It is easy to feel helpless in a hopeless place.
I didn’t quite realize that was where I was living until about an hour ago. It all cleared up this morning when I saw an empty fast food cup in the middle of our quiet culdesac and went to pick it up. I thought, at that moment, damn this feels like I am the old guy in the hood. Yet from where I am seated I am one of the youngest in this culdesac. Yet from where I am seated I have that same endgame feeling as everyone else who plans to live out their lives here. I started thinking about who I am around (neighbor-wise) and the level of energy and drive. It forced me to remember how easily influenced I am by my surroundings. That is part of what it means to be a social chameleon–or at least to try to be.
Every year I get worse. There was a time I’d pull out the story cubes on a weekly basis and drop new fiction in the blog. Ten minutes of new! Now its hard to imagine this blog being more than politics, old man whining, and the occasional sports post. The “where” excuse is still an excuse, but it rattles around in my psyche doing the kind of damage that makes a person want to get it out–to get out. Today I read an article in medium about a guy who is older than me, but maintains the biological health of a 30 year old. A large part of what he discussed was the mental game and self-care. Those are the two areas of my life I’ve neglected almost more than the physical. I cannot do what he does–we find our own strategies. I can choose awareness and to preference what should be most important in my life. It is hard here where the entire goal of the kids and neighbors is to not grind and instead to find more time to lazy. I fell deep into it.
Let’s see if I can get that foothold to start climbing out.
Some Thoughts:
- Absolutely Bonkers Headline of the Day: “Musk testimony dominated first week Musk v. Altman. ‘You can’t just steal a charity’” Musk is suing the AI juggernaut mostly because he left the company and now they are valued at roughly 15x more than his xAI. Now he’s crying foul. Business is odd. I ought to write some stories about how it works and why we’re fucked.