It's Never Easy

Hello again my friend 👋

This is exciting for me. My book has launched! 🎉

https://www.joealterio.com/its-never-easy/

But I'll come back to that in a sec. Bear with me.

More often that not, whenever I chat with someone I haven't seen in a while, in response to the question, "How are things?", I respond with a variation of

"Temporary."

Of course, I am talking about the dismal state of affairs of the world. I am talking about the descent into AI-enabled autocracy. I am talking about the economy, about the looming discomfort of an age in which you can't even discern the shape of the future through the haze, just the idea of a gathering bogeymen just beyond the next hill.

But I'm also talking about my personal horizon.

I'm not sure if it's my age, my stage in life, or that my kids don't really need me that much anymore, but there is a simmering and inchoate "Huh!" that sits, just out of frame, a looming big question mark about the direction and purpose of what I'm doing with my brief time on this planet.

I have talked at length previously about how captured I am by my continuously ebbing presence. I find it totally and completely crazy that not every single person on this Earth is always aware of their fairly brief timeline. How could you possibly spend a Saturday binging a TV show? DON'T YOU FEEL HOW LITTLE TIME YOU HAVE LEFT?, I want to bellow.

This is, of course, deeply unhealthy. I am aware of that. My therapist is aware of that. Binging a TV show you love is good and restful and a good use of time. I am just a victim of temporal dysmorphia.

It is a state of affairs that serves me very little. I am the direct opposite of the buddha. There is so much to be done. There is so little time.

However, there is one benefit: I notice, stuff. A lot. My hyperawareness is so atuned to what I could be missing, that I end up consuming quite a bit of the planet. In an effort to not miss anything, I take in quite a bit.

Back to It's Never Easy.

A very nice reviewer recently said the book is "a meditation on what is important." I an flattered by that assessment, but I do not think it is true. I don't think my judgement about what is important or not important comes through very well: in fact there is no filter at all! It is just a daily reporting of the hyperawareness that resides deep within my being, watching and waiting for the next shoe to drop.

It's something, I guess.

XO,
Joe


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