Looking back on my life, I realize that much of how I feel within a given point in time is based on what I think is on the horizon.

I suspect that this is ultimately related to how I have never been a "happy person". It is probably also why I have always found my work, and conversations related to my profession, to be the most important things in my life: They make me feel as though I am fully directing my place within the future and they give weight to my past and present.

Back before I was an adult, I got by by thinking about how "it will be better later". This worked for quite a long time and was very true. I didn't like being a child. I liked being a teenager more than that. I liked being an adult most of all.

Once I became an adult, however, things started to shift. For a while, the future seemed to track the trajectory of my involvements so "it will be better later" took the shape of my career development and the way that I was becoming more meaningfully engaged in the interpersonal relationships I was forming.

Then, at a certain point, things started to darken. I started to see the end of the road of my career: A place where the part of my industry involving me would shrink so dramatically that I would eventually no longer be part of it. I started to see the growing misanthropy of the world and my advancing age make engagements with other humans more difficult. I became aware of the decay of the stabilizing elements of culture, the changing stakes of political landscapes, and the short-sighted desperation of economic mechanisms.

Instead of thinking about the times when milestones of improvement would arrive, I started to estimate when milestones of loss of all I valued would happen. The scary things is that I have been wrong... these points of collapse are starting to drift closer beyond the usual speed of time.

All I can do now is try to be present in the current moment, since little beyond now is likely to exist. I don't have the power to change the course of the ship so all I can do is choose to dance on the deck, knowing the path leads to doom, whether I panic or not.

Hopefully it isn't how I see it and the issue is only that my disconnection has led to overthought which has led to pessimism. Being incorrect, after all, isn't unlikely.

Of course, it is possible that only I will notice the collapse or care since these concerns may only belong to me. After all, the passers-by don't notice the fields of the dead, no matter how many ants lots their lives in the war.

We will see... or not,
...Nights