I talk to people for a living. I talk to a lot of people.
Most of these people are nice, kind, sometimes even funny and interesting. (lol, sometimes)
While other people can be rude, entitled, demanding, even demeaning at times. We love that.
If you’re going to last in my industry, or in any industry really, you’ve got to be open to dealing with an extremely wide spectrum of personalities, both good and bad.
One thing I’ve found interesting recently, is that these people from different walks of life all seem to be experiencing a similar feeling of emptiness.
Most people have said that they can pinpoint the start of this feeling creeping up within them.
This makes sense considering 2020-2021 changed at least one or two things for basically everyone in the world, right?
And after the world started to come out of hiding we all had hope, right?
For a brief time, we showed each other compassion, humanity, patience.
This slowly turned into division, paranoia, aggression.
Fast-forward 3 years:
What the fuck happened?

In traffic, at the store, at work, at the gas station, there is always someone waiting to shit on your day.
Whether or not you allow them that power is of course a choice, but sometimes on a bad day when you just want a simple “Hello, how are you?” or when you just need someone to let you into traffic but instead they speed up, honk, then flip you off.. that shit gets old. General collective apathy/anger… gets fucking old.
As time passes, I feel this saddening change more and more. Maybe it’s due to aging? Or the time of year?

Could there be a deeper reasoning behind this collective change in mindset other than seasonal depression or mercury somehow finding its way into retrograde for what feels like the 5th time this month?
Or is this just how life is going to be now? Is this the “new normal“?
Well I hate it.
It makes me want to isolate and further affirms my long-term goal, which is to eventually be off-grid.

Whatever the reasoning behind this collective zombie-like apathy is, I find myself wondering if there’s a way we could all go back to how things were before.
Before everyone was on edge where ever you go.
Before people would just lawlessly put their hands on you or your personal property without thinking twice.
Before every social interaction felt forced and fake like there’s some hidden camera crew behind the trees in the bushes feeding you what to say because communication has become so overly complicated that you almost have to rehearse what you want to say in public so you can make sure you’re not offending anyone simply by speaking your mind.
I feel like growing up is hard enough, let alone growing up in a day and age that is this complex.
The age of infinite information.
I can only speak for myself here but in my experience, when I am faced with too much information or I’m already confused about something, I will naturally focus on the complexity of the issue, rather than look for a solution.
It will take my mind twice as long trying to rationalize the issue itself, when I could have had a solution and moved on already.
I am fully conscious of this personality trait and have had the absolute hardest time training my mind to not try to dissect a problem and attempt to rationalize it.
In reality, it makes no difference one way or another how the problem manifested.
The only thing that matters is the solution and gaining the clarity I need to progress forward.
When I disconnect and sit with myself, the clarity comes.

I’m also able to draw a ton of clarity and inspiration from creators, and I feel good when I connect with like-minded people (most of which are online).
The problem is that I am not a very social person a lot of the time.
If I’m home, in my safe space, vibing with myself, I have no desire to be on my phone, which means I’m limiting my inspiration and in some ways isolating myself to an almost unhealthy extent.
So I’ve learned to adapt a balance to my life.
I don’t check my socials often.
I check them when someone sends me something, or if I want to look up a specific photo from a specific day, or sometimes just to see what I’m missing…

spoiler alert; I’m never missing much.

This person had another baby, that person got a Masters degree, this person bought a house.
It isn’t that I don’t want the best for everyone in life because genuinely, I do.
But when I scroll thru Facebook and see the same shit every time, baby pics, wedding pics, oh look at our new house pics, it’s great but like…. why does anyone that isn’t a super close friend or a directly related family member give a shit? I haven’t talked to 90% of these people in 15 years but they’re all like ‘LOOK MY BABY ATE SPAGHETTI TODAY!!!’
..To me, it seems so forced and fake. Fake interactions and validation are absolutely draining for me. Even when it’s thru a screen, I don’t do well.
Maybe I’m just jaded..
Or jealous it comes so easily to basically everyone else in the world except me.
Or maybe it’s a little of both.
Do I wake up and instantly want to grab my phone to scroll & see what all these strangers are doing?
No. I just don’t have the desire to.
I could go days, even weeks without checking my Instagram, Facebook or TikTok.
I just can’t wrap my head around caring that much about other peoples lives.
When I wake up, I open the blinds, kiss my fiancé, hug my dog, make some coffee, smoke a J and go for a walk. If I check my socials at all, it’s to go on YouTube. I gain so much knowledge from that platform over any other. Real knowledge, not useless opinions in 15 second clips with some trendy Taylor Swift song playing in the background. I guess that’s just me. I gave up dissecting that issue. I’m happy this way. I don’t have the programming in my brain for fake interactions, which is why I’m not everyone’s cup of tea. I am a terrible liar, a terrible bullshitter. I call things exactly how I see them, it’s black and white for me. Very little grey. I can’t fake emotions. People don’t like that.

Even real interactions don’t feel genuine anymore.
Everyone acts like you’re out to get them.
Or they’re nice to you until they realize they can’t bully, intimidate, or project insecurities onto you. Then they have no use for you.
Once they know they can’t get anything more from you, they’re out.

Something so simple, something that should be joyous was even ruined for me recently.
Last week I ventured to one of the local malls in my area with a small list of Christmas gifts to get for my loved ones.
First stop was my fiancé’s favorite cologne.
I walked into a unisex perfume store located in the mall that he and I would frequent all the time.
He’s bought so many bottles of cologne and perfume from this store that the associates became familiar with our faces over the years.
I go in and the usual older woman who speaks broken English sees me and recommends this new men’s cologne they had just gotten in this week. I say awesome, I’ll take it.
I pay $120 cash for it.
She looks at the hundred dollar bill I hand her and gives me a strange face. She says “This bill looks kinda funny…” I shrug. It’s an older bill.
She was insinuating my money was counterfeit. (for the record, if I were to ever commit a crime like this, I would make a point to specifically avoid stores that know my face already…)
She did’t ask for a credit card, or a different bill, or a smaller bill.
After marking it up and running it thru a detector 5 or 6 times, she ultimately decided the bill was real.
While giving me several more weird looks, she bagged the cologne and I left.
I didn’t think anything of being treated like I was doing something wrong, because I knew that I wasn’t.
I continued to collect several more gifts before doubling back around to leave the mall and head to work.
As I’m walking toward the door, the lady who sold me the bottle of cologne comes running at me yelling gibberish I could not understand.
Again, I left the perfume store thinking nothing was wrong so when I see this woman hurdling towards me, I stop.
Once she reaches me, instead of asking me if I had another way of paying for the cologne she decided to barrel into me and attempted to wrestle the bag that had the cologne in it out of my hands.
At this point I’m wrestling her back because I had placed other items in that bag, so had I let her take it she would have taken several other things from other stores as well.
Eventually I managed to shove my hand into the bag & grab anything that wasn’t this stupid bottle of cologne.
I could also finally decipher that she was yelling “IT’S FAKE!!!! IT’S FAKE!!!!”
I let go of the bag once I knew I took my belongings out of it.
The woman then threw the hundred dollar bill at me and took off running back to her store.
I stood there absolutely flabbergasted at what just happened.
Witnesses sat in massage chairs 3 feet away and did nothing.
Not only was the hundred dollar bill authentic (I took it to the bank after this happened), but in my absolute state of shock, I failed to realize that the woman only gave me back $100 of the $127 I had spent in her store.
I reluctantly went back the next day for my remaining $27, and the woman called security on me as if she wasn’t the one who wrongfully laid hands on me, a complete stranger, for absolutely no reason.
It’s like after the pandemic we slipped into some weird twilight zone where everyone is just… over it and laws are irrelevant, let alone common decency.

I’m 31 and I can truthfully say I don’t remember a time when a random stranger would have the AUDACITY to go up to a customer and lay hands on them over an assumption. An assumption.
What is a world where people can’t even go Christmas shopping without getting assaulted?
Walking thru the mall and randomly getting attacked is like something you see in a movie.
Something that should NOT happen in real life.
What it really seems like, is that we have lost any and all sense of humanity, and we are in no rush to try to gain it back. No rush to be nicer. No rush to help one another.
We are in our own individual states of fueled panic and paranoia.
Media, politics, & news outlets fool us into thinking we are out to get each other.
& because of this most people, including myself on some occasions, have lost hope in saving this society.
The results of that hope lost are what has ultimately led us to where we are today –
The “Every man for himself” era.
An era where it’s easier to be a total asshole than to
just be nice!

For me, I’m trying my best to focus on the good and zoom into the love that’s presented to me everyday.
I verbally thank God & Source for everything they’ve generously provided for me.
I verbally thank myself for staying true to my heart and remaining resilient in this stormy era of life.
I laugh off the people that can’t seem to get a grip and drudge thru life seeking others to make as miserable as they are.

All we can truly control in this life, is how we react and allow energies to affect us.
I don’t know about anyone else, but at the end of the day no matter what happens,
I will always make a conscious choice,
& I will choose happiness.

Stay safe out there this holiday season!