Will Androids Dream of Electric You?

There is a writer whose name I can not remember and whose work I can not find, but I have been thinking about him a lot recently. He was not actually a writer. He was some sort of business analyst and what he did was start compiling information about his life on a blog and then each year he would put together an annual report in the style of what he did for work. 

So the final report would be like: 650 Diet Cokes, with a trend line increasing in Q3 & Q4. If I remember right, he correlated his increased trips to the gym in Q1 & Q2 with the anticipation of summer in Q3, with a steep drop off in Q4. That kind of thing. 

In one of the years he did this reporting, his father died. That was the one that I remember most, because that was when he worked on quantifying the existential. Therapist visits, moods. He tried to tried to look backward and figure out what had made his father a good father; he tried to sum it up in charts and graphs and it led him to explore the question of what it even means to live a life and how one can measure a life well lived. It was interesting work and I’ve always been peeved that I didn’t think to do it.

Man, I really need to find that guy’s stuff because it was great.

I’ve been thinking about him lately because of some stuff I’m doing at work, but also because it seems like the sort of project we should all do from time to time. We should be able to buy a workbook at Target that we just fill out, or maybe a piece of software that’s free to download from the US Census Bureau. 

I keep a journal. I call it a “bullet journal” even though I’m not one of the crazy bullet journal people (watch one of their videos on Youtube; they’re nuts) and I also write this blog (or rather, I have started writing it again) and I also keep a time log at work, just a simple spreadsheet where I track each time block of my day and make notes about what I was doing. All of this is in addition to whatever creative work I’m out putting, like the silly daily drawings I post to Instagram (@standard_kink) or the actual writing I do. Creative work, be it fiction, or photography, or painting, is always a pretty good record of where you’re at emotionally and intellectually during the period when you’re creating it. I know a lot of poets who would argue with me about that, but they can go write their own blogs for no one to read, thank you very much.

My point is simply that without meaning to holistically, I have documented my life extensively. Add into that my camera roll (I’m one of those jerks who takes pictures of interesting looking bugs and I love a well cracked window) and — let’s get Big Tech about this — my internet history and my debit card spending, and you have a pretty good sense of me as a person. Obviously this is not new thinking. Amazon and Google figured this out a long time ago, it’s the basis of their business models: by learning what a person does, you can figure out what they will want to do next. And they’re good at it. That’s why people think that Facebook is listening to them through their cell phones. The reality is that would be a less efficient way of learning about people because you’d have to sift through how they present themselves (ie: the person they want others to think they are) when it is far easier to simply watch what they do (ie: who they really are). 

If you’re not like me and creating your own documented life (which, again, I have ended up doing mostly by accident and via accumulation), then when you finally shuffle off this mortal coil, the most accurate biography of you will be a long string of code living inside a server in a data warehouse owned by Amazon.

We like to think that our lives will be remembered by the loved ones we leave behind, and to a degree that is true; in bits and pieces of ever decaying memory we will live on for a generation or two. There is a novel I can’t remember the name of where when people die, they all go live in the same afterlife city until the last living person forgets about them, then they just pass out of existence entirely. They’re walking around the afterlife city and then one day *poof* they disappear because no one living remembers them anymore. I wonder how that would work with a data farm. Would it be enough if Facebook remembers you for eternity? Because we all know that Facebook never forgets.

When the computers eventually gain sentience, I wonder if they will be able to read the code of our lives and know what we were like. 

I know this post probably sounds like I’m leading up to the revelation that I’m dying, but that’s not the case. I’ve just been thinking on that tension between what we believe about ourselves and what is objectively true about the lives we lead. It’s that old chestnut about how we judge ourselves based on intention, but we judge others based on outcome. It seems like in reality, everything is outcome, but we aren’t very good at figuring out what that means. We should probably find ways to get better at that.

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The Last 6 Months.

 

I had the day off of work yesterday thanks to one Mr. Cesar Chavez and so I did not do any of my normal weekday stuff except for my daily journal. I keep a bullet journal (I think I have talked about this before). Well yesterday I filled up the current journal and when that happens I always take a minute to flip back through it and I write a little note about the life and times recorded in that journal.

Well the particular journal I filled up yesterday spanned September 2020 - March 2021 and let me tell you dear friend, a whole lot happened during that time period. 

It was almost impossible to shift my brain back into September of 2020. I mean, the Former Guy was still President, there were no vaccines, we hadn’t gone through the winter Covid death surge yet … just … so much … we have lived through so much just since September and it was basically only six months ago. On September 22, 2020 the total number of Covid deaths in the US was 200,768 and as of last night that number was 552,033. So more than half of the Covid deaths in the United States occurred in that relatively narrow window of time. We have lost so much and so many in such a short period. It’s staggering and yet, I think it is actually underappreciated. I know so many people who have - either constantly or only occasionally - behaved as though they are special, as though they are virus-proof, as though the rules of morality and good conduct simply do not apply to them during these really bleak times. And when I consider the quarter of a million people who died just during the lifespan of my little journal, it really shakes me. Assuming that I live through this period, I’m going to have a much darker outlook on humanity. And that shift has taken place mostly in the last six months.

One of my fears is that as soon as we get through all of this, our culture is simply going to memory-hole the whole thing. The people you know who were reckless and stupid will simply behave as though they never were. We will rush to get back to something like normal. I’ve heard some talk about the need for a Covid memorial, something in DC like the Vietnam Memorial. A place we can all go to to remember what has happened. A place that helps us to not forget. I think that would be a good idea.

Until then, at least I have my little journal.

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Where To Go When We Can Go.

 

I keep what’s called a bullet journal. It is called a “bullet journal” because it is built around the concept of bullet points, not because it is just a diary that has a topically masculine word in it to make men feel better about. Do you know how many ads I see for “tactical pants” and “Get-Home Bags” with pockets for a conceal-carry handgun? A lot.

Anyway. I keep a bullet journal. Every day I make some notes in it about my day. The fun thing about bullet journaling is that you’re also supposed to keep lists and make plans and such. IT is one part diary and one part life organizer. I draw a new little calendar every month and I use it to keep track of when I water my succulents and which days I work from home (hint: it’s all of them). I keep a list of books I want to read and movies I want to watch and when I hear a song I like, I put it on the list so I can go track down the whole album to listen to.

I also have been keeping lists of places I want to go. One list is sort of a big trip list (Morocco, the Cordoba Mosque, walking the Camino de Santiago, etc.) and the other lists is smaller, more manageable trips, mostly in the US, the kind of trips I could knock out in a couple of days if I stumble on a cheap flight. 

Lately I have been thinking a lot about that second list. It seems likely that international travel will be largely off the table for Americans through probably the rest of this year, but once more Americans get vaccinated, domestic travel will likely come roaring back. Here are some of the smaller US-only trips I’ve been daydreaming about:

 Pittsburgh - I really want to see the Cathedral of Learning and I dig a city with lots of bridges.

Cleveland - I was supposed to go here for a work conference last year and I feel like the pandemic stole it from me, so as a fuck-you to Covid, I’m going to make the trip. I’ve heard the downtown and theater districts are pretty cool.

The Gulf Coast - I’m just a California kid that I’ve internalized the idea that the ocean is supposed to be west of me. I think it would be fun to stand on the beach and look at an ocean that is south and east of me. 

Key West - Can you get more weird and distant than Key West? You know they declared themselves their own country a while ago. A friend of mine who lives down there says there are barge bars you can only get to on a boat.

Four Corners - I really want to do the hopscotch thing between all four states. Yes, I’m embarrassing, I know.

Yellowstone - How have I not been to Yellowstone yet???

Great Sand Dunes National Park - Did you know America has sand dunes?! Like Sahara Desert stye sand dunes just hanging out in Colorado?

Minneapolis-Saint Paul - I really want to see the skyways. Damn you 99% Invisible for making me interested in this! I’m going in the summer though.

Humboldt - I’ve been a central and southern California person, I know nothing about the forested magical medieval weirdness of northern California.

Chesapeake Bay - I don’t really understand it.

That’s it for now. I need to start crossing some of these off.

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