Dear Reader(s),
How are you? I am…having a little bit of a rough time of it.
I’m looking through Ulysses, the writing app that I use to organize my stuff, and I’m seeing all these half-formed essays and ideas. I got most of the way through one today in the Uber to the airport (I’m off on a short business trip for my day job). I came up with what I think is an interesting and somewhat unique take on the idea that our contemporary ideals around authenticity and openness and honesty and sharing might actually be having something of the opposite effect. And I’d like to finish it, but.
I’m sitting here at the hotel bar, and there have been some issues I’ve had to deal with, work-wise, today. That was after I sent my luggage through security an embarrassing number of times because my electronics were overlapping, and because I forgot a small multitool knife thing that I’d added to my laptop bag—the old road warrior me of a decade ago would have been very cross with the idiot traveler who apparently hasn’t ever been through security before. And that’s before I realized I lost a glove somewhere between here and Boston, and before I couldn’t get my corporate card to work without a PIN, and the taxi driver didn’t know where the hotel was, and seriously, who uses the taxi line at the airport anymore?
And then I realized I hadn’t chosen a seat for the return flight, and so I get to have a middle seat.
What’s wrong with me?
And now I’m writing this and thinking, “These are not problems. The Middle East is a problem. The rise of global fascism is a problem. The continuing issue of wealth inequality and the contribution of insular, biased news-tainment to infighting amongst the oppressed classes is a problem.”
But it’s hard at this moment to not feel frustrated and sad and mad and…emotions.
I used to say “When Bill Gates stubs his toe, it still hurts.” Maybe the fact that the hyper-rich are in their Villain Era right now makes it less palatable, but, it’s true. Suffering is suffering; pain is pain; deserved or not.
So I’m gonna not say anything really insightful here, and just say, today kinda sucked. I hope tomorrow will be better.
As a thank-you for reading this far, here are a handful of Sad Poems:
- tender – things suck.
- melancholia – now I’m sad and I don’t know why.
- impetus – now I don’t feel like doing anything.
- regret – I’m sorry.
- entropy – get back up.
—jr
