Old me

You can’t be the old you. And if you spend time thinking about it you might as well accept that you’re in a alternate universe.  It should be liberating to not have to be your old self.  If you had glory years, if the best is behind you, it gets a little harder though.   How do we move forward without repeating ourselves, without competing against our formerness, which has no bearing on the world the older us is navigating.  I’m so much better than who I was, but I miss who I was, there was a lot of freedom in that earlier version of me.

As a futurist I’ve spent many of my waking hours trying to peer into the future, so that I could chart a path that it made sense to travel down.  I remember when I was young my ideas were always a little too big.  Things would start with a simple enough idea, but the scope always grew in my head.  Eventually I would have to split the idea into parts, everything was a trilogy. Most of the time the humble idea no longer lived up to the opus that started to build in my mind and I’d abandon it.  That isn’t how most people get into thinking about the future.  

I did eventually get better at coming up with an idea and working on it in manageable chunks.  I did start to believe the big fiction ideas were just that, immense daydreams that my mind made to pass the day, this was grounding, but poetry and think pieces were real, world building was less of a thing I could build to. 

As I got older I found myself anxious with my routine. I began to worry that my successful creative hobby, and my good working career were me.  They were.  We are what we do.  I was a succesful IT professional and an early Internet blogger with some following. Life was good.  I was growing uncomfortable though. On close appraisal, the more certain and firm things felt, the more they seemed insubstantial.  I was starting to see the first hints of the world past adulthood, the early uncertainty of middle age.  

The nineties recession had left everything dingy and decaying, except for the growing presence of the internet.  In the real world White flight was continuing its migratory pattern to newer suburbs. White families were fearful of non whites moving in and lowering property values, so they moved their kids to new poorly built suburbs. A world of new schools, longer commutes, no apartments, few black and Latino faces. 

So it is again curious to think that years later I would find myself riding pretty high and uneasy.  As the two thousands picked up so did the housing market.  All over the world people were taking dated and neglected homes and remodeling them.  There was an opportunity to make money and the home was important again.  Home ownership became a rally cry.  Most middle class and wealthy people will own a home in their lifetime, multiple homes, for the poor it is another matter. During the 2000’s though everyone was owning a home, or multiples homes!

Home ownership was changing, consumerism was also changing.  Everybody was upgrading their homes.  The natural pattern of buying a “first home” and then getting the larger home cause your family was growing, and you wanted to move to where the “good” schools were, and then maybe downgrading to a smaller home when you got older was changing.  People were trading in homes like they were cars or shoes. Flipping became a term.  The cost of houses was rising at an alarming rate, like Dutch tulips.  

The thing about trends and events that everyone is drawn into, especially when money is a componet is that everyone is suddenly a fucking expert.  Everyone is trying to figure out how they can get in on the action.  And everyone is sure the party will never stop.  

I liked the Internet, but I was growing slowly concerned about the house game.  The thing about lows and highs is that they always average out.  Naturally you don’t want to buy at the top of a market that is going to topple.  Really you always want to buy the ugliest house for the least money, but that discussion is for another time.    

The Internet was filling with promise.  My livelihood was based on the internet.  Computers had gone from being these devices which were capable of doing great feats, they were slowly becoming the looking glass to the information highway. Housing on the other hand was turning into a party where someone had spiked the punch.  

In the perfect scam the mark becomes convinced that they want to be in on the action.  You’re not hard selling them.  Usually you just have to drive a nice car, wear nice clothes, and have things they want.  This is how you rope them in.  

I didn’t know it at the time, but the newest and best version of me was going to toss on a sandwich board and wail on and on about the sky falling.  I was looking into the future and everything was fucked. The thing is that people who are on the opposite side of delusion are decried. No one wants to hear what you’re saying, they don’t thank you later.  

I didn’t short the market.  I don’t do the stock game, that isn’t in my wheel house.  I did eschew debt though.  I did fight off the advances of buying an additional house, that my ex wanted to do at the time.  I wish i could say that meant everything went well and we won, but you lose sometimes, even when you’re on the winning side.

Looking back, I was continuing to lead a life that didn’t have a lot in common with the people around me.  This is lonely.  Most of us find a tribe of like minded people.  Most of us do not want our conceptions challenged.  We are comforted by the same.  When you’d stop dreaming about stories to pass the time and you realize your job and your outlook on life are going to dramaticlaly change, the uncertainty is crippling.  

And that is where I found myself.  I was losing weight, paying off debt, more than skeptical about the hysteria people were going through and I was afraid. 

Fear is a motivator.  My growing anxiety and fear that everything was about to come unhinged is what saved me.  Old me wouldn’t have seen that.  Old me was oblivious.

End part 1.