No, this post isn’t about the domesday clock or the impending end of the world. The clock is quite literally ticking towards midnight. When I wrote the title there were five minutes to go - now there are only two. I had to look up the spelling of “domesday” which ate a minute or two - because rabbit holes.
So. It’s nearly midnight. You find me holed up in the junk room at home having wasted the last hour installing all manner of long-forgotten software into a pretend version of a computer I had twenty-five years ago.
Some crazy person built an “emulator” that you can run on a modern computer - opening a rift in the space-time continuum that convinces your computer that a corner of its brain has become its own great, great grandparent.
I will sheepishly admit to smiling with glee as Lotus Organiser appeared on my screen.
I should get out more.
It’s been a quiet weekend. I tell myself that quiet is good. I guess that’s a coping mechanism of sorts. It’s easy to start scrolling the social internet and fool yourself into thinking the grass is greener elsewhere. We know how that particular slippery slope goes. In my heart of hearts, I know that most of the social internet is a hell-stew of showoffs, virtue flexing, attention seekers and “poor me” energy thieves.
The majority are not everybody though. They’re probably not even the majority - just the vocal minority that steals everybody else’s air.
In the gaps I occasionally forge far-flung friendships with similarly reluctant observers - caught on the same knife-edge between optimism and despair - watching the pretty people from afar as they post their fake highlight reels.
Sometimes we catch up with each other in the dead of night and share a moment or two of our day. It redresses the balance - reminding us that the world isn’t all that bad after all. Or at least I hope they feel that too.
Anyway.
I need to go for a run in the morning. A mental health run. Break the cycle of obligations, chores, and expectations - the bare minimum existence I seem to have become so expert at.
Maybe I need to start writing the novel I’ve been promising to write for the last however many years.
This evening I got sucked into reading a book from the terrifying tower of unread books (that threatens to fall on me and squash me very flat indeed). “Lessons” by Ian McEwan. It’s causing quite a stink in the literary world because it tells the story of a female teacher becoming involved with a teen boy. If the genders had been reversed I doubt the book would have been published.
Perhaps those standing on soap-boxes threatening to burn the book have forgotten what it was like to be a teenager - to have your entire being taken over by the arrival of a new brain chemistry set.