Next week I’ll celebrate my forty-second birthday. I’ve never been much of a birthday person, but this one seems especially mid. It’s not youthful and relevant, or old and wise, it falls into the unexceptional middle. I’ll probably order takeout. I think I feel loneliness more intensely than the other emotions. I can feel much, much lonelier than I can feel happy, for example. Happiness has a cap where loneliness knows no bottom. I’ve been bone-chillingly lonely recently. I learned that I can feel lonely surrounded by people. There’s a quality of togetherness that I haven’t felt in a while. Not everyone can provide this quality, you have to be selective about who you are together with, and selective can mean lonely at first. I understand that. Rome wasn’t built in a day. But it’s rough. I smoke to get away from it. I convince myself I prefer it like this, to only be able to express myself through these letters on screen, but I want to talk in the world, I want to voice my thoughts like everyone else, in real time as I think them. I want to be able to say what I think in a way that others can hear. I would tell them how I feel. I would look past their discomfort at the mention of love. I know it’s what we all need. Why is that so embarrassing? To need love?  

I’ve been job hunting recently. I am not getting enough hours of work from the nonprofit clients I serve. Everyone has cut back on spending, and for them spending is me. I grew up learning to keep my purse strings tight so I understand that impulse, but my bills are the same amount, so it’s time to cast a net. The experience has been demoralizing at best. I don’t feel technologically qualified for any of the jobs I am applying for, because I was taught that design is a set of artistic principles, not software functions, a lesson I resented in college when I wanted to do all the cool stuff, but very much appreciate as someone twice that age who has seen a lot of software come and go. I’ve always thought my design strength to be in concept anyway, that’s hard to explain to a bot looking for experience in one suite or another. While the rest of the applicants learned the latest program, I was getting paid to do work in the one that came out decades ago. I’m at a disadvantage in the eyes of the criteria-selecting algorithm. I want to plead with the bot-crafted rejection email—I can still learn things!

When it comes to the career that I get paid for, I have been seated in the unexceptional middle for quite some time. I prioritized other parts of my life while making enough to support our family with my small business. I collected a roster of clients I felt good about working for, in areas that I think are worth contributing to: democracy, environmental conservation, health research, and brain research. And then I coasted on my laurels, which worked out because I was good at my job and I was nice to people. I didn’t have any desire to work my way out of comfortable. I suspect a lot of life is spent in the unexceptional middle, despite what all the tech headlines would have us believe. I don’t know a lot about the history field, but I’m pretty sure it’s bad form to declare an age to be golden as it’s happening. We have no idea what kind of shine this age will emit once we look back on it with distance. It might end up corroded. I hope it doesn’t. I hope all of our recent “advances” take us in the direction we want to go… well, I should say the direction I want us to go. I don’t speak for everyone. I’d love it if we used all this computing power to figure out an efficient food supply so no one goes hungry. Is someone working on that? Recently, I watched a reel where two guys loaded AI bots on their phones and let them out-fawn each other for a few minutes. I chuckled, but it felt like unexceptional territory. What kind of good can we do?

I’m worried about everything, and I tell myself I am managing it. Truthfully, my anxiety is better. Now, I only worry about things that I fear are existential. I worry about what I can do to help. I worry about how my children will experience the world. I think it’s going to come down to us. We talk like this technology is going to save us from ourselves but we are the ones making all the decisions. Someone out there is deciding that it’s more important for us to word our emails so politely it borders on psychotic, than it is to protect children from losing their will to live after interacting with a chatbot. Tell me you also see the problem? Please.