Every time I open my browser there is a countdown to my death, according to some actuarial table. It’s a big hit at work. Anyway, broadly speaking I am expected about 21000 days to live [controlling for almost nothing].

I turned 24 earlier this month. It is an intimidatingly small number. It also maps cleanly to a clock metaphor, being born at midnight-

Like most people, I tend to break down my personal narrative in more locally relevant ways. So, though it may be a cheap and tired metaphor, the clock did allow me to put a few things into a broader perspective than usual: for instance, the sheer amount of time that various large institutions have invested in me, or the amount of time I’ve been alive where I’ve had very little agency. Like every person on the planet, I fancy myself somewhat special and a vastly different person than the “me of a Few Hours Ago”, though I (and everyone else) continue to draw a line of continuity back through my prior Selves. It is sometimes startling to compare distances between different prior Selves.

At both ~5am and 5pm, I managed to crash a vehicle into a tree (I started driving young- a story for another time). Also, I have great difficulty remembering the names of most of the teachers I had in the morning. Is my memory terrible?

Currently reading: Martin Gurri’s “The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millenium”. I also hope to finally really sit down and wrap up Impro, which has sat partially read for months.