My tinnitus and an HVAC system somewhere nearby are the only sounds I distinguish in the predawn quiet. Even the nearby highway seems quite silent, although it is Monday, just past 06:00. The morning is foggy and mild and the winter weather that is pounding the east and midwest with blizzards and drifting snow is something I read in the news. We haven’t had much winter weather here.
The trail is wet with recent rain. A dense fog wraps me and obscures the details as I walk. It is chilly, but not really cold, and I’m feeling (mostly) over the cold that slowed me down last week. Colleagues who traveled last week are reporting in with reports of illness, and taking the day to recover. I guess I’m glad I didn’t go. I certainly enjoyed the time at home. My Traveling Partner has been doing pretty well lately, and we’ve been able to enjoy ourselves and each other more.
Today? Just a Monday. Half day of work, then the afternoon at the VA for my annual visit. I shrug as if I were saying it aloud. Sitting here at my halfway point with no view, before sunrise, just the fog and my tinnitus, I find myself quite unexpectedly deeply contented. This moment is mine. It’s not fancy, but neither is it noisy, troubled, nor complicated. I sit with my contentment, appreciating it as it is.
I sigh to myself, looking down the trail, as it disappears into the fog. Useful metaphor, I think. The wind changes direction, and the fog begins to dissipate. I smile, and stretch as I stand. Seems like a good time to begin again.
Seen and unseen, in the predawn darkness. (Different camera settings would have revealed more. Feels like there’s a metaphor there.)
I’m sipping my coffee – still too hot to drink – and thinking about writing. I’m not really writing quite yet, no ideas. I had a thought yesterday afternoon…another yesterday evening…and as I drifted off to sleep last night, a great idea for a title came to mind (I don’t remember it now). It’s that kind of morning. I am “an empty vessel” this morning. This is rare for me. I nearly always sit down to an empty page, and simply write. Another person might reach for some app or write a prompt for an LLM… I just sit sipping my coffee and letting my thoughts, such as they are, guide my fingers.
I am a human being, writing for other human beings.
I am generally employed with companies that are “AI forward” in some significant measure. AI is the new “revenue engine”. Investors and shareholders want to see “AI” in the quarterly presentation decks and annual meetings. They don’t necessarily understand it, or have any idea what “AI” really means in any given context. Companies sometimes take advantage of this, using the language and terms of AI in marketing materials, but without changing anything in their product, services, or app. In this environment, most people pay lip service to the AI hype, whether or not they are impassioned “true believers”. In my own role, I consider myself fortunate; it’s part of the job to take a skeptical view, to find the flaws, to be watchful and cautious, and to reduce risk. I rarely use AI in my work, instead I scrutinize it in the work of others. This suits me, and I enjoy it. I am not an AI fan, and I am not interested in hype. I maintain sufficient proficiency with AI to be able to detect the problems – and I’m focused on those. Can AI do fast work? Sure. It’s superficial and rather same-y, though, and it makes a lot of mistakes (and it absolutely makes shit up and cites references to work that does not exist) and has no comprehension; it does not have an “understanding” of a single word it produces. Worse still, as it works it degrades the working skills of the users who seek its services. Human primate intelligence does not benefit from the use of AI tools.
I absolutely do not use AI to write. I like writing. I like seeing words creeping across the page that have come from my own thoughts, to the page by way of my skillful hands on the keyboard. I enjoy the rhythm and the sound. I enjoy the sensation of communicating and of “being heard”. I have born witness to writers using AI and seen the damage to their ability to write unassisted, as time goes on. Creators who create without AI risk giving up much if they capitulate to using it. Thanks, I’d rather not. Creators who exclusively use AI to create are not actually creators at all (imo) – until and unless they learn to create on their own, in the medium of their choice, without an AI crutch. Few seem to – although I don’t know why they would bother, if the point is “make some money”, and the AI slop they generate does so for them.
I sip my coffee and reflect on progress and technology, and whether humanity has a shot at long-term survival in the face of our foolishness, violence, and short-sighted greed. I suspect we do not, and that saddens me. We’re pretty interesting creatures – seems a shame to put ourselves on the path to extinction, but we may be honestly too stupid to be good planetary stewards who work together as a global culture towards a greater good for all. We are too easily divided and controlled by petty bullshit. There are too many greedy billionaires (I realize how redundant that is, as I write the words), too few wellsprings of real wisdom and goodness, and the rest of us are kept distracted by the seeming urgency of earning a living day-to-day, too busy to look up from our present task to see whether the world really is burning, or do much to change that, once we discover that it is.
I sigh to myself. The week is already almost over. If I focus on work, it feels very much as if this time has been empty and rather pointless, to me personally. There is more to my experience (and my humanity) than my work (meaning my “gainful employment” with one corporate overlord or another). I write. I paint. I laugh. I feel. I explore. I contemplate. I enjoy walking beaches and forest trails. I like the sparkle of glitter, and of seeing the lights of cities from a great height. I enjoy a walk with no destination. I like a drive from wherever I am to some distant horizon. I enjoy a few minutes of idle conversation with a stranger – and I like walking away from it, into some lovely solitary moment. I read and I think, and I seek out things to see. I write poetry. I paint sunrises and moments by the fireside. I have deep discusses with friends, solving nothing in a practical way, but deepening our connection. I love deeply, and enjoy a profound partnership with my beloved Traveling Partner. (Isn’t my capacity for love more important than my capacity for staring into spreadsheets day after day?) I have endured much, and I continue to be and to become. I am one human being, being human. No AI needed (or wanted).
There’s a work day ahead, and I amuse myself by recalling a favorite way of demonstrating AI flaws (I find), which is using it to summarize big group meetings. For anyone who was at the meeting (and paying attention), the tells and flaws are obvious; AI is sometimes (often)(commonly) very wrong about what was said, who said it, and what the “take aways” from the discussion are. It doesn’t reason or comprehend, so it doesn’t actually “understand” what the salient points of a discussion were. It’s just playing fill in the blank and counting up words. AI is “stupid fast” – meaning that it is both stupid, and also very fast. Idiomatic language, accents, and variations in individual clarity of speech result in some hilariously “off” transcriptions of conversations. It would be quite humorous, if it weren’t so terrifying that in spite of these limitations people are using these tools and making decisions that affect real people with the slop turned out by AI. Yeesh. Do better, people. The survival of humanity likely depends on you being smart enough to preserve (and develop) your own cognitive skills and tools, your ability to reason and make good decisions, and your actual sentience. Choose wisely. Take the time to learn to do the things you want to do, instead of trying to cheat your way through life and work with fucking “AI” (it isn’t intelligent, at all).
I breathe, exhale, and relax. I let all that go and sit enjoying my coffee here in a real physical space, listening to the sounds of voices in the background (real people busy with real things). I exist in this physical real place. Don’t you? (What are you doing to improve it? Anything? The clock is ticking…) I smile a good-morning to the barista who greets me in passing, and waggle my fingertips at her as something like a wave, without lifting my hands from the keyboard. Actual human primates observed in their natural environment. I chuckle, aware that we are not necessarily “domesticated” creatures, and that our behavior can be wildly unpredictable, even dangerous. Funny that we adopt such airs of grandeur and dignity, so often – we can be vicious, vile, messy, and prone to casually spreading disease. I sigh to myself, hoping to do a little better at being the person I most want to be today, compared to yesterday. Incremental change over time is effective, if slow. I become what I practice; there’s no choice there, it is what it is. The choice is in what I choose to practice.
What are you practicing? Will that help you become the person you most want to be? The journey is the destination. Is it time to begin again?
Seems to be very effective so far… probably doesn’t hurt that the path is mine, and that I choose it myself.
My sleep was poor last night. Frequently interrupted by one noise or another, but also sometimes just because I simply woke up for no obvious reason. It’s fine. I’ve had a problematic relationship with sleep all my life. I finally woke at a time sufficiently close to the time I generally get up that I went ahead and got up. Would it be coffee or walking? The forecast suggests coffee – another freezing morning. I dress and head out, hoping that I avoided waking anyone, and grateful that in spite of my restless night I’m not feeling groggy.
Each time I woke during the night, I’d turn over or shift the covers or fluff my pillow seeking new comfort, eventually returning to sleep (once waking from a deep sleep surprised to find myself waking; I had been dreaming I was awake, laying there in the darkness lol). I wasn’t stressed or anxious over being wakeful, it happens. Insomnia lost a lot of its power over me when I stopped being anxious about the insomnia itself, or the lost hours of sleep. (Now and then, if wakefulness overtakes me more thoroughly, I just get up, read or write or paint or meditate for awhile, but last night wasn’t that kind of night.) I woke often, returned to sleep eventually, and repeated that experience several times during the night, about every 90 minutes or so. I’m okay for most values of okay, in spite of that. I couldn’t get by on this kind of shitty sleep indefinitely (although I have in years past). I may be tired to the point of being fairly dull or actually stupid later today; I remind myself to get important cognitively dense tasks and work requiring focus knocked out early in the day.
Perspective is a big deal; the spiders in life are not actually as big as they sometimes look.
The restless night causes me less concern that this feeling lately that I “just don’t want to be part of any of this”, and a latent yearning to “walk away” from “all of it”. I know myself pretty well. There’s nothing specifically “wrong” such that resolving that would clear up this feeling, it’s more to do with just not being easily able to get a particular need met well in a way that satisfies it (a need for solitude and a break from emotional labor). I struggle to escape awareness of all the madness going on in the world, and every day there’s some new bit of unbelievable petty unfathomable craziness from the demented elder cohort leading the nation (the cruelty of this adminstration is astonishing and revolting). It stresses me out even to the minmal degree news reaches me at all. (I’m really trying to avoid it for my own sanity.) I’m still – to an extent – in a caregiving role, and present circumstances being what they are (economically, financially, socially…) I can’t just drop everything and check-in to a beachfront hotel, turn my notifications off for a a long weekend, and just paint, and write, and be alone. (In 2023, I could get an off-season room on the coast for $40-$50 per night, right on the beach. Now even off-season rooms are $200 per night at old rundown motels on the other side of the highway, with no view or beach access.) It’s definitely too cold (for me) for camping, too. The time is not now. I’m tied to this experience by the requirements of work and life, the limitations of my circumstances, and I’m reluctant to tell people I care about to fuck off (for awhile) and just leave me alone. I want very much to meet my need for solitude without causing anyone pain or suffering or hurt feelings (creating chaos and drama while seeking to escape chaos and drama defeats the purpose entirely). Anyway, I’m painfully aware that regardless, I’d be dragging my baggage with me, and it is in fact something within myself that I’m seeking to evade, escape, or “fix”. Reliably. I sigh at the inner recognition and acknowledgement. So… what to do about it, though? I sip my coffee and reflect on that awhile.
As with any choice, there are verbs involved.
I find myself feeling sympathetic towards the Anxious Adventurer – this “self-awareness”, and “self-reflection” stuff isn’t without its challenges, and this human journey that is so much about self-discovery and growth is not an easy one. We are each having our own experience on a journey without a map.
Walk your own path, choose your own verbs, and build your own practices.
It is Friday. The weekend is ahead. I breathe, exhale, and relax. A week of working from my employer’s San Francisco office follows the weekend (I fly down Tuesday, return home Friday night). I smile at myself for the tempting thought that I might get some solitary time, if only in the very early morning and in the evenings after work, while I am in San Francisco, but it didn’t work out that way last time at all. The opportunity to collaborate with colleagues in a shared space resulted in longer work hours, and no time alone of note. The company puts us up in a comfortable clean hotel, and I’m grateful for that. I will probably sleep well, but I don’t expect much solitary time, or leisure unless I make a point to carve out time for myself and set very firm boundaries. I smirk at myself knowingly; it’s a coin toss. That’s why I keep practicing; I clearly need the practice. lol
Perspective is sometimes about the view from a singular moment. If I stand somewhere else, doesn’t my perspective change? 🙂
I sigh to myself. I’m okay for most values of “okay”. Life is pretty good, most of the time. Hell, I may not have slept well, but the morning is not as cold as forecast, my headache isn’t bad, my arthritis pain is well-managed – I feel okay. Things could be worse. A lot worse. I’m bitching that I don’t have everything, and can’t satisfy every need I have or soothe every emotion I feel. Shit, we’ve all got problems, right? This journey isn’t effortless or infinitely pleasant, and our “second dart suffering” is the larger share of our suffering for much of our mortal life – and we can make choices that reduce that a lot. I breathe, exhale, and relax, and make a point to let go from clinging to my suffering. In this moment, here, now, things are pretty much fine. Good coffee. Warm cafe. Pleasant music in the background. A weekend just a few hours away. Less than usual physical pain. What is there to suffer over, really? I mean, right here, right now? I’m among the very fortunate; I have a paying job, a cozy home, medical care, potable drinking water, and there are not bombs dropping here, nor am I at high risk of being assaulted or kidnapped by the government thugs roaming our communities in masked packs. Viewed that way, it’s more than a little annoying and self-indulgent to sit here with my hot coffee on a cold day bitching about not being able to get away (from my pleasant life)! I chuckle softly to myself; I am a human being, being quite human.
My coffee has gone cold. Tepid, at least. I don’t really care; I notice and move on. The clock keeps ticking. The music plays on. Daybreak will soon touch the horizon. The pings on my consciousness of various notifications start piling up. Seems like a good moment to begin again. I wonder where this path leads?
Once we choose our path, we’ve still got to walk it. The journey is the destination. 🙂
I woke with a song in my head, and a lingering recollection of strange dreams, rich with layers of meaning, hinting at the importance of living life, rather than merely enduring it or haplessly existing while someone else calls the shots.
… Thanks, Iggy Pop, you definitely know some things about living life…
Choose. It’s your life, live it. Don’t just stand there, do something. It is your path to choose, your journey to make, your destination to select, and your success to define your own way. You have a lot of power to create change. There are, of course, verbs involved. Go where you will in life, no one else will do the work for you… but don’t let that stop you from making the journey.
I reach the trailhead before daybreak and sit with my thoughts awhile. The Giftmas holiday season is, at least for me, a fairly introspective time. I think about where I am, where I’m going, how I’ll get there. I think about my relationships: personal, professional, familial, and now, in the 21st century, even the parasocial experiences that may shape my thinking.
Daybreak comes.
This morning I wait for the sun. Why not? It’s a choice that also serves to improve my Traveling Partner’s experience; he’ll maybe get to sleep in a bit.
When the sunrise begins, with streaks of magenta in a cloudy sky, I stretch and grab my cane to get started down the trail. No rain this morning, but the ground is soggy, and I see that the farm fields on the other side of the highway are becoming a shallow seasonal lake (which it does every year, once the rains come). It is a favorite resting spot of migrating geese and ducks.
It is a new day, and a new chance to begin again.
When I reach my halfway point, the sun is up, hidden behind heavy gray clouds. It was lovely to see the colorful sunrise. I sit on a fence rail at the edge of the marsh, listening and watching, breathing and being. Sometimes that’s enough. A “lust for life” doesn’t require an Iggy Pop level of energy (in my opinion), it’s more about will, and choice, and presence. It’s about being – and becoming. Living life is an active process with so many options and opportunities to choose that we may feel inclined to narrow them down somehow, even telling ourselves we have “no other choice”. That’s rarely true.
I sigh to myself, then correct my posture, and inhale the morning air more deeply, filling my lungs with it, as I fill my heart with this finite, precious, unrepeatable moment. I exhale slowly, letting go of everything that is not here, now, in this moment in which I’m existing. I repeat this exercise several times, feeling lighter, and free of baggage (which I admit, I visualize as having set down on the ground in a pile nearby). I hear geese calling, and see huge flocks taking to the air as groups, filling the sky overhead as they pass. They also have a path to follow. I find myself wondering if they have choices?
Tis the season. A season of migrating birds overhead, and queues in retail spaces. It is a season of sharing and of celebration, for many. For some it is a season of hardship, struggle, and grief. Sometimes tempers are short, and people impatient with each other, but also so very kind and willing to help. Human primates are complicated. I sit thinking about how to be the best person I can, with what I know now. I have more, better, tools and a clearer idea of who I am and who I want to become over the course of this mortal lifetime. I catch myself wondering what might be “next”, just as the rain begins to fall.
Fat cold raindrops spatter my glasses. There’s no cover nearby and I didn’t wear my rain poncho. Choices. Consequences. I get to my feet. I look down the trail toward my next destination. Some shopping. Laundry. Wrap some holiday gifts. Get ready for a new work week. Sure, it’s pretty routine ordinary stuff, but there is room to fit joy in there, and love, and even optimism. Choices. Choose wisely.
Sometimes things feel harder than they seem they should. Misinformation everywhere. The practical details of life getting more costly every week, every month. Paychecks don’t keep up with that unless you happen to be among the very affluent (and then it’s less that the paycheck keeps up than maybe you don’t need to notice the minutiae or count the pennies). (Remember pennies?) Balancing the load takes up a lot of mental bandwidth, even for folks who are very organized and pretty prepared. It’s exhausting.
…It’s okay to admit it when you’re tired…
My head aches. My arthritis pain is actually making me feel ill. I’m distracted from one priority task by the next ostensibly higher priority task. Subjectively, I feel like I “used to be better at juggling all of this”, but I’m not sure that’s literally true. I suspect I’m just feeling a bit overwhelmed by the lingering artifacts of chaos that arrived ahead of me (to this job) or which defy attempts to bring order (the chaos and damage in my own head), or perhaps I am succumbing to the stress of watching the decline of democracy, in spite of my attempt to avoid spending potentially productive time on that bullshit. (It’s not bullshit because it isn’t real, it’s bullshit because it doesn’t need to be this way, and we somehow chose this shit in spite of being told what was coming if we did.)
I’m tired. Not because I’m working my ass off on some construction job site, or laboring on a factory floor, or in a fulfillment warehouse, or on my feet all day. Brain tired. Soul tired. It’s feeling too much like a hamster wheel, some days, and too little like living.
…This too will pass…
I breathe, exhale, and relax. I take a moment to scrounge in my handbag for another dose of Rx pain management, only to discover I’ve already taken that, and I’m already “maxed out” for a work day. Well, shit. I sigh to myself, finish the watered-down dregs of my morning coffee, knowing I’ll likely regret that later tonight. I pull myself upright, and pause to offer someone a compliment for work well done. I find giving others sincere encouragement or expressing gratitude for some task or service someone has provided often distracts me from the pain I’m in. Certainly it’s a better reaction to pain than sobbing or throwing a tantrum. I’d happily just sit somewhere gazing out a window, letting my mind empty itself of concerns, and even thoughts. Parking this fragile vessel and leaving her to idle for awhile would feel pretty good, but… I don’t have time.
…The clock is ticking…
It helps to have a break, and I’m glad I took one. It’s not enough, but it will do for the moment. I imagine the stern look on the face of the woman in the mirror, right now, she knows I could do a better job of taking care of myself than I often do. I make her a promise I probably won’t keep, and hope that she understands. It has to be enough… it’s the best I can do right now. Isn’t it?
…”No. Do better.” I imagine her answering, “You matter. You can at least take a proper fucking break…”
I sigh again, and get up from my desk to take a proper break. The sun is shining. I go outside and get some fresh air, and watch the squirrels play for a few minutes, and stretch. It’s chilly but not cold. The sunshine feels good. Now I feel ready to begin again.
Evening Light 