A full page of scribbled lines

 So, here we go again. The years is coming to an end, and it is only now that I feel like writing something. Here comes "next year I should write more" and all that stuff. The flip side is that next year should be very easy to write more than basically nothing.

 

  I intended to use this as a creative output, but I am always postponing it. It is better to do things than just consuming them but, in the end, it feels like I am stuck in some kind of loop, and never find the time to change. I have tried many things, some very promising but consistency is my weakness. Everything seems "plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines". Maybe it is time to try some small things and try to stick to them. However, it seems so very true that "life is what happens when you are busy making other plans". 

     I know I am the major culprit of this feeling, but it is not entirely my fault. Modern life is becoming a trap for attention and we have not changed to adapt and resist that.  Also, the world it seems to be transforming into a darker place, and if we are scared it is easier to search solace in the easy things, that are so in reach. And as we get older, and colder we pretend it is alright, but the world is changing so fast that is truly terrifying. 

    Opportunistic people are capitalizing on that for their own benefit, and as they benefit more, the make the world a scarier place which becomes a spiral of doom, where the big fish eats the smaller one and the rich get richer. Capitalism works that way, it only looks after the capital, and does not make long term plans, like herbivores stranded on an island with no predators that end up starving when overpopulation reaches a tipping point. So I would not be surprised if we are end up getting "laid-off", as employees of a company where the directives have an excel that reads red and they making it green by mass lay-offs and they pretend everything to work the same afterwards. 

    I digress,  as always. But I want to keep the flow of letters running with no plan whatsoever and this is what happens when you write the first thing that comes to mind. I do not want this to be half a page of scribbled lines, I want this to be a full page of scribbled lines. 

     I want to get a little bit better, I want to do better than consume. And I probably been feeling like I am not using my time properly for the majority of time since I have this blog or its original incarnation which, by the way, I cannot remember where it was. It was a long time ago, and things that used to be super clear are starting to fade in my memory. Which was never that good. That is a little scary. I remember listening, some years ago, to "Perfect Life" from Steven Wilson's "Hand cannot Erase" (I had to look up the name of the song) and remember thinking that it was impossible to forget almost everything of someone so important. But now, I am starting to believe that is possible. After all, I am so bad with names. I should make a list of everyone new I met because I cannot remember a new name.

    How long is a full page of scribbled lines? I have things to do, and I will try to continue this before it gets published, but I know myself and seems very unlikely. A quick search tells me somewhere between 40 to 50, so I have to keep babbling a little longer. This quick search was the new kind, where IA shows first, and at the end, if it sounds plausible and aligns with what you already believe, you take it for granted and never check everything else. I wonder, I wonder how far this will go, how would it change our lives. I have not many skills, and many of those few that I have I am not sure if they hold any value. Also, it makes up so lazy, taking a lot of mental exercise away from us, that I am afraid we will end up knowing nothing. It is utterly terrifying. Will we be discarded if we are of no use anymore?

    I had the intention to use the blog just for writing some short stories, like the ones in  the label Tell Tale Heart, but I could not figure how to do it. Any story about science fiction that I could came with seems to be old history regarding the current developments. I cannot imagine a future with technology that seems futuristic enough, nor I am being able to  concoct a story to showcase my fears which feels that is not something that has had already happened. Maybe I will try to find some railways for me to do it and try not to think to hard about that.

    Well that is enough. I have things to do and here is my full page of scribbled lines. I hope to write here again soon. We'll see...

 

The key is to be bored

Recently, I was bored. I started scrolling in the phone, so I wouldn't be bored. Then, a video caught my eye. It said something along the lines of "it is important to be bored". The bottom line was that it is important to be bored. Because if you are never bored, you will never think deeply. You will never have deep thoughts.

 Could that be the key? Maybe I did not write in a year because I was never bored? Was I always on the internet, passing the time, being bored because I did not want to be bored in an instinctive way?

 

Maybe. Maybe that is the key. To be bored.  And that way I might write once more. 

There is no rewinding

 Recently I tried the SNES mini. Is a nice callback of simpler times. Nostalgia plays a big role in our current society. Why else should anyone would like to collect  Masters Of the Universe figures? Probably because they give the collector good memories o just reminiscences of nice emotions, emotions that otherwise have faded away. And I believe that with age emotions dull, like an overused blade edge. When I was younger, I was terrified of a simple trip. And now, in similar circumstances I am just a little wary, but more or less confident. Probably because I passed through a similar situation before. Now, when I see younglings overwhelmed by situations that really do not matter that much, I try to remember how I would have felt in the the same situation. And yes, I would probably be overwhelmed too. The worst part is that, no matter how hard I try, I cannot make them feel any better.

       But I disgress. When talking about simpler times, I really do not know if the world as a whole was in fact better, or it was that we were little and had no real information about the world. I remember the Mafalda comics, and that parents were constantly worried by the possibility of a nuclear war. Is not it the same for us? There is always the constant threat of things going downhill. The world has improved in many aspects in the last decades, but as a whole, are we in a better situation now? Are we happier? Have we reached a peak? Or is it just that, with age, it seems that things can only get worse? Was there any generation that look into the future with hope while growing older? Maybe the generations that lived through a war. Those who lived in hell maybe can look at anything else and see the bright side.

 

    I'm still ¿disgressing? Going back to the videogame console, besides being a Nostalgic bait, it also has a new feature with the Rewind funcionality. If you mess up, you can undo your last seconds of game and try again. After trying that, I thought that is a pity that life does not have a rewind button. It is not the first time I thought of something similar and maybe there is a post here talking about that. Once, many, many years ago, while attending school, and in a period in which I playd a lot of videogames, I had the thought of loading a saved state if I performed poorly in the next test. I inmediatly noticed the absurdity of the thought, but I was very amused and intrigued that such a thought could ever have crossed my mind.

    However, thinking a little bit more about ir, I think I do not want a rewind button. If given the chance, there are few instances where I would have behaved differently. And in many of those cases I probably will not risk to lose my future in some bizare butterfly effect. Everyone loves a good what if, but only if I could load my saved game.

  I do not have any major regrets. I have some, but I still can live with them. Anyway, I am happy now. What I really fear is losing what I have. If I think about it, the fact that our current society works is nothing sort of a miracle. Furthermore, we are fragile, mortal beings, it only would take a little stroke of bad luck and you are done. Or worse, you could lose something or someone you love. Moreover, I feel like I am in the top of the hill, and things are going to go south. But maybe that comes with age. As we get older maybe we accept the facts that we are not younger anymore and that we will not live forever. That is scary, very, very scary. But maybe, little, by little, we can come to terms with that. Maybe it is like driving a new car that is working a little worse little by little. You know how to make it start when it is cold or what window not to open, until, one day, it is time to let it go. Who knows.

   By the way, how is it possible that in the top songs of this month there are, at the same time, "the Sound of Silence" and "Forever Young"? Wonders of this age, that I understand a little less with each passing day. Maybe when is time to say farewell to my car I would understand the world so little that I would not mind letting it go.