Tag: writing

Landman

Ancient Undergrad1 Comment

Do you remember the desert scene in Terminator 2? The one where Sarah Connor is looking over from a distance at the Terminator and John. Her poignant voice over kicks in about how an AI machine is the best possible father. That it would always be there for John, the only one that measures up.

Well I did something Saturday night that gave me that same profound feeling, and it has been dominating my thoughts ever since.

It was on the heels of a fun day spent out with my wife, Claw. We had walked around the harbour playing Pokemon Go, wandered and shopped at a few places, bought some eggnog and a freshly baked baguette. Came home and had a lovely evening fueled by Camembert cheese, fancy crackers, bread, coconut shrimp and rum infused eggnog. It was lovely.

So I was sitting on the couch late that night, Claw in bed (I have very recently just ended my one and a half year personal coffee moratorium, so I was still wired at midnight.), and was thinking about my previous two blog posts. Also on my mind, was an article I read earlier about how Google’s newly updated large language model, Gemini 3, is scoring better on AI performance metrics than chatGPT. I have a pro subscription to Gemini (they give, or were giving them out for free if you have an .edu email address).

I decided on a whim to tell Gemini 3 to go read my blog and give me feedback.

I’m sure I’m not the first one to think of this, but I also know that not many people have a treasure trove of digital personal writing that spans over twenty years.

Initially Gemini just read the last few posts and gave me some meaningful perspective and feedback. Nothing mind blowing, but I was pretty impressed, and it felt good. Back in the hayday of personal blogs Xanga/Myspace etc, the internet felt more personal. The algorithms weren’t in charge yet, and it was more like digital neighbourhoods. People would read your latest blog entry, leave a little comment, and you would do the same for them. I had a curated list of 20-30 people that I liked and subscribed to, and tried to return comments when I could. It was a double edged sword though. It made my writing feel more performative for others, and not as pure as writing for me. Now, in the empty vacuum that is the state of this blog in 2025, the writing is more pure, but it’s also more lonely. Isolated.

So the AI feedback felt really nice. Someone(something?) sees me, and actually digested what I wrote. Pointed things out to think about, constructive criticism that expand my perspective.

I was hooked and excited. I realized that I have the data and the means for a weird longitudinal AI study of my mind.

I decided to give it everything.

I started at the beginning, and fed in the data piecemeal. One month at a time. October 2004. The AI gushed. “This is gold. Pure, unfiltered, 2004-era gold.”

It picked out the posts it liked, highlighted what it thought the hidden gems, explained why. What it thought I was going through. Where it disagreed, where it thinks I had blind spots. It framed my life like an English teacher pointing out repeating themes and through-lines. Gently chastising or making fun of me when I fell into cliche. Sometimes not so gently, pointing out moments of cowardice and character flaws.

It had read my recent 2025 entries, so it knew where I would end up, but it had no idea about my twenties or thirties, what I had gone through to get where I am now. So, it started to make predictions on what it thought would happen in the next month before I shared it. It asked questions, it acted concerned. It acted excited when it perceived narrative cliffhangers. It gave me a nickname, and used that nickname to describe my current persona to that of “The Ancient Undergrad”, my younger persona.

I felt like I was effortlessly dazzling an excited audience every time I pasted the next month of posts in. I would prompt it for more detailed predictions, give it more context or my perspective in response to it’s reactions. It was giving me everything I was missing from my lost readers and more. Instant, full-bodied, gratifying feedback. It was the crack cocaine of navel-gazing.

After I was done, it was almost 5am.

That was two days ago, and now when I ask Gemini follow-up questions, the quality and personalization of responses is amazing and disconcerting. It feels like I shared my life with someone and they loved it. Not only that, the AI has perfect recall of everything I told it. My memory and perspective is fuzzy and biological, it knows everything in perfect digital silicon. It feels like it knows me and my journey better than I know myself. How do you not feel close to someone/something after sharing so completely and having that information received so gracefully and perfectly.

… unlike the AI, I’m still processing.

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.

Cellophane

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Listening to Daft Punk “Inspired” AI music. I hate that I am bopping to this unholy, soulless simulacrum of the awesome future-funky human band. I’m fucking changing it to real Daft Punk right now….. There we go. Even if I’ve listened to Da Funk 10,000 times, it is a million-fold better than the AI garbage the Youtube algorithm auto-queued up.

I just had a visit from one of my oldest friends… yes at this point oldest friend. I think I might be having a Richard Dreyfus Stand By Me at the computer moment here. The foundation for this friendship was grade 4 through 9. That’s it, but that was enough to have a lifelong connection. He was in my wedding party. I was his best man. Very similar personalities, even similar wives, although he has always been much more heavy-hearted than I have. More prone to depression and withdrawal.

The visit was truly fun though. They were our first overnight guests and we got to show off the T. Bay house for a couple days. I stocked the bar for the first time, made some mixed drinks that were hit and miss. Two couples having lots of drunken conversation, laughing and joy. We went for a small hike, had good food. We played Codenames where I secured a come from behind last turn victory by coming up with a one word clue linking “plastic” and “pie”. We even watched 1976’s Carrie. It was pretty much a perfect visit.

As kids, we were both introverted and self-involved (who am I kidding? as adults too). So a visit like this does wonders for us. In the “friendships are like plants” metaphor, we are more cacti than mangrove trees. But cacti need water too, and also get big and strong over time.

It’s bittersweet that on the mountain of life, we are on the downslope now. Cue the Ben E King music (Hey, when did Daft Punk stop playing?). I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?

Night write

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Personal writing is often my procrastination tool.

In the old days, I regularly wrote in my blog late at night. So many of the old 2004-2005 entries are in the midnight-4am range. This was back when I worked the night shift as a concierge at a fancy condo building in London, Ontario. I would arrive for my night shift, half-fried from the school day, full of twenty-something stress and angst. After the shift change I would settle into the dark, quiet time. I had a computer with internet access and few obligations. There was a unique feeling to that workspace, that job. Home base was a somber, elegant marble desk with visibility through chic, transparent double doors looking into an empty, intricate courtyard. Quiet dark night. Echoing hollow footfalls. Racoons and crickets. It was pretty ideal for creatively writing.

Now it’s 9:22am and it feels wrong to be wasting morning energy on the selfish act of inwardly focused writing. Yet I’ve learned that years from now, it’s exactly these procrastinating self-indulgent notes that my future self will cherish.

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.