Today is one of those days where everyone seems so smart and accomplished, and by everyone I mostly mean strangers. I posted this on Twitter so now everyone (mostly different strangers) knows I’m insecure and defeated.
Ok, not really. Though I’m also irrationally panicked about how this is the beginning of the end because of things like video supplanting text. I hate online video. My brain doesn’t work like that. Like this might be the year I just give up and slink away never to be seen or heard from again because I’m irrelevant.
I think I liked this post/piece of content “Whither The Webpage” but then felt a little bad after reading: “Chances are good you’re reading this particular piece of content on your phone, through a smoothly-loading feed. That’s okay! This is neither quantitatively unusual nor qualitatively bad, it’s simply the way things are.” because I’m totally not reading post/piece of content on a phone.
Words, though, are great. It was Patricia Lockwood’s piece on the Grand Canyon, part of a series in the NYT on national parks, that made me feel dumb and envious this morning.
And then I read about how Google is smart enough to parse email messages and come up with replies, sometimes more succinct and human than when human-authored.
Unrelated but not, I cannot smoke pot, just can’t, and I kind of want in on its new wave of mainstream respectability. (I didn’t grow up with an affinity for it unlike 90% of Northwesterners.) It’s like Snapchat to me. I get it in theory and fun and maybe a little addicting for so many but the appeal is totally lost on me. One big hit last night got me so high I couldn’t walk and I kept thinking it was snowing and so I took a Lyft that went the most roundabout way possible from Ridgewood to Jackson Heights but I was too queasy to pull out my phone to check Google Maps and I threw up all over my bathroom wall within seconds of entering my apartment. Two of the five times I’ve gotten high in the past year I ended up puking violently and once, when I was in Portland last, I was able to keep the heaves at bay, but barely.
And today I’m tired and off-balance and all I can do is consume content and worry about the future and my rapid orbit into obsolescence and wonder if it’s still possible to get swept-up by the exciting and new and find a place for yourself.