Everything Is Never Going To Be Just Right
I need a daily reminder of this concept from the really quite excellent Meditation for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman:
This portion of your limited time, the part before you’ve managed to get on top of everything, or dealt with your procrastination problem, or graduated or found a partner or retired; and before the survival of democracy or the climate have been secured: this part matters just as much as any other and arguably even more than any other, since the past is gone and the future hasn’t occurred yet, so right now is the only time that really exists.
I seem to always be eagerly waiting for everything to be just right. Then, I can begin.
Well, Ansgar, everything is never going to be just right.
So start living already.
Elsewhere Today
- US fertility rate reached a new low in 2024
Well, of course it did. Choosing to have kids isn’t done in a vacuum. When that choice is complicated by a social safety net that either doesn’t exist or is rapidly being dismantled, the choice to not have a kid is going to get picked more and more often. - Pro wrestling legend Hulk Hogan dies at age 71
It’s a start, I guess… 🤷🏽♂️😈
Unhealthy But Honest
All I know is that I’ve been in quite the funk the last few. My frustration with the general direction of my corner of the world is huge, both on a macro level (I mean, have you seen the idiocy that passes for the United States in 2025?) and the micro (just general discontent in where I’m at on a personal level right now).
I’m not sure what to say about the macro, other than the lack of any real means of affecting any change is lost to me. I’m in rural nowhere in a state that is incredibly red, surrounded locally by the same, and am hard-pressed to discover a way to gtfo while my in-laws are alive and local. Yes, I know, I should stay and find some way to work to change things. But so few here want that; I will just let them fully embrace what they are asking for.
On the micro, I finally, again, declared Facebook bankruptcy for the time being as I, again, turned a keep-up-with-my-peers social network into predominately a shitty angry news source. About the last thing I need is another of those.
And those in-laws I mentioned? Maybe not full MAGA, but supportive enough of that side of the aisle that the difference is in title only. Because of the harm they and their ilk have done to this country, to my wife (their fucking daughter) while she tries to remain cancer-free, and to my son (their fucking grandchild) and whatever remains of his future, all that’s left of me for them is rage.
Yes, I know, maybe a little unfair. Probably. After all, they’re just 80+-year-old ignorants who refuse to change despite living through the easiest fucking times. But soon enough they’ll be long dead, while my son (again, their grandchild) gets to deal with a worse future they’ve helped usher in for most of his existence.
Fuck ’em, let them rot in the streets.
What To Do, What To DO?
Seriously, what the hell am I supposed to do? I’m stuck in rural dumbfuckery, surrounded by those who will excuse anything by their representatives so long as there’s an [R] behind their name, despite how all those with an [R] behind their name seem inexplicably hellbent on destroying anything that might improve anyone’s life.
Meanwhile, the Dems, at best, clutch pearls. And god forbid their electorate choose an actual progressive - they’ll spend all their time (and the three bucks they’re constantly begging me for) to squander the possibility.
Give me a party I can actually work for, and you’ve got me.
But right now, I feel politically homeless.
Discussions Build Humanity
I’ve been thoroughly enjoying the last few rounds at the Catherine Project.The gist of the project involves slowly reading literature classics with weekly small online group discussions about them. For instance, this spring, after spending over 50 years on this planet, I finally managed to read and deeply discuss Homer’s The Iliad and The Odyssey over the sixteen week session. Reading at that pace gives you a chance to chew on the text, to give it a chance to speak to you. And the weekly two-hour discussions with a handful of curious strangers was something I eagerly looked forward to every week.
This summer, though, with all of this, I just needed a break. I longed for a bit of the mindless. And for a few weeks, I blissfully was. But I still missed that slow, close reading and, most especially, the discussions. So, I convinced the family to do a miniature version of that project. Not only do we get to read a few (hopefully) good books over the summer, but it also forces a house full of decided introverts to sit down and have some deeper conversations. A book-and-a-half in, I’m going to call it a resounding success, and I have a new thing to look forward to every week (and I don’t think I’m even the only one!).
The one thing that this activity has made particularly apparent to me is how almost entirely pointless social media is. Let me ramble my way to my point…
The book we’re reading right now is Lois Lowry’s The Giver, and one of the points that my son brought up during our first discussion on it was how the book’s community’s rules ended up ensuring every conversation never went deeper than the surface level. The citizens are subtly and not-so-subtly trained from birth to avoid any uncomfortable/interesting/novel discourse. Those ideas may arise, but only in a confessional sort of way, and then the conversation is redirected back to the mundane. And without those discussions occurring, the community is stripped of much of what makes them human.
Social media isn’t quite that direct. No one is actively policing the redirection away from uncomfortable. From the interesting. From the novel. But the corporations hosting our posts just want us to keep watching those ads, and a lot of time spent in a single discussion isn’t going to get our eyeballs in front of enough of them. So they incentivize scrolling more, seemingly hiding posts we swear we just saw, even advocating the posting of the same content repeatedly from some of the niche news sources in order to get more interaction from their followers. However, in doing so, the conversations around that content never have the chance to go deeper than the surface. Sure, I’ve had a few decent back-and-forths in my day. But far more often, the thread just withers and dies before it even has a chance because it’s impossible for anyone to discover in the fire hose that is all of them.
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter (lest I haven’t said it today, fuck you Elon!), Threads, Bluesky, Mastodon, Reddit. All the same, never any depth. And just like the community in The Giver, without those discussions occurring we’re equally stripped of much of what makes us human. And we need so much more of that today.
You Know That Feeling?
You know that feeling when you let yourself unfocus and allow your mind to go wherever it will? Look off into the distance, no special thought or goal or anything in that foreground area of your consciousness, letting the thoughts come but largely ignoring them?
We should all do that more often.
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