Yesterday I was reading and formatting old 2004 entries. Going through and fixing the broken emoticons, missing links and pictures. Not editing, I treasure that cataloguing of my young self too much to mess with. I was just making the text look less ugly and putting in little “sorry image broken” pics. This process is going to take forever. It wasn’t until 2013 when Xanga finally shut down for good.

Anyway, while doing this, I was reminded I used to make puffy pancakes all the time. One of the staples of my broke student life. So I made one yesterday, and it was delightful.

Combine and mix:

• 2 tablespoons of butter
• 3 eggs
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/2 cup flour
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

Bake at 400 F 25 minutes.

That’s it.

_

I didn’t have any regular flour, so I used Finnish pancake mix I received as a gift a while back. It was from a famous restaurant in my hometown that burned down a few years ago. My hometown is known for having a large Finnish population, I know that’s common for the Minnesota/Wisconsin area, but T. Bay has a disproportionately large amount of Finns even relative to those places. They add much welcome character to the city.

My wife and I have found a house there that we want to buy. Before the election, we were considering a return to Canada, but also the aforementioned Minnesota/Wisconsin area. Now we’re locked in on my hometown. I can’t shake the feeling that this is reactionary. A lame little fuck you to all things Trump. Peace out assholes, I’m going home. Yes, that’s part of it, but really the driver is the combination of family, affordability and environmental stability. I’m still creeped out by how warm it is this November. If you don’t have that ominous existential worry about climate change too, maybe don’t pay attention to what the scientists are saying. It will be good for your sanity, if not the prospects of planetary improvement.

I’ve been down here living in Massachusetts since 2005. In the same house since 2011. The prospect of shaking up the routine is so exciting. The prospective house is just rough enough to give us things to improve, it’s rural but still within the city limits. A lot of land. The future I hope for is peaceful and fun. I hope this happens.

I am enjoying my return to this blog. Back when I was still writing on the Xanga platform, I wondered how much of my fun came from the act of writing Vs the thrill of receiving feedback from people I didn’t know IRL.

Certainly it was both, but I no longer doubt how much I just enjoy writing. No one is here and it feels special. A little magical. Like throwing some quiet thoughts far out into the universe where it’s unlikely they will be seen, but knowing they’re out there.

I contrast this feeling to what it’s like after scrolling Reddit for 20 minutes. Social media joy is bursty and transient. It’s a candy binge, fun moment to moment but ultimately empty with gross residue.

Honest, self-reflective writing feels more like a well rounded meal. Your brain is engaged, not just a passive shit consuming lump. It feels nutritious. Even bad writing confirms that you still have the capacity to string together your own hazy thoughts.

Yesterday, I was reading my old 2005 entries, oscillating between wanting to melt with embarrassment, to astonished pride at the writing and who I was then. So unintentionally quirky and earnestly striving. Stressed to the max and making so many mistakes yet showing great perseverance and grit as I swam in chaos and doubt. I owe so much to that struggling confused kid. I am so happy I have that writing back to read almost twenty years later.

Tuesday had a Helm’s Deep vibe. Yesterday was more of a Pippin singing in Minas Tirith vibe.

One of the many things that bother me about the result of the US election is that I feel myself slipping into a world view tinged with Nihilism.

I live in the northeast, just outside of Boston. It was 81F yesterday on November 6th. I was sweating while raking leaves. As I did this, many of my dark thoughts were fixated on the fact that a climate change denier was elected. Any hope of the US government giving a shit about global warming evaporated like California ground water.

It’s hopeless and I’m tired of getting angry about it.

The stock market had wild swings yesterday, mostly to the upside. Investors know they will make more money with government protections stripped away or hobbled. The wealth transfer from poor to rich started immediately. As if wealth inequality in this country wasn’t bad enough.

I sold some stocks in my portfolio that had the biggest increases on the day. This money is earmarked for buying a Canadian home. After almost 20 years, I think I’m going back. My retired parents already went with a realtor to see a promising house. My wife has a green light to transfer her remote job to Canada. It’s looking like a go. We’re prioritizing privacy, quiet and nature.

Moving doesn’t solve anything but it feels like the right thing. I don’t think I want to live out the second half of my life in the USA when I have a viable option to live where the perceptions of reality aren’t broken or totally warped yet. It feels nice to think about returning to the place where old friends and family knew me in a simpler time.

I hope it goes smoothly.

It’s an ungodly hour. Sitting. Lounging in my massage chair as my elite liberal ass is kneaded by Japanese technology. Black cat on my chest purring, apparently not caring as my body undulates and shakes as I tap away on my phone above his little body. He’s a delightfully weird little cat and I’m glad he has decided to share his soothing purr.

So Trump won.

When I left this blog dormant in 2013, almost all my posts were private. Yesterday, I went back to the beginning and was restoring the private posts to public one at a time. I did 2004 yesterday. That was also was an election year. Bush vs Kerry. I was predictably upset at the result, but even then, in my mid-twenties, I had scabbed over political scars.

It was really 2000 Bush Vs Gore that broke my heart. The Florida hanging chads. Remember that fiasco? It was during my second year of university. I fancied myself an environmentalist, favorite class Ecology. Truly hopeful that a president who cared about science and the planet would get us back on track. That election felt like everything. It was the first time I was really shocked by the American people. I still have a hard time processing it. That is the pinpoint in time where I believe we fell into the shitty alternative reality.

It doesn’t feel like it, but I think that’s because of my limited perspective. If I was a Boomer maybe I would say it was when Reagan beat Carter in 1980. Or Nixon winning in 1968.

In this moment though, the 2024 election feels bad. It really does. So much so that I lost total momentum on this post as I slipped into a dark contemplative fog thinking about the future.

Massage is over, yet purring has maintained. I love this cat.

I try to live the credo, move through life with your eyes open. Kind of pretentious right? A whole lot like this blog feels…. I have to stop apologizing for taking up bandwidth in reality. Shake it off, start again.

I’ve held to that credo fairly well. My undergrad was a hilarious seven years. My master degree was another five plus. I fucking loved school. I loved taking humanities I didn’t need to. I loved wallowing in the stress and challenge of all the core STEM classes. Back then I was Miyazaki’s No-Face with knowledge. Illegally downloading and consuming The Teaching Company’s classes on things like Greek mythology and history etc. as I walked to class or my low paying concierge job.

I’m still a voracious consumer of information sources that are based on fact and science. If you have an entertaining podcast that broadens your perspective to the world, I’m in. Radiolab was the GOAT for a while. Nowadays there’s tons of them. The Grey Area, Science Friday, Hidden Brain, Science Vs, etc etc. I’m not a total Poindexter though. I round that out with news, story, comedy, political and finance podcasts. I love documentaries, challenging movies that may be tough hangs, but force different thinking and empathy. Less reading than I would like, but I still fit in books like Stumbling on Happiness, the Freakonomics series, etc.

My career was particularly suited for this (now we’re going to get really pretentious). All science is, is a method to find the truth. That’s it. Make a guess at a truth, design and do an experiment to test it, analyze the results and determine if you better understand something about the world. And I was fortunate enough to work with side by side with world class scientists over the last 15 years of my career. That changed me for the better in profound ways. I had to sit at those lab meeting tables every week, discussing and dissecting results, planning next steps based on analysis and broader research in the field, defend everything I did, question what the others were doing. I was dogshit in the early years, I know it. Incredibly intimidated, big imposter syndrome, nervous as fuck, but I got there. Steel sharpens steel, and I got much better. I’ve presented in front of scientists in the National Academy, Nobel prize winners, went to the conferences. I earned my place and belonged, became a leader in those rooms. With all this chest puffing, what I’m trying to say is, I think I’m pretty good at separating truth from bullshit.

So the US election is tomorrow.

What am I feeling? Some mix of anger, hopelessness, grief, disappointment. I check Nate Silver’s blog daily. The aggregate weighted polls suggest the election is a coin-flip, but If I was to bet, it would be on Trump. I hope I’m wrong.

I’m a dual-citizen now. Marrying an American made that possible. I’ve made a life for myself in a Boston suburb. Politically, when I started this blog I fancied myself a far-left radical. Subscribed to Adbusters, reveled in thoughts of anti-capitalist anarchy. Buy Nothing Day, Occupy Wall Street, fuck the elite overlords poisoning our world and enslaving society! Since then, I’ve moved out of the fringe. I certainly still have a liberal core, but I’ve come to believe it is possible for companies to do good things and provide valuable services while having profit in the system. Sometimes you even need that profit incentive, like STEM industries where risk, competition, and speed drive innovation. So I’ve softened a bit. This doesn’t mean I’m not profoundly sad about the state of the world. Debbie Downer time.

I have significant personal happiness in my life. Despite that, I feel a mix of unhappiness, anger, loss and hopelessness for our species. It feels like we’re circling the drain. It feels like science doesn’t matter. It feels like reality doesn’t matter. The USA has caught the perfect virus, and tomorrow night we will get the titers on the viral load. In my way, I’ve tried to understand the Trump phenomenon. Political podcasts, the “Get Me Roger Stone” Documentary, engaging in the r/Conservative and r/Republican subreddits. Attempts to talk civilly with Trumpy family members.

The phrase of his that echoes in my head is, “I love the poorly educated”. How damning is that? How big is that red flag? This is a conman laughing in the face of his supporters. He’s waged war on government and societal institutions because they are independent checks on the stream of bullshit that flows out of his face. Social media has amplified the human tendency to side more with your community than qualified strangers. This is eroding the guardrails of reality. It feels like the fourth estate is dying. We’ve been split into two sides, one fueled by ignorant, righteous, rage. American entitlement. There’s little understanding or desire to actually solve the existential and societal problems our species is facing. Finger pointing, hate and propaganda meant to confuse us. No one even wants to think about the problems. We walk around in cannabis hazes. We watch trite shit on our phones, upvote or like videos and posts on the toilet or couch for a fleeting moment of pleasure and escape. Declare people not like us as dumb. Not caring to think deeply about anything or the challenges and complexities of life. This leads to a failure to understand what is causing the inequities in our society and realize that Donald Trump is incapable of fixing it.

Deep breath. I try to find comfort in my friends, my wife. Bringing this blog back seems to be helping too. Let’s see what happens tomorrow.

It’s two days until the election… No. I don’t want to start there. Instead, let’s review how my life has changed since I last wrote here.

The dating turmoil of my late twenties ended after I met a woman who truly made and still makes me happy. Before that, deep down in my core, I believed marriage was extremely unlikely. That my insecurities and relationship needs wouldn’t align with anyone that would love me back. But I was wrong. I found her. She was, and is beautiful inside and out. We dated for a couple years and then married in our early thirties in a wedding that is still brought up as the best the family has ever had. 10 years married now. No kids by mutual agreement. We’re aging together, still strong and healthy. Own a house, 2 cats and it’s lovely.

I’m re-starting this blog off the right way with her. Telling her about it, letting her know that this is an outlet I miss. Reaching a mutual understanding that she won’t read it or seek it out. Giving me the space to express myself more freely, even if it’s just to an audience of one.

On that stable foundation, I had a successful career in science. So much so that I retired from it early at 44. That was this summer. I’m still calling it a sabbatical, but it feels like retirement. Finances are solid and I’m proud of what I accomplished. My work helped save lives.

So, life was good during my absence from this blog. Society on the other hand….

So….. it’s November 2024 now. Four days before the presidential election. Eleven years since I did any writing to myself in this format. Twenty years since I started this blog on Xanga back in 2004 as an introverted, lonely aspiring University Student. Jesus fuck my life has changed. I’m Forty-five years old now. This post will stand as the first one where I’m clearly not young anymore.

I imported all the old Xanga posts. First thing I did was edits to censor names and identifiers. I got distracted by my old writing. I couldn’t help but get nostalgic for that 25 year old kid. The writing was so self-involved… which was part of the point (but goddamn, sometimes it was so clever and charming too). Why did I start a blog? Why public? Back then, likely some narcissism. Some loneliness and relationship unhappiness. A desperate want to be heard and liked, even if that conflicted with introverted tendencies.

So why turn back to it? Because it feels so much better than a comment on social media. Fuck Reddit. There is upvote/downvote judgment on every comment or thought written there. The partitioning of communities encourages group-think hive minds. My old blog was so much more pure. I want to return to the good parts of what that writing did for me.

If you know me in real life, please don’t read this site. I want to write honest and not fearful that I’ll hurt you. I hope this is just a start.

So looks like Xanga is going to close huh. Too bad. I would have gladly kept posting a random note about my life every so often.

Should I try and archive this stuff? It only has nostalgic value. Whenever I read backwards my posts seem pretty stupid.

Maybe I’ll looking into opening another outlet now.

My favourite video game series is Fallout. It takes place in an alternative reality where there was a major nuclear war in the 50s. A few hundred years pass. Your character emerges out of an underground survival vault to discover the ruin and recovery of the human race. Post Apocalyptic, sad, violent, wonderful.

Xanga kind of gives me the same feeling as Fallout. Except more hopeless. Lol.

The doctor was just here. I’m going to get my third rabies shot in a few minutes. (All is fine, just precautionary). Fucking bat.