This Day and Age

Getting old sucks. We all know that. Maybe. The biggest revelation for me, as I have aged, is the idea that I am actually the same, and always have been. I just have more aches and pains, and I'm more tired, and less alert, and there is a ringing in my right ear. Plus my muscles don't work as well as they used to, and it takes longer to "get in shape," and once in shape, it takes less time to lose it. Oh and the hair thing.  But inside, I'm still the same. I'm actually no smarter--perhaps wiser, but that is open to debate. It seems like I have a little more information, and my approach to things has changed a bit. You might attribute that last to wisdom, but a good case could be made for it being preservation of energy.

I'm grumpy. The world hasn't really changed that much since that time where my memory seems to have started. Let's say, 1957.  I was seven then. Details were different, but I think pretty much the world was the same. Certainly in North America, we all lived in a bubble--the Golden Age of America, where it was probably wonderful to be a white Christian male. I don't know. I was only seven. Seems to me, though, that the nonsense has gotten worse.  Denser. Back then, we really did talk about stuff like how advertising was invading our perceived world, how TV commercials were a bad thing. I mean, we weren't stupid. But now?  Good God. If one is "plugged in" at all, tons and tons of advertising come with that. Just glancing at a Facebook page or the main page of the CNN website (or any  news site at all) probably pulls in hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of ads from various places on the Internet. The Internet is no doubt the all-time busiest and most pervasive advertising medium of the history of the Earth. We really don't stand a chance. At least in 1957, you bought a TV and got the broadcast waves for free. Well, technically, if you don't count the commercials. Now, we pay for Internet access, don't we? We pay, and pay. And then we can barely navigate around ads in order to read stuff on the Internet. And it's not stuff.  It's "content." The word came into use because there had to be some sort of distinction, I suppose, between real information via writing, and just lots of words so that the page you were looking at could have a purported purpose other than just to deliver ads to your computer monitor.

Well, I guess I could go on and on, but it seems like too much work. Suffice it to say, in closing, that with age I have become more selective about how I expend the energy that I have. Turns out, most stuff in the world is pretty easy, once you just relax and do just the things that are really necessary. I think the fun thing about being young is that you could squander your energy. Because, you know, the things you "have to do" are not the fun things.

Well God forbid anyone reads this, I readily acknowledge that it's not good, but this is just to get my writing mojo back. I'll post this just so I can look at it later.