It’s an introspective day today. Things have finally slowed down here from the tulmult of the last few weeks and I’ve been able to stop and reflect and make thoughtful choices.
One thing I decided was to drop writing my Nature Bats Last column for the local newspaper. I sent in my final column today. My desire to write the columns has been waning of late. There’s a feeling that I’m shouting into the wind and getting only silence back. I’m thinking that if those readers who’ve been following along haven’t gotten the big drift by now, another five or 10 articles isn’t going to make any difference. And I’m finding that it’s work to put the articles together and that other than the brief glow of ego I feel each time I see a new column of mine in print, that I’m getting very little for the time and effort and it’s getting annoying to have to fire myself up again each week to crank out 750 words on one of the deadly harbingers of future doom and submit it by a certain time.
My blogging here is better but it’s suffering from lack of quality time in which to write my own thoughts rather than simply putting up references to pre-existing news stories that reinforce my hypotheses. And, I have to admit, it suffers some as well from a lack of readership in a medium swarming with millions of minds. But, I have the feeling that there are possibilities yet to be realized with it whereas with the columns, I think it’s mostly wasted time now.
I was also reflecting that one thing I think I really miss from being younger was that pervasive feeling that something really new and amazing might just be around the next corner. An idea, a person, a movement, a book – something could and probably would show up and make the world amazingly new for awhile. There was, of course, also the crackle of youth and hormones talking in our ears then. To stand up and streach like a cat full of muscles and to feel the juice in your veins as you walked out to meet the new day which might hold anything was good.
These days, the world is a mess and I have very slim hopes that anyone’s going to come out of the woodwork with a radical and brand new idea to turn it all around. These days, I look at the youth full of hormones and cat muscles and optimism and their ‘take-no-prisoners’ attitutes and I just see them as living in a dream within a box bigger than they can yet see. And I question why anyone should tell them. The future will find us all soon enough.
I’m beginning to draw up lists of the various things I want to accomplish while I’m in New Zealand this winter. It’s only a month now before I leave and I know how fast that time will fly by. Strange to think that while the winter storms are breaking here, I’ll be in Christchurch at the height of summer. While I’m there, I’ll be working on this web site, programming in Win32 for the software that we use here at the nursery on PDAs, reading various books and exploring the South Island. I’d hoped to ship my motorcycle down this year but the logistics will be too complicated given that I won’t have a fixed address until late December or early January and by then, I’ll only be a month away from returning.
A week or so ago, I had a look at the SecondLife (SL) phenomenon. It’s an amazing thing that’s going on there. it was just a few years ago that most of us read Snowcrash and then, the ideas seems interesting but remote. Now, SL is becoming a major event in virtual space. People have businesses, own virtual land and make SL money which is actually redeemable or real money out here in RealLife (RL).
I downloaded SecondLife and tried to install it here but none of my systems has a new enough video card to deal with the graphics requirements. That was a bit of a shock as I thought that while my stuff might be a few years old, it was good quality. Once again, the kids on the skate boards have whipped by me and my walker out here in RealLife (RL).
So, I’m debating if I have a plausible reason for upgrading one of my systems – other than so I can try SL out – and thus far, my skills at rationalization haven’t been up to the task – but I’m still working the problem.
I think I found out what I am today. Or perhaps, what I feel like I am. I’m a Cassandra. Wikipedia defines a Cassandra as, “is a term applied to predictions of doom about the future that are not believed, but upon later reflection turn out to be correct.” I think if I had the naming of thiswebsite to do over again, I might call it CassandraRedux.
Well, I’m off to try out some web cams so Sharon and I can communicate with audio and visual while I’m in New Zealand. Ah, techie-stuff (as he rubs his hands together), that’s always better then messing about in real life.
Ah, you’ve got Weltschmerz. So have I, but I’m not sure it’s entirely due to our, uh, maturity (I’m 49). Even in my youth, I was never a Pollyanna, but I was always a fighter. Now, I’m bug-eyed by the alarming and incredibly evil “Real Life” that is exposed on cryptogon.com, and I’m world weary, enervated, and losing my will to fight even the evil that seems to be an ongoing part of my own life. When you lower your weapons and see the Juggernaut fast approaching, you need to run, and that’s what I’m doing, too. South Island, ho!