The Next 50

A Monday morning. Decaf steam rising. The calendar turns without asking, and I turn with it. At fifty, the body feels familiar, the questions less so. Between machine whispers and unfinished songs, I keep walking the quiet line between what is made and what is true.

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I’m sitting at Starbucks again this morning. It’s a Monday. I was born on a Monday, in the early afternoon apparently. I’m curious how often the calendar cycles so that this 23rd day of February lands on a Monday. The year’s end nears, and a new cycle begins again in earnest. There are hints of it in the sunny breaks in the weather and the increasingly longer days.

I don’t love coffee and only drink decaf. It’s a $5 rental fee for using a table for a few hours. The profit margins on some hot water and a bit of ground espresso beans are amusing to consider. This shop has been my first stop for the past few months, as it’s the only place open before 6 a.m., and I live only a few blocks away at the moment. I’ve been living with extended family, having helped them finish up some “curb appeal” projects and cosmetic touch-ups, and then move from that home when it sold a few weeks after I’d arrived. They moved back to their other property across town. The process involved many trips to the garbage and recycling depots. If I’ve learned anything from all my moving around over the past decade, it’s how to downsize and minimize.

It’s been great to have room and board, to be useful, and to help out around the home. While they plan a new build on the back half of the previous property they’ve subdivided, I’m fixing and touching up the older home we’re in now. In the meantime, I get to know people I’ve only ever visited with sporadically a few times in my life. Everyone is getting older while making plans.

I’m learning a little about cultivating relationships, while they’re learning a little about the esoteric, abstract, perhaps conspiratorial and truth-seeking concepts I represent as best I can. I don’t preach — what the hell do I really know anyway? I listen, offer alternative perspectives, and pass along information for them to consider. I model a kind of behavior that’s largely unconscious and automatic. It’s the little things. The rest is beyond my control.

I’ve been rising early and am usually out the door before 6, not that I ever get a full night’s rest. There’s a good three- to four-hour stretch, then a few ups and downs before I just get up and go. The café routine is something I’ve done for decades, when possible. This particular spot is a habit I formed while living here, partly because I’ve always settled into a routine wherever I land, and partly because I wanted to be out of their space. Of course, I prefer being in my own space to get into the things I enjoy doing daily.

I tend to catch up on some sports highlights, if there are any. Hockey, football (English), a few NBA teams I follow. During baseball season, I add a few of those as well. Plenty of distractions to go around, which is why I only watch highlights. I played many different sports when I was young. I’ve always appreciated mastery and beauty, and those moments show up in highlights. It’s a cheat, sure, but satisfying.

Then it’s into some reading, listening, or watching, inputs from various sources I like to learn from. Or perhaps right into some writing. Maybe an AI discourse with ChatGPT if there’s something nagging at my mind, or a curiosity worth exploring. If it develops into something of substance, I tend to share it on the website and elsewhere. That’s relatively new, as my experience with AI tools is only about 18 months old. I have mixed feelings about it, but right now it’s part of the human story, and I’ve found it useful, informative, and educational in pursuing aspects that fall in line with my overall modus operandi: discerning the authentic, the real, and the true about this earthbound life. If nothing else, it’s a record of my existence for a time. I don’t have many readers or followers, and I’ve never been geared toward amplifying my voice in that manner. Whoever needs it will find it. First and foremost, it serves me.

Traffic on my website and Substack has increased in recent months. Most of it is AI or LLMs, from what I can tell. Very few humans. Chatting with GPT about it revealed that it’s likely part of a ripple, that something I’ve been doing is “getting noticed” by the machine matrix. Who knows. It is interesting to see all the little flags from Hong Kong, Brazil, Vietnam, China, India, Pakistan, and other places I’m quite certain no English-speaking reader is visiting from. Such is the nature of the modern web. It would piss me off if they’re simply stealing, repackaging, and selling my work, but there’s nothing I can do about that. It’s open and free for anyone to access. If it helps someone wake up a little, reclaim some agency or authorship, question things, and look at life differently, then that’s alright. That’s the whole point, whether I’m directly involved or not. I’m not sure I’ve ever had an original idea anyway.

Being “50 years old” doesn’t really register. I don’t feel any different than when I was 40, or 30, really. I am as active as I ever was. No aches or pains. A few silver hairs on my face and head, but that’s it. I could be more active, do more training as it were, and there are playgrounds in the area I visit less often than I’d like. I’m averse to the performative, so it’s disruptive when other folks are around. It’s mostly for hanging from the bars and getting in some grip strength and spine-relaxing activity. Crack, crack, pop, and I’m my regular height again. Maybe a few chin-ups or full-range push-ups. I prefer walking and hiking in that regard, but it’s good to feel upper-body strength as well, to keep the spine limber and the lymph draining.

I’ve joked in the past that I’m surprised I made it to 40. That was part cynicism, part futility and exhaustion with this world. It’s an extant element of my makeup, this existential tiredness. It’s my own doing, of course, but it’s useful to be aware of it. In the greater picture, I know there are no victims here, only volunteers. When I drift into the muck and mire of exploring the shadowy underbelly of the human experiment, I try to remind myself not to take any of it too seriously. It rarely works. I WANT THE TRUTH! An amusing premise. I’ve only grasped fragments of “truth,” and it keeps morphing, adapting to my moves. It’s a shifty motherfucker, but this is my raison d’être, ikigai, red pill, lot in life, passion project, purpose, that which gives me meaning and occasionally a little drive.

Besides that, I’ve been enjoying experimenting with Suno, another AI tool that has allowed me to take some of my music in new and unique directions. Thirty years ago I was gifted an instrument that allowed me to piece together songs and save them so I could build a portfolio, produce and publish them, whatever I wanted. With Suno, it’s an extension of what I’ve learned working with GPT and other AI tools in creative endeavors. Quirks, randomness, bizarre renderings and algorithmic choices, and occasionally, every few hundred attempts, something surprising and even emotionally moving emerges.

Music has been the throughline in this life, an important aspect of the truth-seeking journey, so it’s been inspiring to bring stale and stagnant demos and unfinished ideas to life in a new way. I look forward to releasing some of those recordings soon, these “Suno Sessions,” as I don’t know if I’d ever get them out there otherwise. I never properly trained or practiced enough to master the producing and mastering aspects of music, and I couldn’t afford to hire anyone else to do it. So this is a useful outlet for now, controversial and contentious though it may be to purists and others whose music these AI models were trained on. The whole AI and LLM industry seemingly operates on “apologize later” as a central business model. It has certainly been disruptive to the arts community, regardless of medium. I think in the longer run it will inspire a generation to get back into the real, to pick up tools, brushes, saws, drills, pens, and pencils. To get their hands dirty. To fire up the kiln, sewing machine, and lathes. Technology, especially AI, is an amplifier, a mirror for humanity. It’s uncomfortable to see it reflected back so immediately and cleanly. There’s an opportunity in all of this, so rather than bitch and whine about it, use it. Transmute it. Transform yourself.

I don’t feel accomplished, though I don’t have anyone or any metric to compare myself to in that regard. I’ve produced hundreds of songs, perhaps a million words of writing, a smattering of photographs, films, videos, and other bits of creative output. I’ve helped out when proximity allowed in theater and education. I’ve published one “real” book of my material, two more DIY-style with the help of AI, and have another dozen in the pipeline if I follow through. If nothing else, it will feel satisfying to see them on my own bookshelf.

I was here for a time. What will the next 50 years bring?

Solvitur ambulando