It's the end of June, and we're one month closer to the next presidential election. I didn't watch the debate at all, I've just heard rumors that it was a shit show on all sides. I keep asking myself if I'm really prepared to deal with the fallout of another Trump term, since I doubt that fate will be kind enough to kill him in his sleep before we ever need to vote for him. Regardless, I've made piece with the fact that unless Biden does something that demonstrates unequivocally that he knows that America's hurting and he's willing to do whatever it takes to fix it, that's probably what will happen. I just can't stomach voting for a man responsible for guiding our country as it enables a genocide, and I know most people my age feel the same way. Even if that wasn't the case, I'm getting really sick of voting in elections where I have no meaningful choices because my views are fringe. What's the point of living in a democracy if I have no way to meaningfully express my beliefs? 

    Have you ever thought about why you live where you do? Have you ever thought about what it would take for you to leave and find something different, something far away from where you live now? My mother is retiring soon, and that means it's soon going to be too expensive to live in Bellevue, the town that I've lived in ever since I was five years old. It hurts. I can't remember feeling truly at home or accepted here, but it still hurts. Most of Bellevue is made for the rich, for people who seem to have it all from a distance, but within it were these pockets where people who had less could find other people who had less and build community with them. Within these places, Bellevue felt alive and real. The pandemic killed off those places. Now Bellevue is a place where either you have everything or you have nothing, and we're just barely managing to hang on. Even if we could stay, I'm not sure we'd want to, the bad always outweighed the good. Even now, though, I keep hoping that somehow Bellevue will embrace the part of itself it wants so badly to hide; the part where people without any money who were just trying to get by used to live. If it could do that, than maybe we would be able to stay. 

On Average

 If you took every person alive today,
Added them together
And divided by seven and a half billion,
Would we be,
On average, 
A decent person? 

The Nightmare Future of NFTs

     For whatever reason, I was compelled to watch Dan Olson's video "Line Goes Up" again recently. Well, the first part of it, at least. It got me thinking about how strange it is that NFTs kind of just disappeared after 2022. I'm perhaps more grateful that they're gone than anyone else but I worry that we're leaving the door open for history to be completely rewritten a few years down the line. There were just too many people who were insistent that they'd be worth something for me to be comfortable, and lets not forget that even near the end the thing NFTs were synonymous with was art. Bad art, at that. 

     The thing about art is that it's a symbol. Good artists make their symbols obvious without over explaining them, using pictures of flowers and trees to convey something about the deeper nature of humanity that an art novice might miss but an art expert will see instantly. Bad artists mess up in a hundred different ways, but they always leave the door open to reinterpretation in a way good art never can. You would think that the procedurally generated garbage that NFTs became would leave no room for meaning or interpretation, but that's not accounting those who either don't know what good art looks like, or they simply don't care. Not to mention the contrarians who will value things because the world thinks that they're ugly. Things that are common, boring, and meaningless have a power to them. They attract those who want to make something meaningful but don't have the skills to create something unique. They become the fodder of belief for those hungry for something that's safe for them to believe in. Do we really want NFTs to serve as the next generations idols? Are we really willing to risk the future where our children worship this tech as a god? 

    Let's also not forget that as more and more of the servers keeping the links the NFTs reference go bust, those that stay intact will become more and more valuable, leaving the door wide open for a future where people are convinced that NFTs were always the future and we just weren't ready to admit that yet. There are children primed to be lured in by a narrative that the tech that nearly ruined our world was a boon no one wanted to accept. They're not old enough to remember how dangerous NFTs really were. They'll hear nothing about those who were hurt, those who have been shamed into silence, they'll only hear about how stupid and ugly the pictures they represented were. If they're lucky, they'll get the narrative of how useless the tech was. They'll hear nothing about societal damage, of the people who believed with all their hearts that NFTs represented a new form of reality, especially with the advent of the metaverse, only to have their hopes, dreams, and sense of reality crushed once the whole system collapsed. They won't hear about those who clung on, both out of stubbornness and out of sincere desperation, a need to believe that everything would come out alright if they just waited long enough. To them, NFTs will be nothing more than a technological dead end at worst, a future that never came true at best. They won't know that there were some for whom NFTs marked the moment their world ended for good. 

    With AI seemingly taking the niche that NFTs once filled, I worry that we're being lulled into a sense of complacency. We're letting ourselves believe that the door to damnation is closed and that no one will dare risk opening it because we have a cultural immunity to that sort of tomfoolery. But as PT Barnum once famously said, "A sucker is born every minute," and we're leaving a world ripe for the exploitation of our future suckers. We've already watched our world end once, I don't want the future to face what we've had to face this past decade.

The Prisoner's Dilemma

 How do we cope
When we all want success,
But also want everyone else
To fail?
Do we learn how to share
What we have with each other?
Can we face that we're prisoners
All locked behind bars?
There are only two ways
For our problems to end:
Either we give selflessly
Or watch in horror
As our world is taken from us.

    Ah Summer, when one can look outside and see greenery under a blue sky. It's nice to see nature while it's still glorious. 

A New World

 One day soon,
We'll wake up and see
That we are who
We were always meant to be.

Alive.
In a future of our own making,
Away from the follies of the past.

One day we'll wake up and see
That we have a common dream;
To be able to look at one another
And say,
"I know you see what I see."

This new world has been forming
Since before we were born,
And it's been so long
We forgot it was there.

Now it comes forth,
And we await it 
With a joy unmatched by anything
Save the birth of our children.

For now we no longer need to wait
To be forgotten.
Now we can walk forward
And share a world 
That will last
For another eternity. 

     The world's changing. I read about it all the time. But it's weird to think about. It's also depressing. Worse, I don't even fully remember all the things that have changed. I just know that most of the stores I saw so often that I forgot about them are now closed, and nobody drives the cars that I'm used to seeing.

    I don't sympathize with the Alt-right, but I think I might be beginning to understand them. They're villains, but that's because that's all they can be in this world. They lack the virtue needed to be ordinary people doing ordinary work, and they lack the skills needed to be the extraordinary people they were told they'd be. They're easy to hate, and I hate them as much as anyone, but I also can't help but feel that they, like us, are trapped in a world they had no say in making. It may be that we can't save them, but who's to say that we can't try and make it so that their children won't fall to the evil consuming their parents.

Summer

 The weather is warm
Sunshine spilling over trees
Summer has arrived

    I have a lot of opinions, as you've no doubt noticed, but I'll be the first (and only, since nobody else cares) person to admit that my opinions come as a result of spending most of my life feeling like the world sucks in a vague, nondescript sort of way. Growing up, I had everything I could possibly need, but I never felt completely happy. I had difficulties, but then who doesn't? I just sort of got used to the idea that happiness came with caveats. After the pandemic, I started realizing that I didn't feel like it was right to live in a world where I could only hope to be eighty percent satisfied, but I'd been used to accepting less for so long that I had no idea what it would take to make me happy. I have the blog, and my writing practice, but I still feel like something's missing. Nothing integral, and I'm not sure I'd feel complete if I did have it, but something that would make me feel less like I'm wasting my time. Or maybe I just want more friends, I'm not entirely sure. 

Juneteenth

A long fight towards justice,
Many failures, few successes,
But one day we'll know for certain
That we can live as we please,
As equals. 

    My mother and I are planning on moving at some point fairly soon, though I'm not sure when. We're just tired of the town that I've grown up in, which is becoming increasingly pretentious and increasingly full of empty buildings that don't seem to attract anyone. I'm not looking forward to moving, but I'm looking forward to getting out of here. 

The Artists Within

 My audience numbers
To me and me alone.
Only I understand the gifts
That I give.
I write of a future 
That we're meant to share
A future no one else wants to see.

My other watches
From some distance away.
It says, "It doesn't matter how good you are
If no one sees you."
No matter how it patters on
I refuse to give in.

For I'm on the cusp of
Greatness and Glory.
No one can stop me from 
Winning the day.
Nothing stands 
Between me and my dreams.
My future's but a heartbeat away.

The stupidity of the dreamer 
Who believes in themselves
Never ceases to amaze me.
Anyone can see
That they're writing is trash,
Which is why only they want to read it.

I counter their arguments
In my mind alone.
For I have created greatness
Unmatched by their work
I've written the best
And I'll write it again,
My audience standing alongside me.

For I'm on the cusp of
Greatness and Glory.
No one can stop me from 
Passing this test.
Nothing stands 
Between me and my winnings.
Just look at my past, and you'll see I'm the best.

No one need tell me
That my work is the best,
But I know that one day they'll see through my act.
I know that my best
Is someone else's worst, 
And the only reason no one says it
Is because they have tact.

What if I'm nothing more
Than a massive imposter?
What if I'm seeing something
That's not actually there?
Is there a reason
That people mostly say I'm okay?
Is there a reason that 
Only I seem to care?

I'm on the cusp of
Greatness and glory.
No one can stop me
From being who I am.
I don't care if I'm the worst
Who has ever existed,
I will do this for as long as I can. 

    It wasn't until I was writing the post for today that I realized that yesterday was Juneteenth. We don't do a good enough job of celebrating it. When it's Christmas, you can't escape it, but when it's Juneteenth you barely hear about it. I do hate Christmas because it's so ubiquitous, but is it so wrong to have a holiday just for people who care about it? And is it so bad to be a little grateful to see people celebrating because they think it's important?

Edit: Juneteenth is on the Nineteenth. Sorry for any confusion. 

     Sometimes I like to pretend that I know what's going through the minds of billionaires. I don't know if it's because I like pretending I could be a billionaire one day, or if it's because I'm trying to remind myself that billionaires are human and should still be treated as such, presence in Forbes be damned. That only goes so far though. They do stupid, greedy, or downright silly things that make no sense to me or anyone else I can find online, which in other circumstances would be a way to humanize them, but considering they run our world it just makes me feel uneasy. Do you want the world to be in the hands of someone who thinks that Fifty Shades of Grey is great writing? I guess, put like that, I'm glad I'll never be a billionaire. No one's going to use my mistakes as reason to strip me of power if I don't have any in the first place. 

Home Sweet Home

 No matter how far I travel,
No matter how tired I am
Or how worried I get,
I feel safe knowing
That home awaits me. 

     I don't think that Teslas are the cure to our environmental woes, but it's nice to know that people want to do right by the world. I just wish Elon Musk hadn't hijacked our future with his own agenda. At least with the rise of remote work, people won't need to drive as much. All we have to do is move past the idea that people need to work in order to be worth something. 

    I wrote the above before finding out that Elon Musk just forced likes to be private on Twitter, something no one asked for. The idiot didn't want to just make his own likes private, no he has to keep us from figuring out that the only people who like him are the kind of people no one else wants to be in a room with. At this point, even if Teslas were somehow the cure to our problems, I'd be voting for Tesla to go bankrupt. Elon Musk has no redeeming qualities at all. 

Kettle Corn

 Made in a giant pot
On a warm summers day.
Smell filling the air
Of the market I'm in.
How I can't wait until sweetness
Explodes over my taste buds,
Bringing a moment of happiness
In a boring life. 

     I love writing, but I confess that lately I've been feeling a little bit burnt out by blogging. Without Twitter, it's just gotten really hard to find things to talk about, and it feels like the media is so skeezy these days that I don't even know what's true and what's sensationalist trash fire. I started blogging hoping it would help my creative juices flow, but all it seems to have done is made my stage fright so bad that I don't want to post anything if there's a risk of even one person seeing it. Clearly, I've got a lot of work to do, and it should probably start with avoiding social media for a bit. The world's gotten way too depressing to write about. 

What I Used to Love

 Like sand 
The past slips through my fingers,
Crumbling into dust
That scatters to the wind.
Old images,
Old metaphors,
Words I've all but forgotten,
The names of things I loved but lost
And those who lost me in turn.

I hear the world screaming,
Begging for change,
Begging for the future
Its leaders deny it,
But in my heart I feel hesitant.
The ground beneath me is so far away,
How do I know I'll be safe when I jump?
How I wish I could grow wings
And fly away from all that I used to love.

Look upwards
And you'll see a sky 
Bathed in starlight,
In ideas of what could be.
Look into your heart
 And you'll see who you could become.
All around you people beg for stories
And tales,
Yet you, the teller, 
Can only sit in silence.

I come back down to earth,
The ground underneath
Feeling crumbly and thin. 
I look at the others,
I say what I want,
They listen
And my words carry far.
The future opens its arms out
Eager to great me,
But it's not enough.
Nothing will be enough
To help me let go. 

     I know some people like weeding, but I'm not one of them. I don't like tasks that don't offer immediate rewards, and in our yard you can weed daily for weeks and notice no change at all. I'm also one of those unlucky people who attracts mosquitos like dog doo attracts flies, so I get bit a lot even with bug repellent. I'll be really grateful when we move and the yard is someone else's problem. 

    Am I the only person who looks at people who have hundreds of thousands of followers online and finds themselves thinking, at times, that they look from a distance like people who would gladly have chosen to do something else if given the opportunity? I say this, mind, as someone who chose to write a blog doomed for obscurity because she wasn't willing to do what literally everyone else has to do; kill off the parts of themselves not suitable for human consumption. I'm not kidding when I say that I've seen people who have achieved success beyond my wildest dreams and been filled with a sense of pity because I see someone who is predominantly known for the ten percent of their personality that the world is willing to tolerate. I come from a place of privilege, I will admit. I'm lucky enough to not have to work and I'm more than pissed that I live in a world that expects people to give up everything and gives them nothing in return. I am not someone who believes in a world of unlimited empathy. I am someone who believes in a future where no one is forced to live as someone they aren't simply so the world will accept them.

My Hometown

 Is my hometown falling apart,
Or am I just getting older?
Am I crazy for thinking
That everyone seems to be 
Getting more selfish?
Am I blind for not having seen it sooner?

   It's a beautifully sunny day today. It's also rather warm, at least to me. I'm just glad summer's here and I can stare out of my window at sunshine instead of grey clouds. 

Innovation

I live in a world of innovation,
Where we can't tell what tomorrow will be
From looking at today.
I live in a world of innovation,
What will it take for us to innovate
Into a world that's real and safe? 

    I know I shouldn't know this, since I'm ostensibly avoiding X (The corpse formerly known as Twitter), but I saw the other day that, at least for me, it's getting rebranded as X.com. Can I just say that you know a rebranding has failed when it not only makes you hate a product, it makes you hate every other product with the same name? Not just products either. Every time I see the letter X I get angry for no reason whatsoever. Good work there, Elon Musk. You've ruined X for ever person in the world. I hate that you probably think that's a good thing. 

A Time Long Gone

 I stare out my window
On a world of brown,
Where once there was a sea of green.
My mental eye turns inward
To a world that changed greatly,
The world that I once knew.

Things happened to me
In a time long gone,
To me and everyone else.
Things happened that made me
A Dreamer and doer,
Someone who carried the world.

I wrote epic stories,
I dreamed epic dreams,
I built a world piece at a time.
The world that you live in
Was built by my hand,
The hand that time has worn down.

Will you erase me from your world
As I erased my grandparents,
Those from the time long gone?
Will you make me obsolete,
Forgotten and unwanted,
And I did to my elders long ago?

The world is ever changing,
Like dunes in a desert,
Like the cities in which we all live.
Someday, you to, will look out
On your world,
And wonder what happened to those long dead. 

    Someday, the people writing books on our current time will agree that the people in charge were monsters in need of a reality check. It's a shame the people in charge can't see that, but until we find the people who can actually lead us through this mess, all we can do is drag our leaders in the direction that we, the people, wish to go. 

    It's the start of June, and with it the start of a season of fairs, markets, and sunshine. Well, hopefully sunshine. Sunshine is never guaranteed in Washington State. Let's hope this is a month of ideas and completed works as well.