After a two-year break, it’s time to interview myself again, to see what’s new and/or exciting as I and 8 billion others continue to experience life on Planet Earth.
Previous parts in this series can be found at the links below:
At the end of Part 4, posted June 22, 2021, promised future topics included:
- Writing
- Drawing
- Programming
- Other stuff that ends with -ing
- Vague promises to discuss dating experiences from days of yore
- Not mentioned but implied: More exciting foot news
As always, the interview will be conducted by my doppelgänger, who in this particular interview will be known as Ned.
Ned: Hello again.
Me: Hello there.
Ned: What’s new and/or exciting since the last interview, lo those 30 months ago?
Me: Much has changed. Much has not changed. My underwear has changed. I do that every day.
Ned: Let’s dig into some specifics.
Me: About my underwear?
Ned: …no.
Me: All right. I’m feeling cooperative right now, so seize the moment!
Ned: When last we talked, the world was still in the grip of a global pandemic. How are things now, in December 2023?
Me: I had a COVID-19 vaccination less than two weeks ago.
Ned: So the pandemic is still a thing?
Me: Yes and no.
Ned: Explain.
Me: No, in the sense that life has pretty much reverted to pre-pandemic behavior/reality for most people. Masks are optional, everything is open, and so on. Yes, in the sense that COVID-19 is still around, mutating merrily away, but it’s no longer clogging up hospitals with patients due to vaccines and everyone otherwise catching it at some point. Long COVID is a concern. I’m also unsure if I should capitalize covid or not. Anyway, it’s more a background thing now, unless you’re squashed into a bus with 500 other people, then some guy without a mask next to you starts coughing into your shoulder, and you start thinking about how it would be nice to have a giant hamster ball you could just roll around in public with instead.
Ned: Sounds kind of terrible. I mean, the hamster ball part sounds neat, the rest sounds terrible.
Me: It’s not that bad. I’m sure in a hundred years we’ll all look back and laugh at this pandemic thing, as heads in jars.
Ned: Like on Futurama?
Me: Yes.
Ned: OK, what other big things have changed that you want to talk about?
Me: Define big.
Ned: Pressing global issues and concerns.
Me: Doom.
Ned: How so?
Me: The rise of authoritarianism, the invasion of Ukraine, the invasion of Gaza, probably some other invasions I’m forgetting. The climate is also still getting worse. We are doomed, slightly doomed, or maybe not doomed, depending on what reports you read or which people you talk to. There is generally a fair amount of doom, though.
Ned: How do you cope with all the doom?
Me: I stopped checking the news.
Ned: Really?
Me: Totes for real. Anything truly big still gets to me, so I’m not living in a complete news-free bubble. But it’s nice to not actively and voluntarily read about doom all the time. It makes it easier to relax when I’m having a bubble bath.
Ned: You have bubble baths?
Me: Of course! They are awesome. I do some of my best thinking when immersed in bubbles. I am a fan of Dr. Teal’s bubble bath, specifically elderberry and citrus, both of which smell great. This is not a paid promotion. But it could be. Call me, Dr. Teal, I’ll be your marketing shill!
Ned: So you avoid the news now. What else?
Me: What else do I avoid?
Ned: Sure, let’s go with that.
Me: Social media, by accident. You see, I would always post photos to Instagram and then check it and Facebook when I was tucked into bed every night. Then I thought the blue light from my iPad might be keeping me awake, so I started reading with my non-blue light Kobo ereader instead. My sleeping improved. And then I never found another regular time to check social media, so I just kind of stopped. It’s been nice. Not as nice as a bubble bath, but nice.
Ned: So you are one of ten people on the planet who does not do social media?
Me: No. I still check in every few months. And I am on Mastodon, but the experience there is very different, because there are no ads or algorithm. If I want to see nothing but photos of cats, I can get that on Mastodon. On Facebook, I get an avalanche of ads, a billion “Suggested For You” recommendations that grow increasingly bizarre and questionable as I keep scrolling, then, a lone post from someone I actually know before the avalanche starts again. As an experience, it is gross and awful.
Ned: Have you tried other social media besides Mastodon?
Me: I have peeked in at Bluesky and Threads. I have no idea if Blueksy will amount to anything. They tried making the word “skeet” a thing, which is cringe times five hundred billion. Threads is owned by Meta, so it will eventually be ruined by ads and garbage, just like their other platforms. I deleted my Twitter account, though I rarely used it.
Ned: Oh right, Twitter.
Me: More doom. In one year, it has been transformed into flaming wreckage full of Nazis, conspiracy theorists and racists. Kind of impressive, in a way. Yet it shambles on, because the doom is powerful. But enough about doom. I’m trying to end the year on a positive note and you, sir, are not helping.
Ned: Right, sorry! Moving on, let’s talk about your feet.
Me: I have feet, two of them.
Ned: Last time, you were having problems with your feet.
Me: I am happy to report my feet have been problem-free since then.
Ned: That’s great.
Me: Yes. I have happy feet now. But don’t ask about my knees.
Ned: What about your knees?
Me: I think there’s a strong chance I was awful in a past life, and I am now being punished in this life via my knees.
Ned: Sounds bad. Yet intriguing!
Me: It could also be a hereditary thing. My dad had famously bad knees. Well, not that famously.
Ned: What happened to your knees?
Me: Once I quit my job in IT–
Ned: You quit your job?
Me: Yes. Ask me again later, I may elaborate. Or not. But after I quit my job, I had time to resume a regular running schedule, and eventually was back to doing 10K runs at Burnaby Lake. It felt good to be on the trail again, touching trees and such. I never actually touch trees while running, though. That’s probably dangerous.
Ned: Go on.
Me: In the spring of this year, I noticed my knees staring to get stiff after runs. It got worse. It then got a little worse again. I was concerned my knees would explode or something. I took pictures (of my knees). I went to my doctor. He identified a Baker’s cyst™ behind my right knee.
Ned: That sounds gross.
Me: It is, kind of. Basically, your knee cap has a bunch of fluid under it, to keep it lubricated and allow it to shift around without horrible things happening to it. With my right knee, that fluid was instead pooling up behind my right knee. Sort of a squishy bulgy thing.
Ned: Yuck. Did they amputate?
Me: This isn’t the 14th century, you know.
Ned: I know. I just wanted to say that. So what happened?
Me: I went to a physiotherapist, and he poked and prodded my knees and legs. By the way, when a physiotherapist says they’re going to do apply pressure to a part of your body in a way that “won’t feel great” believe them. Eventually, my doctor and physio guy cleared me to resume running. My knees are mostly better now, but I’m still mainly doing 5K runs, building back to 10K eventually. It’s meant I have run less in terms of distance, but have still managed to run regularly for most of the year. The whole thing lasted longer than the foot thing, but was less painful.
Ned: So you are now fit as the proverbial fiddle?
Me: Well, my weight keeps going up, despite efforts to lose it.
Ned: Have you been on an all-donut diet?
Me: No. But now I kind of wished I had been, because the results may not have been that different, and I’d have had a bunch of yummy donuts in the meantime.
Ned: Any new plans for fighting the fat?
Me: Less snacking. Vaguely hoping for a miracle. Things like that.
Ned: Excellent. Now, let’s talk about that job you quit!
Me: My last day was August 27, 2021, about a week before the school would have re-opened to in-person classes. I was vaccinated, but the idea of going back, and of enduring that commute, was not something that made my socks roll up and down with excitement.
Ned: Did you quit because of the pandemic?
Me: I’d say it accelerated the process. I had reached a point where the work was immensely unrewarding, even boring. I did not want to keep doing it. And the manager of my particular section of IT assured me that there was nothing else for me there, just working on the service desk, doing the same monotonous stuff with no foreseeable hope for promotion or a new role or anything.
Ned: That sounds less than ideal.
Me: Indeed. But it brought clarity to my position and made it easy to leave. Then I left!
Ned: And then what?
Me: I started learning how to program, so I could make my own games. I figured if it didn’t work out, I could just dig ditches or something until my body was reduced to a broken heap.
Ned: Fun! How is the programming going?
Me: Math is hard. I started working with the game engine Unity, then the executives there decided to enact a bunch of idiotic policies and destroy all trust with their users, so I switched to Godot, which is free and open source. I am making progress. It has been an interesting experience. It’s better than having a Baker’s cyst.
Ned: When is your first game due out?
Me: Next year. And by next year, I don’t mean in 19 days, when it will technically be 2024. But some time in 2024. I am keeping the details mostly mum for now.
Ned: That’s quite a change from working at a service desk.
Me: Yeah. I’ve gone from soul-crushing work to brain-crushing. But it’s by choice, plus I get to make my own hours and the commute can’t be beat.
Ned: Let’s talk about stuff you avoided talking about last time.
Me: I hear my kettle boiling.
Ned: You big fat liar.
Me: I’m not that fat. Fine, ask away.
Ned: Writing?
Me: Yes.
Ned: You are writing?
Me: Yes.
Ned: What are you writing?
Me: Mostly blog posts about whatever pops into my head. I also started a Substack newsletter which features some writing. Newsletters are hard. I did five issues, with the time between issues growing more…expansive.
Ned: Is the newsletter dead and buried now?
Me: Nothing is ever dead and buried on the internet. That’s what makes it great. And terrible. But for my newsletter, I decided to reboot it and start again in 2024.
Ned: 2024 seems like it will be a busy year.
Me: You know it, baby. Maybe all this work will help me shed some flab. *sobs*
Ned: I have complete confidence in you, unless you are secretly hiding cookies.
Me: No cookies, except for the internet kind.
Ned: Anything else, writing-wise?
Me: I’ve started noodling around again on my novel, The Mean Mind.
Ned: Aren’t you just the ambitious little go-getter!
Me: With so many plates in the air, I’m bound to, uh…hmm. I think I lost the analogy there. But yeah, I’ll be working on that, too, plus comics and things. And the game. And vacuuming.
Ned: Excellent. I look forward to hearing about the success of your many projects in Part 6!
Me: Whoa, let’s not get crazy here.
Ned: Sorry. A final writing thought to share?
Me: Just this random piece of trivia: I once wrote and submitted a teleplay for Star Trek: Voyager, called “Worlds Apart.” It was decent. And rejected.
Ned: Moving on, you refused to talk about dating last time. Let’s hear you dish now.
Me: Kettle boiling.
Ned: …
Me: Someone is at the door. With my boiling kettle.
Ned: …
Me: What? What is there to say? I’ll give you a very short summary, and you’ll have to try again in Part 6. Or Part 60.
Ned: Fair enough.
Me: I lost about 40 pounds in 2008. I was feeling spunky after this, and started dating again. I had many experiences, that ranged from, “What was I thinking?” to “What was he thinking?” to “This guy seems to want to end the date suspiciously close to the start of tonight’s episode of Survivor.” (It was 2008, people still watched regular TV.) You’ll have to wait, possibly forever, to hear more than that.
Ned: Aw. Just a little more?
Me: If I wrote a book about my dating experiences, I would call it Fruits and Nuts.
Ned: Any other personal, embarrassing experiences you’d like to share?
Me: No.
Ned: Not even one?
Me: Let me think. No. Also: No.
Ned: No?
Me: Correct.
Ned: Until next time, do you have any inspiring words to pass on to anyone reading this?
Me: Yes, actually.
Ned: !
Me: At the last scrum on the last day I was actually working in my previous job as a drifting, directionless slob at an IT service desk (my last two weeks were on vacation, which is a nice way to quit a job), I was handed the proverbial mic. After nearly nine years of being there, I offered my soon-to-be ex co-workers this: Do what makes you happy. Unless it’s being a serial killer. Don’t do that.
Ned: Great advice! See you in a couple of weeks.
Me: What? That’s not in the contract!
Ned: Haha, I’m kidding. Maybe in 2024, the year you do everything.
Me: Maybe.
Stay tuned for Part 6 of this apparently endless interview, coming in 2024. Or some other year. Probably not, like, 2397 or something, though.
