Moments, frozen in time
Working frenetically in the past 20 years, horse-racing towards my little human goals, enchanted by the magic of technology, I somehow forgot to write and draw. And I loved it - I still keep a backpack full of poems, short stories, and my 16-year-old memories, captured in the amber of paper and ink. Maybe this was the reason I started writing again.
Another reason I stopped at some point was that I lost the urge to express myself to the world. Why tell when I can do? What's the gain except fuelling up my own logorea? I somehow lost the artist in me, replacing it with the employee.
But now I have kids. And among the life lessons my wife and I try to teach them, maybe I felt the need to leave a little legacy in this blog for them (and in my GitHub account for this site, in the form of .md files, haha).
Well, I write in English now rather than Bulgarian, but honestly, I've somehow outgrown "language nationalism". And I plan to keep writing in Bulgarian on some topics, although I am also perfectly comfortable not doing it. Anyway...
See, there is something magical in the moments.
Past, present, tense. I love to emerge in an observational state, deep-diving into a particular moment of time. I've experienced transcedental travel, lucid dreaming, meditation, and not in the conventional "guru style" way. I don't practice these today, yet I have learned so much. This is a whole other story/ies, though.
At some point recently, I realized it's pretty hard to explain these concepts to my kids, as they are much more interested in their current slice of time in Roblox, Minecraft, and their little-kid things. What if, for some reason, God forbid, I am unable to leave this knowledge?
Moments come and go, but we can freeze those in time. And as funny as it may sound, these might become increasingly valuable over time.
Today, every second article, every post, fights for attention and appreciation, and gets soaked in AI. This cripples the art of writing, and we can't stop it.
Don't get me wrong. I don't condemn AI and call me a hypocrite, but AI helps me thrive immensely in the technological, research, coding, and marketing spheres. It expands my solid foundation of knowledge at a speed I never dreamed of. It saves me a lifetime every day. It's polite, although sometimes deceptive, and this way it keeps me also alert and aware. So I will continue to use it, and abuse it - no regrets. This does not mean I perceive AI as a human being, or will start worshipping it, nor will I proclaim it a new God. It's just a new tool, freaking good, but a tool. It does not replace humans; it removes redundancy. A lot of people don't understand this, but itis a separate topic.
I opened the above side-thought as it's actually an important one. I noticed my bigger kid does not like AI. At all. Same with his friends - the youngsters feel the hidden synthetic smell of the clankers. Same with my younger kid. What they see in AI is a distorted, plastic, and fake image. They don't buy it, and really don't appreciate its use. And I am really, really curious how many other young people dislike this and will reject it at some point. I might be wrong; we will see.
So these shards are not written by AI and will never be.
A gift for my wife and relatives, and an act of art for the people who know me, don't know me, and might not know me in person. These little text snippets become moments themselves, rough, imperfect, but alive. Yeah, they might drift from the main course, but they will leave little traces and capture tiny micro-moments, like the gorgeous sunset on the seacoast, the whisper of the summer wind in the leaves of the tree above my hammock, the humming of the birds, or the slow rotation of the wind generators.
And when I'm gone, these digital traces, those frozen moments, may be my whisper in the leaves of the eternity tree. Bringing a smile to my kid's or grand-kid's face, a smirk with a reminder of the authentic funny old fart that revived his hobby to write.