The last five years were among the strangest time periods in my life.  At this time in 2020, I was returning to Minnesota from a trip to Uruguay after spending the previous Christmas in Portugal.  I was feeling pretty good about the future.  I was a bit nervous about the possibility of a Trump re-election but he had been such an unmitigated disaster that I figured all signs pointed to him losing next time.  My job was going well, I was enjoying the band I was in, life was OK.  Then, while on a layover in the Miami airport, I heard that Kobe Bryant’s helicopter had crashed and then I heard about some sort of respiratory virus that the CDC was concerned about called COVID-19.

Well shit.

Ever since that day life has been a series of stressors, mostly health-related, with no break.  There have been multiple funerals of family and friends, multiple hospice/caretaker situations, multiple surgeries and hospitalizations of family, friends, and pets.  The world kept getting crazier, Minneapolis had riots, I’ve changed jobs twice, once because of burnout and once after being laid off.  I have hated almost every moment of the last five years.  I have felt like I was under siege.  I have felt no joy.  I have struggled to maintain my sanity and to have any sort of healthy relationships with family or friends and even the one piece of good news that happened, the defeat of Donald Trump, was undone.

This was the last straw for me.

On November 6th, I left all engagement with all social media, I took this blog off-line, I stopped reading the news.  I left the internet unless being paid to use it as part of my job.

In the nearly three months since I have decided that I will not, cannot, subject myself to another four years of Trump headlines, Trump bullshit, and Trump drama.  If I so much as glance at any social media feed I am overwhelmed by anger and hatred and I simply cannot allow myself to feel that much hatred.  I just can’t.  It will kill me.

I have come to accept that the system is rigged, the game is over, the good guys lost.  There is more stupidity, delusion, weakness, and evil in the world than there are decency and justice.  Many people who I thought were decent humans have shown themselves to be pro-fascist Nazi-sympathizers who are happy to support a criminal monster no matter who he hurts.

This is simply a demonstrated fact.  Why waste time bitching about it?  I was clearly wrong when I thought most people were generally decent.  Oops.  My bad.  Turns out that most people are kind of awful.

Furthermore, posting online about the travesty of the day via some big tech human cattle pen is just playing a part in a no-win system catering to powerful sociopaths and human stupidity.

Life is too short and precious to spend participating in such things no matter how many decades I have been using the internet or how much I formerly enjoyed it.

The internet used to be wild and weird and human.  Now it’s mostly an algorithm-driven cesspool filled with idiots being manipulated by sociopaths into either buying shit and supporting fascists or buying shit and impotently shaking their fists and pounding their keyboards in frustration about the fascists.

Where is the fun in that?

If I would like the next five years to be rewarding, meaningful, and worth living I have to avoid anything related to Trump or his brainwashed cult members wherever possible.  I have to avoid the outrage and drama of the internet.  Life offers plenty of stress already.  People and pets get sick and die.  Jobs are lost.  Bad things happen.  It’s called life.  Adding MAGA and Meta on top is just too much.

Case in point: after the election, 2024 ended with a final kick in the balls when, on the final weekend of the year, my dog Finn, an incredible little guy who had special medical needs that had helped dictate my waking and sleeping schedules for a year and a half, died unexpectedly.  And of course, the very next day I got severely sick with a lung virus and spent a week battling a 101-103 degree fever and trying to avoid a trip to the ER.

When I felt better, I decided enough was enough.

I was going to get my life back.  I was going to have friends again.  I was going to make music and be happy.  I was going to be present and mindful.  I was going to stay away from social media poison, stay away from the internet, and cultivate a life in good old atom-based reality.

And you know what?  The first few weeks feel a lot better than anything has in the five years prior.  I never want to experience another year like any of the last five.  I am committed to making this year a good one.   Hiking, working, living.

It’s time to turn over a new leaf.