New Roll / Thoughts On Aging (Patreon)

Hello! This is more backlog; I got this roll back in March, but delayed my processing until now, because it turns out life is still moving really fast for me, even when I'm trying to dig in my heels and slow it down.

This is Fuji 400 in my Christmas-gift Nikon N60, which I have to have put two dozen rolls through at this point. On Flickr and of course downloadable on my Drive.

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What follows is not an emotionally uplifting blog. It's not required reading; please feel free to skip it.

I turn 30 in July. I feel as though over the past year or so I have learned that there is actually no floor on human cruelty and ignorance and it's extinguished a lot of hope I did not realize I was leaning on. It truly feels like I am entering a new era for myself.

Is this what 30 is? People tell me that age brings a big switch in thinking, but if this is it, I don't like it.

It feels like the process of ending my twenties has just been round after round after round of ever-more-disappointing results in a game of Who Goes Nazi? It turns out a lot of people simply do not find it worth it to try and oppose what is clearly wrong. This tendency only becomes stronger with proximity to power.

Is the loss of this naïvete—the belief people would do right, even at a cost—the wisdom of age?

I really haven't ever thought of myself as a misanthrope. I enjoy the company of others, I rely heavily on my wonderful friends and found family to survive, I enjoy chatting to virtually everyone. But lately I find myself haunted with a skepticism of others that I don't like but I cannot shake.

Like, yeah, sure, we're having a friendly conversation right now—but where, exactly, is your red line on how I'm treated? Do you have red lines, or have you found that unpragmatic? Would you actually defend me, my friends, my wife, if it mattered—or would you turn away as we were oppressed and beaten?

Is this nagging fear of others just what maturation looks like?

At the same time, I am also scared by the world. How can I judge others for knowing the same fear, and feeling the same stakes, when they clearly are influencing how I'm acting? How do I find compassion for myself for being afraid when others are suffering? How could I fault anyone for deciding that they just have to look away from this?

After all, what, exactly, is to be done? I have long known that a sense of hopelessness is the point of Kafkaesque authoritarianism, but that doesn't change the fact that it is overwhelming, terrifying, and seemingly impossible to combat.

I am watching friends in a lot of fields—environmental science, law, medicine, public health, journalism, public service—see their jobs where they do good for others evaporate. Their roles' elimination seems to have two motives: to make a very rich person slightly more money, and to make way for jobs that explicitly do harm. I guess we're supposed to give up on bettering the world and go put tiny screws in iPhones now?

Is the supposed "conservatism" of aging actually just giving up, trying to help the few people you can, and hardening your heart to stop caring about the suffering of anyone outside of that bubble? I don't want to age like this. There has to be an alternative.

I mean, the world cannot just become shittier and crueler until the oceans finally burn away, right? I find myself asking anyone I trust who is older and wiser this question, begging them to tell me the answer is no, and of course they can't.

I think I'm just depressed! I am fairly certain I entered an episode shortly after the inauguration and I just haven't left it. It's just not intense like my past depression; I'm not worried it will kill me, like I was last year after my parents' disavowal of me. Instead it's a resolute grimness; a realization I have to keep trying but the good is almost certainly behind me. It feels like I have seen the high-water mark, where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

I'm not even sure this was productive to share; I apologize if you made it this far and just feel worse! I just find my thoughts circling on this stuff too much to make any sense of it without trying to write it out.

Be well and stay safe.

Vicki