It is Wednesday, September 4th, 2024. I haven’t been motivated to write in my journal for some time but have a free moment as well as a modicum of motivation.
After I wrote the paragraph above my neighbor poked his head over the fence and we had a chat. They moved in about a year ago but have never really had the opportunity to get together and chat. He has shown some interest in doing so thus it might finally happen.
I’ve been meaning to write about many things but what is on my mind at this moment is noise. Around my mid-thirties I started to notice just how much noise there was around me. It is especially noisy here since the neighbor two doors down is doing some type of construction which has lasted the past couple of days. It is mind wracking hammering, soldering and who knows what else. That finally stopped about 20 minutes ago and then my neighbor on the other side decides to start running some type of machine. My other neighbor (who popped his head over the fence) runs a daycare and there are children’s noises every weekday, especially one particularly unhappy kid who is always crying. Furthermore, there is plane noise due to proximity of SFO a general hum of engine noise highlighted by the hillbillies on their dirt bikes or trucks that have been modified to make extra noise. It isn’t even quiet in the middle of the night due to the night as we can hear the ocean when all other noises have subsided.
Noise is not what I wanted to write about but realizing how prevalent it is needed to do so. I’ll gripe about distraction, the other item affecting my sanity in a later post.
Instead of noise, I want to write about the ending of summer with Labor Day. I was really looking forward to the summer with trips to Ohio and Japan and now it is a memory. Time marches on. I’m now 47 (or is it 48?) and every proceeding summer fades further away. They would eventually be forgotten entirely if it weren’t for this blog, videos and photographs. The kids continue growing up and I remain incredulous that I’m past midlife. It is appalling to read my comics and see that the parents are all now younger than me with the oldest of the bunch being only 45.
I’ve started to realize that I’m forgetting much of my own life. If it weren’t for this journal I would have forgotten a lot. Therefore, it stands to reason that most people have forgotten what their own past lives were like except for specific moments. Instead of seeing the past in full color HD it only comes in random faded pictures. Thanks to this blog I can at least remember it as though I’m watching general video if not in HD.
Therefore, I have the ability to remember what things were like and understand how much everything has changed and how weird the world has become. Imagine if we could go back in time and tell everyone a large portion of Americans would be stuck in a cult of personality to Donald Trump! Due to this I realize how easily people can be swayed to complete idiocy when such a thing before might have been too surreal even for a fictional film.
I remember when e-mail and the internet were supposed to make our lives easier not more miserable. There were such high hopes for a utopia with the internet but it mostly became a marketplace. We’re now at the stage where it is actually degrading with studies saying over 51% of the content is now AI generated. What all this tells me is we have absolutely no idea where the future is heading and the changes keep speeding up.
I’ve come to understand that humanity just bumbles along with no overall plan. It never turns out well as war is always on the horizon if not actively taking place. Through climate change the world is heating up yet many still vote against the planet, even those experiencing 120 degree days! We have a major pandemic with COVID and people refuse vaccines preferring horse medicine and bleach in their ass. Advice given from Donald Trump instead of actual doctors!
It baffles me to no end and I wonder if it is something psychological discovered by Fox news to actually make their viewers stupider in the pursuit of profit. It goes as far as Republicans mirroring the movie “Idiocracy” with their WWF wrestler president becoming reality with Hulk Hogan speaking at the Republican convention. I must be in a simulation where the architects have decided to ratchet up the idiocy level. Humanity bumbles along and I find it hard to believe that we are headed for a dystopian future where there will be mass migration due to heatwaves, worse pandemics, an inability to know what is ‘true’ thanks to AI and a good part of the population denying it all. When will they put Trump on a cross and start praying directly to him? Just when you think they cannot go any lower they find a way!
All of these existential threats occupy a large part of my thoughts. But thanks to being able to remember the past, I can remember when the world was not so idiotic and my mind was more at peace.
The constant construction noise two houses down has started up again. It would be nice if they’d send a little gift to their neighbors around them apologizing for the noise. Perhaps I should put up some large speakers and blast ambient construction noise their way? Or perhaps a nice leaf blower soundtrack. Leaf blowers after all ensure that not even Saturday is a quiet one.
It is very difficult to get into my stream-of-consciousness writing mode with constant grinding from the construction. So I’ll wrap this up by lamenting the end of summer and all those summers gone by. I’ve grown weary of this hyper-paced world with it’s constant distractions, and feeling like I’m the only one who remembers when the world was more ‘normal.’ Even when I get away to a more peaceful place like Ohio people cannot spend more than 20 minutes in conversation without a distraction often with the sound of a motor starting up somewhere. Perhaps we’re all going mad as a society with the ending looking like it will be extremely unpleasant. Dystopia has arrived and the madness has set in.
