Free Writing: I Seem to Be Pretty Free

I opened flomo on my computer and found it had been open the whole time. I just had no idea how long it had been since I'd used it.
I just finished dinner: qiaojiao beef. For a cutting meal, it's a pretty good pick, a bit better than braised chicken. Light, but still full of flavor.
Free writing means letting your thoughts flow naturally. I think you could call it "write whatever pops into your head."
I don't think moments like that come along often. Even most of the times I think I'm free, looking back, there seems to be another way to see them.
Take today. I worked in the morning and got home a little after three in the afternoon. In theory, everything after that was free time. So what did I freely do with it?
• The first thing I did when I got home was open Claude Code and check on the task I'd given the AI that morning. Yep, looks like it finished fine, but I haven't had time to check the results yet.
• Then I opened Gemini. On the bus this morning I'd been thinking about adjusting my strength training and starting a strength-building block. So I sent Gemini my training history and asked it to put together a 5×5 A/B strength program based on my situation.
• Once the plan was done, I went to the gym and trained for exactly one hour.
• Back home, out of habit, I mixed a protein shake and drank it, then had another glass or two of water. It's been getting hot lately, and after the gym my skin felt sticky and gross.
• But no time for that. It was almost five, so I opened Obsidian and started on my column. It used to come out on Mondays, but I have no backlog, and since last week some unusual circumstances pushed it to Friday. So now it can only come out on Fridays, and moving it back to Monday looks a bit hard.
By the time I finished the column it was past six. I let out a deep breath. Not bad. Work this morning had left my lower back a bit sore, and my back kept sending waves of aching. I left my workroom, lay down on the bed in the bedroom, and opened my phone to see everyone's free-writing check-ins in the group chat.
I seem to be pretty free, and yet somehow not free at all. I appear to have far more time than the average office worker, but I'm still stretched thin. Vibe coding, working out and managing my diet after I get home: isn't that just another kind of job? Free choices tangled up with my own will carry an invisible set of chains too.
I suddenly thought of what Nietzsche said: man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.
Oh well. I was tired, so I ordered takeout. Back to the start: it was qiaojiao beef, I finished it, and it tasted pretty good.
Then I sat down at the computer to do this free write. Yep, it really is way easier than writing my column or my weekly. Getting this far took only ten-something minutes.
It's 7:13 p.m. now. A bit hot, and I'm sweating slightly.
What next? Maybe I'll head out for a little walk 🚶.