Why does it feel like time is just slipping away like there’s no tomorrow, and yet it always comes, lukewarm with an aftertaste of guilt and anxiety? Would you like some sugar with that?

Why does it feel like my life has devolved to pixels and qwerty and centering divs?

Was there a time when humanity was free?

Was there a time before all this technology made us slaves without a contract?

Before all of this AI-slop, before all of this online media, inescapable, insurmountable, a wall of infinitely loading content that comes and goes from the void that is supposed to represent society. Browsing online is now often like boarding a train without a station. How stupid to get on. How impossible to get off. Please, can you void my ticket?

I fear that we’ve collectively become too dependent on technology as a society to function. I fear that the 90% of my waking hours spent on a computer is going to kill me from the inside out, ruining both my mental and physical health in the process. I fear that whatever safeguards I put in place against compulsive browsing are only just stopgaps made of hopes and dreams, appearing to give me back control of my time but instead stripping me of all further will and self-control.

I don’t want to live like this.

How can I get off?

I realized today that outside of doing homework (on the computer), socializing (on the computer), and coding (on the computer), I frankly don’t have anything else physical. I mean, I still run everyday… But that’s it?? I used to do sports, I used to play the violin, which helped, I suppose.

What else can I do with my time? Staring at the wall just makes me feel worse.

At least, hooked on the net and the bits,

you’re pre-occupied, distracted

with only a slight distaste

in the current state

of affairs. An uneasy imbalance in what is and what ought to be.

How can I face reality, when nothing real beckons towards me? What is there to do? And if we extrapolate, I’ll be spending more and more time online as I get older, willfully dividing the gap between me and society, between me and my family, between me and everything that humanity once treasured, loved, and nutured. What will I get in return? A terrible posture. An unhealthy work-life balance. A lack of confidence in my ability to carry out a normal life. Or even a lack in a desire to carry out a functioning life. I’ll be a neet. or maybe i’ll have a job first, and maybe i’ll work ungodly hours until i can’t function anymore and then i have to leave and then i’ll fail to pay rent and utilities and then i’ll move to the streets in whatever city i happen to be staying at and i’ll be homeless and ultimately rejected by the hand of society that has raised me since I was young. and then my parents will die.

Well.

What is there to do?

Youth is a promise. Adulthood is a curse. The transitory period should be a blessing. I’m waiting for mine.