We Are All Marching Towards Oblivion
My son turned thirteen a couple of days ago, which is one of those concepts that is both incredibly mundane and absurdly difficult to wrap my head around. I haven't had children for thirteen years, surely not! I am still a young idiot, I haven't been working for decades, I haven't been in the same job for seven years now, I haven't etc. etc. etc.
But I have! I've been wandering this earth and apparently having children and working a stable job and paying bills and experiencing all those Adult Situations that Bill Watterson wrote about in that one Calvin and Hobbes comic1 that has only continued to become more accurate as time goes on.
I don't necessarily feel bad about any of that, and it doesn't fill me with an existential dread or anything. Internet being what it is, there are tons of people who have enough existential dread about not accomplishing enough or being trapped in their jobs or whatever, and I'm not one of those people. Maybe I've just gotten used to it, maybe having children has somehow counterbalanced all of that like "well at least I have participated in the creation and formation of other humans" and that somehow papers over my desire to have been a famous author or game designer or whatever. Free of needing to be successful at any of those things because I have a union job instead.
Anyway, none of that is the point of this. The point of this is me saying that I have a teenage kid now, and I'm lucky that he's a smart kid who just wants to play video games and watch anime so I don't have to worry about all the other wack shit is out there on the internet and in the world catching his attention and suddenly I have a kid who has opinions about, I dunno, I'm sure there's plenty of weird shit for him to have wack opinions about. Kid likes One Piece so at least he won't grow up to be some kind of grindset mindset freak. He's a good kid, I don't know how he's managed that with insert self-deprecating remarks here.
Holy crap it's four days after I started this and I don't remember what the point I was heading for was. We all get old, I guess? This is why I never used to save drafts. Happy birthday, son. This would be a real shit birthday present, but lucky for you, I bought you some nice Sony XM4s instead.