Tag: life

Coffee and Music…

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….have always been my most reliable way to snap out of ennui. I can make ennui a noun right?

It’s unfortunate that like so many other forms of creativity in 2025, music quality has also plummeted. Probably for the same reasons that I wrote about in my last post (Picture me saying that as I push up my glasses, and hold an index finger in the air). I’ve heard or read people say things along the lines of, “Where did all the great bands go? Why does music suck now?”. I don’t think it’s coincidence that my interest in music steadily dwindled as smart phones proliferated. I would pinpoint the inflection point to be somewhere around 2008. You see it in my playlists. There’s all these 90s and early 2000s bangers and then the jams start to become few and far between. And I truly love listening to music. The receipts are here, it’s undeniably apparent in my old posts, how large a part music was in my life. But, holy fuck have I fallen off the bandwagon. The kid who wrote here twenty years ago (me) would be horrified. The extent of my knowledge regarding the 2025 music scene is pretty much (1) there is some sort of “Geese” album that people like. (2) Music from the Kpop Demon Hunters movie produced monster hits (3) Taylor Swift dominates the Billboard charts.

This is an extremely sad state of affairs.

When thinking about the state 2025 vs 1996, I feel sad that things have changed, but also fortunate that I got to experience my formative years during the 90s. I was born in 1979, just barely catching the tail end of Gen X. I wish I could convey to all the younger Millennials and Gen Z kids just how fantastic it was to be a teenager in the mid 90s. (I’m aware I’m in full Andy Rooney mode right now and I don’t care. And yes, it’s an intentionally old reference).

It’s not just nostalgia. Recently, I saw old footage on Youtube of kids in a high school from the nineties. The first thing that popped out was the dorky clothes. The second thing was how engaged everyone was with each other. No cell phones, just human interaction and complete presence. Joy everywhere. No devices, no screens. It was such a different world. Fucking unreal. These kids truly don’t know what they’ve lost. Back then, kids didn’t have their time and energy stolen by apps scientifically engineered and continuously tweaked to be as addictive as possible. Isolation is everywhere, optimism has evaporated, and focus is constantly stolen. Who is going to form a band under these conditions? It’s not surprising the proportion of solo artists is much greater today vs then. It takes effort, will, and social skills to get together and execute a collective vision to make cool as shit music.

(BTW I am bopping to closer by NIN as I write this. Look and marvel at how my acronyms span generations. The Xennial micro-generation can pull that shit off with ease).

Well… as evidenced by my title, I had aspirations on writing something about both music and coffee. Despite my intentions, it looks like I wrote another “get off my lawn/back in my day” post. I wanted to opine on how I’m back on coffee after a year and a half caffeine hiatus. I wanted to write about how significant that first black coffee was. How I saw through other dimensions and time. It got me moving and thinking. It really is a wonder drug. It’s a little harder to reign in tangential thinking, but even so I’m getting more shit done. I think I’m back on team coffee. I want the highs and lows instead of steady of energy…. at least for a while.

Smart Fog

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Something about that title seems obscene. It must be the unintentional letter adjacency to smut, fart, frog and fag. I was just trying to pick a title that describes the dysfunctional mental state most of society is in because of smart phones. It’s 2025 and we all live together in one big corporate smut fag.

I hate how I’m susceptible, having my time and motivation stolen. Addictive apps steal creativity and focus. Spend any significant amount of time with a social media algorithm and it’s going to bring you into the darkness and bind you. Oh, you liked that Youtube short? Here’s five more just like it, plus another ten videos of people reacting to it. Oh, you picked up your phone to research a DIY project on Reddit? While you are here, why don’t you check your sports subs, or look, here’s click-bait that you have no control over but be outraged. Let’s chase more empty calorie dopamine.

All of a sudden it’s noon, you’re still in your pajamas, and you haven’t done a single thing of value all morning with your finite free time.

If that’s the typical individual level experience, how is it at the macro level? Do you think society has the same level of focus and creativity as pre smartphone days? We are experiencing the death of daydreaming. How often in 2025 do we think without distraction? I’m 46 years old. I have seen the whole shitty change happen. I remember boredom. Standing in lines, waiting for something or someone with nothing to do, the best you could do was maybe listen to music on your iPod (or Walkman/Discman before that). You had the time and space to think and plan. To daydream and reflect.

What is going to break this dystopia? Because it feels like a death spiral.

Maybe writing in this empty blog can be part of my quiet rebellion. I will express myself here honestly and imperfectly. Fuck the algorithms. Fuck 2025 and the enshittification of everything. Owning your own time is a form of wealth, and I’m tired of people stealing from me.

Big Apple Birthday

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On Sunday Claw and I returned from a long week-end in NYC to celebrate her birthday.

And we did it fancy.

I did the planning. The two main events were seeing La Boheme Friday night, and a Broadway show, Sunset BLVD (starring Nicole Scherzinger) on Saturday night. We stayed at the Empire hotel on 63rd St, right across from the Met. I bought two new suits, some ties and bowties to match Claw’s dress, cufflinks and a fancy looking watch. Ate at a couple fancy restaurants, saw both the American Museum of Natural History and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Brunched and shopped in Soho and was massaged in Chinatown. Walked through Central Park, had a final breakfast at Broad Nosh Bagels before driving back to Beantown.

It was a pretty decadent week-end. We needed it. Claw needed it. She works very hard at a challenging job. Getting out and experiencing some culture and fine dining was more than welcome. If we are going to be living in the Ontario forest in a few months, we should take advantage of some of the cultural opportunities a short drive from home while we can.

It’s not lost on me how many people can’t afford a week-end like this. This was in my head as the fancy opera audience watched a story about poor and starving artists. On the way to the play, the cab driver was complaining about being financially squeezed so that he had to work all the time now.

When we were dining out on opera night, Claw ordered a pasta dish that had a sizeable portion of truffle on it. Later when she posted it on Facebook, a friend commented about it being a weird combination, sweet on pasta. They didn’t realize that the truffle wasn’t chocolate. A lot of people in our respective families are just trying to keep their heads above water. I am humbly aware of how fortunate we are.

It felt like the city had some edge. That might just be New York though. The gruff interactions we experienced could just be par for the course. Still, I can’t shake the feeling that society is in the calm tension before the storm. How much more can this capitalist system squeeze out of regular people before things start to break?

2014 – 2023

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How do I feel after formatting and archiving all my old blog posts for posterity?

Wistful.

That kid that wrote here in 2004 embodied the spirit of my youthful soul. That young man is still in here, but there’s a middle-age crust now. There, now you see! I’m an ugly, horrible, grouchy old man! That melancholy feeling from yesterday has lingered. I ripped an old scab off my fungus heart and am now missing everyone and everything from that time in my life.

So what happened in the years where my blog fizzled out and Xanga died?

After breaking up with my long-term girlfriend (and the resulting interim dating phase), I found my future wife, Claw in 2009. She was, and is, a kind, generous, warm person with interests and passions that align with my own. We were married in 2014, and our marriage is still solid as a rock.

We decided not to have children. We’re both 45 and mostly at peace with that decision. We revisit the conversation once in awhile to reassure each other we made the right call. Heart and head don’t always agree though. The house feels too empty sometimes.

I went from being a very low paid toxicology technician at a contract research organization in a Boston suburb, to a slightly better paid Research Associate at a pharmaceutical start-up in Cambridge, MA. They ran out of money and laid everyone off when their diabetes antibody failed in clinical trials. The chief scientific officer apparently liked me though. After he landed another executive job at a stealth start-up, he reached out to me to join the tiny company. I spent the rest of my career there, 2011-2024. The company is now in the S&P 500, having made a blockbuster drug in 2020. I was promoted a few times, ended up retiring as a senior scientist last June. I feel incredibly lucky to have been integral in developing something that saved thousands of lives. I am listed as a co-inventor on dozens of patents and have financial stability to reclaim my time. I am still trying to figure out what to do with it. Claw is still working by choice. I am proud of my career. I worked hard. I owed it to that confused, exhausted, naive student who started this blog back in Weldon Library 21 years ago. You would be proud of us kid.

We bought a house and moved to a Boston suburb in the Metrowest area. We love vacations to the Caribbean. Aruba, Puerto Rico, Grand Cayman, Bermuda. My original wedding ring is buried somewhere in the sand near the Pillars of Hercules in Antigua. We visited Japan, the UK. Countless trips around Canada. I was the best man in a Vegas wedding. Trips to Cape Cod. We’ve had great vacations in LA and NYC.

I’m still in good shape, working out most days. No major health scares yet. I started growing weed. I made a bitcoin mining rig. Wood working projects. Friends have come and gone. Couples have rotated in and then out. Friendships are like plants and I’ve never been great at watering them. I’ve maintained a few close ones though. I think there is space for more now that time has opened up. Life feels quiet. I work on my chess game, read, play video games. Life can feel boring without real stressors. It feels an incredible luxury, but also existentially uneasy. What is my purpose?

“You pass butter”

We are preparing to leave Massachusetts. Since Claw’s job is fully remote, we are going back to my hometown in Ontario, Canada. It is a secluded property buried in the woods on 40 acres, but within the city limits. No neighbours are visible from the house, only ancient granite mountains. It’s our apocalypse home and a fresh start. We’re going to find out how hard is it to build a social network outside of family in our mid-forties. 2025 feels like the start of a new chapter. I hope it’s not the last good one.