1. Social media learns your interests and crafts your algorithm to show you more of that stuff. I don’t know how it happened but my Facebook Reels suggestions for several weeks have been nothing but a hydraulic press crushing various objects. I’ve seen bowling balls, candles, wood, action figures, and more get flattened. I find it fun and satisfying, and obviously, as I keep watching them the algorithm will keep showing me more but I still don’t know how it started.
2. It was the tale of 2 cute kids at the supermarket one night this week. One little girl, probably 3, was running up and down all of the aisles with her mother trying to keep up with her. I found myself playing traffic cop once, alerting the mother of where her child had gone. The other little girl, probably also 3, was so excited to help her grandmother scan items at the self-checkout that she caused the machine to shut down several times. The attendant had to repeatedly come over to reset the machine. I thought both were cute, the adults watching these kids were not as amused as me though.
3. So often over the last several years I feel in my life that I have totally lost the road. It is as if I am crossing a rickety bridge in the fog and I am not even sure what’s on the other side. I’m just hoping that whatever it is it’s worth moving toward. There are plenty of times I feel I need to stop moving and take a serious look at my surroundings, but then the fear of wasting more time overtakes me and I start sprinting in the darkness. I don’t know if this is how my mid-life crisis is manifesting itself. What I do know is that I’ll keep moving forward until I find whatever I’m chasing or until I collapse.
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| How life feels at times. |
4. A really fun thing to have happen is to pull into a parking space after dark. Then you open your car door to step out and on the ground is a mass of god knows what. Some was liquid, some was mushy, and all of it was gross. To top it off I had to do a kind of ballet dance to get around it. Not sure if I totally missed stepping in it. That was not a good time.
5. On the roads to some beaches on Cape Cod, and I’m sure other places, some signs show you how to proceed if you’re not in a vehicle. They say: Walk Right, Ride Left. That makes sense if you’re going in one direction. What about if you’re going the other way? When you walk right and ride left isn’t it on the opposite side? Doesn’t that make it basically anarchy on these roads? The sign should just say: Walk wherever, ride wherever, as long as you’re not in the middle of the road. These types of thoughts and observations are Exhibit A of why I say my life is like a Seinfeld episode some days.
6. My introversion paid off a bit. I stopped for a few quick things at a convenience store. I grabbed them and immediately went for the self-checkout register located in between a pair of regular registers. This was so I could get in and out without a lot of small talk that I’m not particularly a big fan of. The employee that was working had stepped away momentarily to straighten up one of the aisles. They were so grateful that I could check myself out rather than make them stop their work and come back. I decided to take that win and not say it was because I didn’t want to interact with anyone.
7. At my work there was a fun message I came into one morning. We have an automated away message that is sent to people who text after hours. It just thanks them for the message and states our hours. I walked in with 48 unread messages from one specific number which was alarming at first. I mean who would text us 48 times overnight, right? It turns out that the message that came in was automated, and then we responded with our automated message, which then triggered the same message again from the source. You can see where this is going. It was two bots responding to each other repeatedly. I couldn’t stop laughing once I realized the absurdity of it.
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| This is how I imagined the bots interacting. |
8. Those who used to read the original Initial Impressions blog back in 2010-2012 will remember my attempts to get 5-Hour Energy to sponsor my road trips. I mentioned it numerous times in the old blogs. Now there’s a new version of this energy shot called 5-Hour Energy Sport which I guess is different than the regular because it’s supposed to be a pre-workout. Anyway, I enjoy it but again it has me wondering how to get them to sponsor my road trips. Maybe I’ll keep mentioning them in the video version of this blog. Or maybe I should actually start doing more road trips before I look for a sponsor?
9. In keeping with the feeling lost, Mid-Life Crisis theme I am trying to shake things up with small changes in my life. Switching from Pandora to Spotify for my music app. Quitting Twitter/X and going to Bluesky. Growing my hair out a bit. It’s only been a few days of all of this but it does feel a little new and rejuvenating. I believe a series of smaller tweaks in life can be just as impactful as packing up and moving cross country. I mean I already did that, twice.
10. Speaking of growing hair out my plan is for it to be only slightly longer. When my hair is long it is not straight or curly, it is like a bird’s nest which I hate. I have been routinely shaving my head since 2010. With few exceptions, this has been a weekly occurrence. On the odd occasion when I have grown my hair out people are shocked that I actually have a full head of hair and don’t shave it because I am going bald. Unfortunately now in my late 40s, I can already see after a few weeks of growing it that my hair is far more gray and white than I remembered. I’m not going to dye it though, I might as well age with dignity. Plus I can always just shave it off again in a few months.
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| My hair will not be as long as it was here in 2019. |
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