2024 - Interesting Times

I don't know how to begin this post on this less-traversed internet-alley wall. Human graffiti against a backdrop of more and more AI-generated content, the product of all of us, directed by a few of us, to feel a connection, make money, communicate, and reach beyond the gifts we have been given. And that's just the AI of it all. A growing population of elderly encroaching on the parking lots of our iceberg proxies. A whip-crack recoiling of the Overton window. An economy in denial, or a world in denial, or is it me in denial? A thirst for connection while we build digital walls around ourselves and vent through the pressure relief valves of viewing holiday slideshows of friends of ours that have become more parasocial relationships than more through a constant back and forth of likes and picture posts. And Lions. And Tigers. And Bears. Oh my.

I can't complain about this. I asked for this. I'm 16 again and learning about the idea of this ancient proverbial curse: "May your life be interesting." or "May you live in interesting times." Or something like that. "Ha," I say. But this wouldn't be a curse. Uninteresting would be boring. The hubris of the teenager seeking things more interesting than semi-rural life in small-town Ontario.
I think, mostly, times have probably been interesting always. Somewhere in the world. In some way. We like to hit things with sticks to see what happens, and that tends to lead to opposite and equal reactions.

I think that after years of trying to find my voice in writing, really, my style is just a rambling conversation with nobody in particular. To myself, my future children, and eventually now, my children sometime in the future. It always makes me feel uncomfortable. As though I have something to say that's important enough to write down on a page.

So, all of these thoughts have been going through my head with all of it. I love technology. I've built a life foundationally using technology. I game in technology. I work in technology. My wife is alive because of technology. I can function in society because of technology. Without the internet rising back in the early 2000s, I would not have had a way to connect with people that I could have pushed myself into. Wildly afraid of new social situations as I was. The transition from high school to university was enough to derail any gains I made in acting or singing in the high school plays and musicals.

These thoughts are so loud and so many things to factor into the state of the world. And I think about my children. I feel that more than for my parent's generation, having children has been an act of wild optimism in the face of the structures that assail the life I experienced growing up in the world. Granted, a life tilted greatly in my favour as a white male walking through it. I believe in Humanity's long-term ability to persist. To get through. It's probably blind optimism, but I have to believe that. I hope that if we can get through this great turning as a society, my children will be there to build with the blocks forged in the crucible of that change. It will not be the same childhood I had, but a different one with a different purpose. I want them to be a part of the next way the world is and for that way to be landing in a more positive place than it feels like we are sliding towards at the moment.

Then, I have other thoughts. If I were able to simulate the past to look into history, what parts of history would I simulate? Surely it would be an interesting time. And with AI and what comes next looming on the horizon, what time would be more fitting to simulate than our birth as a conscious creature? That missing link between what we are now and what we were at the very beginning. What led us there. How did we come to be?

Are we a simulation of those things we are now pushing higher, faster, stronger? Are we a flash of light from the past run into silver nitrate to catch a glimpse? And really, how can I even go further down that path? There be dragons, and I'm not the one to slay them, not today. I'm just a baker for another generation of adventurers now. A storyteller in an inn.

All these loud clamouring thoughts are there, and I want both so much to talk about them and never ever talk about them again. I have a drive to keep pushing through discomfort at the thoughts for some kind of 'ultimate truth' on the other side, and find myself feeling like that golden path is not one I can walk. It's for my children.

All this is to say, 2024 has been a pretty good year. I've found a home at a new place of work. Our twins turned 2 this year. We've worked to get our financials under control. Our older kids have grown a long way. But seeing all these positive things in contrast to the news of the world both local and further afield, both present and pending, has been a difficult scale to balance.

Today is the first day of 2025 and there are so many dominoes stacked in different lines my normal model of operating in the world seems difficult to maintain.

2024 for our family was one of getting financials more in order, and settling into a new company. 2025, for me, is going to be about mental and physical health. I guess it's the overarching theme I'm shooting for, and I wouldn't be surprised if it's been a theme I've written down in the past. Now, more than ever, I need to bring the mental and physical into alignment.

Happy 2025 for folks out there. May your journey through these and future interesting times be as unassailed as possible, and should interesting times come knocking, may the bedrock of the structure of your life and community be a panacea to any afflictions.

Peace,

Shane