, I've done weird resolution. I'm not usually a New Year's resolution kind of guy, and I mean, really, I just decided to do this around the time of New Year's. But I do remember back in 2020, I had the resolution of like not buying clothes from anything that wasn't like American made. That was actually kind of hard. Well, I mean, it's not like I buy that much clothes, but whatever. It was a worthwhile experiment. But either way, I think this is going to go pretty well. And of course, I do reserve the right to make exceptions for it if there are, you know, let's say I'm at some event, I'm at some big thing where I'm meeting a bunch of people. I'm not going to be like, I'm not going to go to a restaurant, blah, blah, blah. I mean, I might like try and throw other possibilities around. But if it's a big event with a bunch of people, a very special circumstance, I'm not going to be like, I'm not going to go to this restaurant for this, that or the other reason. Really, the whole idea of it is to cut restauranting, unnecessary restauranting out of my daily life, which has been a lot easier to do than I thought. We'll see how it goes. Originally, I said I was going to like reevaluate like maybe I'm going to start strict and maybe like reevaluate as I go on, like, oh, maybe I'll make exceptions for a deli or maybe I'll make exceptions for that. But honestly, I don't think that's that's going to happen, to be honest. I think the more difficult thing is like planning for trips. Because, you know, I'm the kind of person, especially when I'm going on vacation. Traditionally, I've just gone to restaurants all the time, basically. I mean, I very rarely make food for myself on a vacation, but that's got to stop. That's pretty degenerate. That's pretty lazy anyway. And again, even when I'm on, it sucks to go on vacation and be unpleased by the, you know, how bad you're getting ripped off at restaurants as well. All right, so that's all. I think that's all I have to say here. So I encourage you, actually, if you're interested, you don't have to start on New Year's Day, but you could try something similar yourself. I think it's probably a good idea. I don't think you'll regret it. I don't know, bring back picket. You got to bring back picnicking or something like that. I don't know. Force it on your friends. Some people in my life have been like, Luke, you're just going to be so annoying to us because you're not going to go to restaurants and stuff like that, but it hasn't been a problem yet. It's at least if it's been that big of a problem, no one's complained about it. But you know, the whole idea is replacing it with something that is just as social, but not, I mean, it's not a restaurant. Yeah, bring back picnicking. That's all I got to say. Anyway, I forgot how I used to end videos. Oh yeah, that's right. I never had a way of ending videos. Goodbye.