end of August
Yesterday I biked from my friends house to a mall and back. It took about 2 hours and it was about 40km.
It was a hard bike ride. The day before I slept all day. The day before that I went climbing up in the mountains in the morning and shooting with another group of friends in the evening. It was a busy but a fun day.
Today I slept until noon. I had a burger, two protein coffees, some water.
Listening now about the Tea Dating app data breach. Interesting development. Another data leak happened to Allianz Life too. Briefly just looked at the “News” page of duckduckgo for “data leak” and the UK Ministry of Defense and Luis Vuitton also have had recent data leaks.
The internet is interesting because you have to give up your information in order to use it but the thing you are giving it to is a black box of questionable morality and pretend security. The “clear net” is kind of like going through TSA. It theoretically keeps you safe but it is more security theatre. It makes you feel more safe than you actually are.
I know I should be more careful on it but I don’t even know where to start. I also think it kind of sucks that to actually be safe on the internet it cost money and time and requires a pretty deep set of technical skills. It’s not enough to avoid sketchy sites or “just use a vpn”. That is part of the security theatre too. It might add a layer of protection, but it’s like wearing a parka thinking it’s a bullet proof vest.
I guess what I don’t like is that (at least here in Canada), freedom/privacy were supposed to be guaranteed in the charter of rights and freedoms but really haven’t been for a while. Really they’ve been consistently eroded for the past 20-30 years.
I guess, I feel defeated and I think it just kind of sucks.
It sucks because I always feel watched. It sucks because it feels like my mistakes will be used against me one day. It sucks because if I do something wrong at some point my past can be clipped, changed, doctored, held against me. And no matter my legal defence, there is an apparatus with a government budget geared toward destroying me.
You might think this is just paranoia or anxiety, sometimes I think so too. Sometimes I wish it just was. But if I look anecdotally at my peers and compare them to my parents and my parents parents, the amount of anxiety about these exact same things reduces exponentially with each generation I look back, and increases every generation I look forward.
That’s why I say it just kind of sucks.
I don’t really know what to do about it. I know that when I think about it, it makes me want to crawl under my covers and do nothing. It makes me think to myself, “why would I take this risk” it’s not really worth the reward. And it isn’t. Taking risks sucks now.
But maybe it always sucked and that’s me getting in my own way. Some sort of psychological block. I don’t know.
I don’t really know about anything anymore. 29 years old and I am more confused now than I was when I was 19. At 19 things still made sense. Life had a trajectory and a direction that made sense.
Then I went to university and life began to make less and less sense. The trajectory became blurry and then disappeared. The direction moved and then began to spin like a compass near a magnet. Things made more sense and less sense at the same time.
I thought I was crazy. I sought help and left school but it was like peaking behind Oz’s curtain. I couldn’t unsee what I had seen. The trajectory and direction were a myth from the start. A castle in the sky.
All the therapy and the books and the philosophy. Group sessions, spirituality and religion, meditation and yoga, in-patient programs, psychiatric experiments. All I know now that I didn’t know then is that we all lie to ourselves to make sense of what’s real, to avoid the pain that reality is unfeeling and doesn't care.
Some people believe the lies they tell themselves more than others; or at least can pretend to believe the lies very well. We call these people leaders. And they tell us, the ones who question or don’t really believe our own lies, why the lies are real and why you shouldn’t question them. Because questioning the lies only hurts yourself and the others. Questioning makes it harder us all to paddle in one direction, questioning causes others to question, and we all lose steam and we can’t all paddle to where the leader wants us to go.
Sometimes the leader is just one, sometimes the leader is a group. Many times the leader is a story that has been told for generations and that if questioned would mean you are questioning the fabric of what holds someone’s identity together and could be seen as an existential threat. And they will laugh at you, and call you crazy. And after that if you still question they will hate you, and try and destroy you. And after that if you still question they will ignore you, and say they feel sorry for you, and treat you as if you are crazy or stupid or both. And after that if you still question others will cheer for you and you will become your own leader, and people will follow you.
And the intoxication of the crowd will lead you to believe more and more of what you say. And then other’s will question you and you will tell them not to questions because it causes those following you to question. And you will use the same tactics of those who disposed you to dispose them. And then you will be alone again, wondering what happened. If you are lucky you will begin to question again. Yourself and others. If you are not lucky you will become stuck wondering what happened and why you are alone.
Damn, that was a rant and a half.
TL/DR - I don’t like being so surveilled on the internet. Questioning everything all the time is complicated and confusing.
I feel lost in the sauce these days. Nothing seems to be right. No one seems to need me but I somehow need everyone. I feel like I’ve been falling for a long time now, I should have hit the ground by now but I just keep falling.
Sometimes I think I can see the ground and I look forward to hitting it. But it usually is just a thin tarp stretched over the abyss I am falling through and I a pass through it until the next false landing shows up.
The next false landing coming up is what I’ve been calling the “end of August” because in my mind I haven’t planned past then and I’ve thought to myself “I’ll give myself until then to decide what direction I’m heading”.
But if I’m honest with myself time will pass by and August will come and September will start and I will be feeling just as directionless then as I do now.
Somethings will change, most things will not.
Life will go on.
I don’t know if I should even post this because it seems rambly and psychotic but I guess I will. If I change my mind I can just delete it. Maybe someone will relate, maybe no one will.
Nothing really makes sense anymore and I’m too tired and confused to figure out why.