I have been traveling a bit. Spent some time in Brooklyn and plan to be there more this fall. Brooklyn is such an amazing place. Really every borough in the city of New York is amazing. The intensity and celebration of life has unexpectedly made me more optimist about the future. Florida is good. I like the warm weather and the relaxed lifestyle but I am more pessimistic about the future when I am in Florida.

It’s been a while since I have written a blog post. I moved to a new apartment in the same building. it’s basically the same apartment layout but was a bit cheaper than my old spot. So I moved upstairs. Everything is the same yet different. I am NYC this week. I was at a 75th birthday party for a dear friend. It’s interesting when you fully acknowledge that you and everyone around you is getting old. There is still life and desire but it is tempered by age. Aging has been a curious experience. Some days I am glad to have gotten this far. Other days I want to rewind to an earlier moment. And other darker less happy moments I wonder if this the time to go. Have I reached a logical conclusion or do I have more to offer the world, family, friends, whoever? There are days where I could lay down and imagine never getting up. There are other days when I can’t wait to get started. The tension between wanting to be at rest and remain in motion is tangible. I wonder how other people feel and when they realize the end is near, or is it always somewhat of a surprise. I have imagined many endings for myself. I also have imagined continuing on for a bit more. How. Much does one need to accomplish? How long should it take? Is there always another opportunity?  When does one step aside and make room for the next generation. How do you let go and keep going?

I can't believe in a week I am moving from the 2nd floor to 8th floor in my building. There are a bunch of reasons. Anyway it's probable the shortest move I have ever done, though it's not the first time I have lived in two different apartments in the same building. There is some psychological motivator that makes me move. I have been in my current apartment for almost 5 years. Probably the second longest I have lived in the same place in my adult life. As a child we moved once when I was about two years old. From two until I graduated from high school I lived in the same house. though I don't remember the early years. My main recollection is sharing a room with my brother. There were five of us. Four boys and one girl. She got her own room. My brother and I share one room and our two youngest brothers shared another. I assumed most people shared a room. I had a roommate my first year in college but since then I have mostly lived alone. I estimated that I have lived in about 25 places so far. Some are hard to define because there have been times when I drifted between places and didn't really have a fixed place. I was never homeless or unhoused in the typical sense. It was more that I didn't want to be any particular place. In those instances I either lived in a hotel or stayed with an acquaintance. Mostly though I have lived alone for the better part of 45 years. On the other hand I use mass transit as often as possible. So make of that what you will.

I have the easiest life ever. It’s not because I have a lot of money or a steady income. It’s because my standards and expectations are almost non existent. I get riled up occasionally over something that seems incredibly stupid or cruel, but then realize it’s impact is minimal or out of my control. I calm down and find something else to do. It really is the greatest luxury to be able to look away. Increasingly I find myself torn between looking away and engaging. Engaging to what end? Can I do anything to make a difference and is that difference helpful. No one can tell the future so it’s never clear what the correct action would be. But also no one can tell the future so why let someone else determine your next action. I assume most of what I do and think will have no discernible impact on the world. Sometimes I am surprised when years later someone tells me that I had an affect on their life. Again no one knows the future. We are all just poking around the unknown. I’ve also had people tell me the negative affect I’ve had on things that I thought were brilliant moves by me.  So it’s always best to remind yourself that while you should make a best effort to do the right thing, there will always be a chance you didn’t. Be humble. Be prepared. Be surprised. Be ready.

As I get older I have less incentive to do anything. It's strange because on one hand I have less time left and on the other hand it seems whatever time I have left will be squandered if I do anything. Nothing really matters but also nothing is stopping me and nothing is likely to change my life. So I sit and do nothing most days. I have some work that I do for money and I keep up to date on what's happening in the world. I help out friends and artists. I make a minimal effort to keep up to date with family though I am not sure if my presence is desired or needed as I've been absent so frequently. Some days I pretend I am going to change and embrace some issue or cause or lifestyle. In reality I am content to wait. I think about things, I speculate, I help out when someone asks. I don't seek out much though.  What if I am waiting for a moment that has already passed. How you know? It's not like a bus schedule.

I notice Wordland has been updated to 0.5.19. The popup style and link menu is still nonfunctional on safari. I have no idea why the mouse click can not select a style or link. My work around is to use firefox which works without issue. You would think after all this time (20+ years!) that building a web app would be consistent across browsers. There's nothing wrong with the code for this text editor as far as I can tell. Yet the subtle differences still impact web apps using common languages. I mean this is just JavaScript, HTML, CSS. How can it be different browser to browser? I'm sure there's some weird thing Apple is doing with Safari that is unrelated but somehow completely necessary for their purposes. These are little things that make me despair for our future communication. I did some more testing and can make the style bar work in safari but moving the cursor until the selected attribute seems to be highlighted. It's hit or miss though because even bringing the cursor to what appears to be the same exact spot doesn't always work. It's really sad that this simple function is so frustrating. It's a problem I thought was solved decades ago.

We are now halfway through 2025. It's all so arbitrary but also something that binds us. We can not escape time. We can ignore it. We can move through the world as if there is nothing special about time. It's at once the most subjective and most referenced attribute of our society. We constantly want to know how long something will take. We want to know when something will happen. I am guessing the most common use of SIRI is to set a time or an alarm. A thousand dollar egg timer! I read a book recently called The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli. He is a theoretical physicist specializing Quantum Gravity. Gravity as it's commonly defined is a distortion in spacetime. So his book is about the subjectivity of time. How time is unique to each of us and the idea of things happening at the same time is meaningless in the universe. Of course in the confined space most of live the difference is so small as to be undetectable. But it's still there.

I woke up feeling out of sorts. I am angry and saddened by the callous nonsensical public discourse about the political and cultural situation in the United States. I am simultaneously ready to runaway, hunker down, move closer to the craziness, and just sit here and do nothing. It’s unclear if any of these attitudes would be better or worse or change the outcome. I am not sure what the outcome should be? What sort of world do I want? Does it matter? I try to suppress my rage toward people who to me are clearly trying to destroy the lives of anyone who does not submit to them. I have no idea what I can do. Write and call your representatives. Talk to my friends. Tell random people what is happening. The last one is telling becuase most people are fully engaged in their lives as they should be. They assume whatever is happening is not that bad and if it is, there is very little they can do to change it. So they adapt and carry on. Is there a breaking point? Do we only bend so far? How will we know when things have gone to far. At what point do the choices narrow so that you must act. Clearly I have no idea. My casual attention to the issues and occasional participation may or may not have any affect. My periodic support of other people  and organizations may or may not help. At what point does one become an opportunist? Can it be avoided? Should it be? Maybe the things we think save us don’t really have much to do with our survival at all. Maybe the important stuff is anonymous and mostly undetectable. I guess this can also go the other way. Something so innocuous we don't see it may in fact be destroying our entire world. Sometimes even after we identify something we ignore it because we either can’t comprehend its affects or even worse we can understand the affects but also have no will the change it.

It’s the last day of June. I guess that means something. We have a collective notion of time and it comforts us to see the days tick by. Though sometimes we worry about deadlines and marking the passage of time upsets us. Conceiving of time and attributing importance to one day over another has been an integral part of human civilization for thousands of years. Some of the oldest artifacts we have are related to keeping time, tracking the movement of celestial bodies, changing seasons, migratory patterns of other animals. Many different systems have been created. Almost all related to the natural world in some way. It’s important to relate to cyclical events in the world. I read an article recently about a committee developing time zones for the moon. It’s interesting to consider our entire idea around calendars and time will not apply once we get to space. I wonder what else won’t matter when we get to space. I also wonder what will.

It was a way to say goodbye. I am not sure of its origin but I remember hearing/using the phrase in the 70s as teenager. It was a nice counter phrase to the general gloom and doom of the era. The Vietnam war was winding down but still weighed on peoples thoughts. The 1973 war (Yom Kippur) led by Egypt and Syria attacking Israel to reclaim land lost in the 1967 war. Followed by the OPEC oil embargo and a new word to describe the American economy – stagflation. So Peace Out seemed like an optimistic phrase when parting ways in the post hippie suburbs. The revolution hadn't come. America appeared to have lost a step and no longer could dictate terms to the world. Nixon resigned and for a moment we were truly adrift. Ford became president and Nelson Rockefeller was appointed VP. Ford had himself been appointed by Nixon when Agnew resigned. So we had two men who were not elected by the people in charge. Strange times when you think about it. So Peace Out and maybe Peace Now.

The version number for wordland.social changed.  According to the release notes it makes the blog list ranking relative to which sites you are posting to. The other changes are more about future features. It seems to be working as expected. I am writing this in Firefox so I haven't tested to see if the popup styling menu works in Safari. Maybe another post later today. It's laundry day. I have also decided to make a little bus trip to Hollywood Florida. There's a bus near my apartment that goes there. I booked a ticket. It's less than the gas and toll costs for me to drive (if I had a car). Each time I find a public transportation option or a collective travel option I think we are closer to evolving as a society. Of course the allure of owning a vehicle is always just under the surface. I wonder if that desire for one's own transportation is a strongly associated characteristic of the society I grew up in or is there a deeper need being met by having your own transport? My example is probably of no interest to most people. And I once was enamored with having a cool vehicle of my own. I was also thrilled to be able to get on a plane to anywhere and be there faster than any previous humans could imagine. Now I am more interested in how shared systems that use less energy and make less impact could solve many of our environmental and social problems. Of course it could just be me an old man dreaming.

I have a bunch of important decisions to make in the next two weeks. Unfortunately I am of a mind to ignore all of them. Making plans is always more interesting than having to execute the plan to me. Speculating and articulating is enough. I don't need to do much of anything. Of course I do need to work as I don't really have much money. Life is comfortable but definitely not secure. Could it all collapse on me. Indeed it can and probably will. Can I survive a collapse? Who knows. There's either not enough pressure on me or I am unable to detect the pressure. No one can be aware of all the stresses on their life. If we could then we would probably live forever. I wonder if any study exists to show longevity for all the various self help and one weird trick people?