The other night at work a tween literally called me old to my face. And, okay, in her simple concept of the world I am old. In the grand scheme of things, of course, my age is less than a blink, just like all of us. The point being, I’m fine with my age for the simple fact that it’s my age – why pretend, why fight? Why waste whatever time we do have left obsessing over your age when you could be enjoying your life? All that is really an aside because I love my age for the reason that it means I was fortunate enough to grow up before the digital revolution, in a time of relative peace, in a world without Facebook and Instagram and all of the rest of the social media bullshit, one in which I had to be creative, use my imagination, create. And that’s with wasting many, many hours on TV and video games.

And now? Well, just look at people. I’m currently at the dealership getting my car repaired as I write this (on an actual notepad to type up later) and while using the bathroom I watched a man frozen with one hand under the faucet, unable to finish washing his hands because he was staring at his phone. He couldn’t finish washing his goddamn hands, and what a sad world have we created when that’s even possible? And that’s not an exception but the norm. Who asked for this completely messed up world of distraction? The only ones to benefit are the tech bros and the government, who loves an easily distracted populace.

But back to my childhood in the 80s, where there were no smartphones or tablets, nothing digital to immediately shove into my face at the grocery store, walking down the street, at a theme park for goodness sake. When you’re a child and Disney World isn’t stimulating enough, what does that say? And I see it all the time. Instead of attempting to mitigate this terrible situation that we have created, we diagnose more and medicate more.

But I digress, again. For years I’ve been trying to gain traction as a fiction writer. That hasn’t much happened, but I still write because I love it and get so much out of it, publication notwithstanding. It’s the only way I’ve found to feel like I’m truly expressing myself, and one I can guarantee I would never have found – certainly not to this extent – if I’d had the ability to access a supercomputer in my hands 24/7

Feeling sad? Scroll. Anxious? Scroll. Rejected? Scroll. Fearful? Scroll. Not for me, not been. Back then I took pen to paper and explored worlds of my own making, explored emotions and connections and dreams, and I’m so grateful for that, for the time I grew up in, for the space (mentally more than anything) to do such work. It made me who I am and so cheers, tween, for me being old. I’m sorry you’re stuck in this awful, over tech filled world that we’ve created. I’m sorry you can’t escape it, I’m sorry you don’t even know you’re in it, or that there is another way. Hopefully one day there will be again.