January 1, A New Year.

If you are reading this you are alive... That a great place to be.

I like new years. In recent years I’ve even been making lists, some of them for my personal life, some for my professional life, and I put them in a journal and on a white board, so I remember to check in with them over the course of the year. If I get in a rut, one of those head spaces in which I do not know what to do with myself, or what to work on, or even just if I’m a little bored, I go check out the list and see if I can make progress on one of the objectives listed. It has proven an effective way of getting things done, and offers a simple satisfaction in accomplishing tasks as things get a line put through them. In some regards I look at the list and wish I’d gotten more, or certain things done, but it is also good to look at it and realize just how big some of those goals are, and be ok with them not being done yet. The next year comes around and I erase the accomplished tasks, move the unfinished ones that I still want to finish into the new list, and add whatever else has come up.

Some of these are big goals, like finishing a book, publishing a book, but some are simple, personal, quiet objectives. These lists do not have rules and are deeply personal. I have X time on earth. These are the things I’d like to work on and accomplish.

It is also fun to look at where the world is, where it has been, and where it is going. This gives a little knowledge to how I can expect to move along in society. A quote that seems to resurface for me this time of year is the following, and I like it:

“Don’t look back. The past is the last refuge of the defeated -or aged- and there is as yet no need for you to number yourself among either...look forward and not back, remember always that life is a gift from the gods and therefore not a thing to be despised or wasted. Live it to the full.” - The Far Pavalions. MMKaye

We are alive on earth. It’s not a given. There is a great mystery in what happened before we are alive and what happens after, but it’s all just a guess. The only known we really have is right before us. It includes gravity, light, darkness, pain, pleasure, and all the goods of a day on earth. I’ll take it.

These last years have been a little wild in America. Our society has gone from a society focused on living day to day, to living in a dark, handheld screen in which our thoughts are dictated to us by countless anonymous faces and persona. Americans, and people around the world have gone inward. Into our own heads, into our devices, into the online world that is full of ridiculous expectations that we need to think, process, and be part of solving any and every problem in the world. It’s a dark fucking corner by most accounts, and the religion of science and politics has for many replaced the religion of life, mystery, and living with others.

Priorities have shifted. Invisible lines have been created with regards to how we are directed to get along with our neighbors and communities. We’ve become an incredibly selfish society. Not all of us. Not everyone. But by and large, we’ve lost the sense of being on the same team. In this way I almost hope for aliens to appear some day because maybe, maybe that is something that would unite us as people.

I saw the other day a time capsule someone created in 2000 that they just opened, 25 years later. I love this idea. I might make one. But I want to gather things from around this entire year to make it, and maybe seal it up at the end of 2025. I’d want it to include not just little bits of brochures and texts, but music, art, photos, etc…

But in a way that is what a lot of writing here can serve as. Life in America, 2025.

When I look at the general premise of the thing, it’s still really great, regardless of many of the synthetic divisions that certain powerful figures attempt to cast on us, and politic on us, and judge on us because for some reason people in power think we all want to be just like them. Many of us don’t. Many of us are not in constant pursuit of riches and fame. Many of us are not centering our lives on one certain scientific dogma or religious opinion, or scientific religious dogma. No, we are trying to embrace our days with our family, with our dog, to enjoy the job we know we have to do to get on in society and be able to afford some of the simple pleasures we enjoy.

There are a tremendous number of people in media, hell, I think even in my neighborhood, who would love to commit everyone else to live just like them, because they are certain that they are right and everyone else is probably wrong. But it’s insanity. And I think maybe, just maybe we’ve turned a corner on this. As

Matt Taibbi

discusses in his New Year’s piece this morning, we may have turned a corner away from the religion of politics and science. Maybe we now will be allowed to have our own opinions without worry of cancelation from our communities and the greater Online Hoards. Maybe now we can discuss over casual drinks our difference of opinion without feeling threatened or attacked. Of course many of us have been trying to navigate this way for years, but the greater media backdrop snuck up on us, took over the world, took over everyones minds, one small iPhone at a time.

But I think it’s the year of independence for our minds. As I wrote yesterday here I think this is the year we will not be able to trust what we see on the internet. Of course we’ve been lied to for years, but the level at which ai is going to take this, the internet as we know it is doomed and about to enter the dark ages. I think it will continue to be a place to shop, find out how to fix our washing machine, replace our spark plugs if we are so inclined, but for news, politics, and the like, we are not going to be able to decipher what is real, and what isn’t. We are going to have slow down in our information absorption because we are going to have to take our time to find out if a thing, event, even person is real or not. Instant information can be faked too readily. An explosion, an uprising, a new reporter reporter things that seem unimaginable might well be just imagination. We are going to have to rely on journalists we actually know. We are going to have trust photos from people we know are faking it. Same goes for history, artists, and on and on. And I’m ok with that. The important thing is to help spread this message because there is always a cultural lag in understanding at just how potently powerful entities can and will lie to us.

But it’s coming, so I’m preparing myself for it. And it feels on track. Online social media and ever present digital presence in front of my face is growing tiresome. I long more and more for long form thought and find myself far preferring the likes of Substack to any of the other social medias that are nothing more than fast snippets of cocaine laced sugar that do nothing for me. X is good on free speech, but damn, it is literal insanity when you scroll for even five minutes. Some of the most brilliant and most stupid ideas on earth, all scrolled in front of us, rolled into our minds in endless succession, leaving our minds tired and limp from being overwhelmed by a dangerous mix of fact and fiction and everything in between. And we’ve come to realize these last several years that the main stream media’s news is nothing more than propaganda for pharma and the state department and most powerful and invisible political entities we don’t know about. The truth is shadowed at best, and often just blatantly lied about.

The best way to see the world, is to see the world. To talk to real people. To travel. To get outside and be social with other humans. Our neighbors, the people at the check out, lingering at the bar, walking down the street. We need to re-engage with our communities more akin to how we all did it 30 years ago. We need to chill out with the screen time. We need to read more long form writing. We need to take the time to develop our own ideas without the incessant presence of strangers telling us what and how to think. We need to rekindle our relationship with the outdoor world. We don’t need to be surrounded by wilderness for this. We just need to take walks, be it in a city park or a city street, being outside under the real sun, in the temperatures of the real world, is one of the best things we humans can do. Just ask

Huberman’s Substack

. There is plenty of science behind it. When we get outside, get warm, get cold, get real sunlight on our skin and in our eyes, our minds and bodies work better and we interact with the world more optimally. When enough of us do it, it makes a better community. A better society. This is the way. It’s not by following the political turmoil online or the rage bating news from 2000 miles away. Things we can do nothing about are pointless to dwell on, and frankly an utter waste of our time on earth. I’d rather waste my time playing frisbee with my dog.

So here we are, the first day of a new year. I’m ready. I’m working on my list for the year. I spent my first half hour awake outside, swimming naked in the dark frozen morning waters of the Rattlesnake. It was softly snowing. No one was out yet as the light was still well behind the mountains as the dark was subtly turning morning blue outside the shaded silhouettes of the trees growing along the banks of the water. It was nothing new, but felt new regardless. Bundled up back at home, my first cup of coffee took me outside to watch as the sun slowly crested the hill across the valley. This is the lead I’m going to pursue for the year. More outside, less screen. More humans, fewer bots. More real world, less digital nonsense. It can be a lonely undertaking in a world where everyone is attached to their screens, but I’m hoping that at least a few others around me will follow this lead. I’m hopeful. I think it’s shifting for at least a bunch of us who are simply tired of the insanity the digital world has become. It was supposed to be a tool. It isn’t supposed to be our lives, even if a few eccentric technocrats that profit from it would like us to think the Metaverse IS the future. It’s not. Not for me. Not for many I know. And I don’t want it. I want to be out under real trees. We let a tool take over our lives We enter a fake world hours at a time, sometimes multiple visits per day. I’m over it. I no sooner want to walk around staring at a screwdriver or spatula than I do my phone. In its attempt to “connect us” it has made many of us more lonely than we ever imagined possible. It has attempted to disconnect us from everything near and dear while trying to substitute a fake self righteousness and political correctness. It has tried to replace things that are worth believing in with things that utterly meaningless and abstract. I’m going to exchange it for the sun, the river, the voices of people and the birds the massively beautiful natural world that exists.

I’m excited about this new year. I’m excited to have you all along on Substack which I think is of actual value as it allows for long form thought in a nuanced and multi-toned way that other media landscapes pretend doesn’t exist. I have some plans for this site to share a wider spectrum of things. As we watch the digital landscape devolve in ai nonsense I’m hoping to help contribute to an alternative, human driven source of information and thought. We’ll see. I’ve added a few ideas to my white board in the office and in the next few weeks will start experimenting with some new ideas. I’m glad you are here along for it. I hope to have something worth offering for your time.

The snow just started following. My dog is facing me asleep in the living room. The fire is going. Everything is white and warm wood with a few little lingering sparkly lights. This is a great way to start the year. I hope yours is similarly off to a good start. Cheers to 2025.