_____ _
| ___| | |
| |__ _ __ | |_ _ __ ___ _ __ _ _
| __| '_ \| __| '__/ _ \| '_ \| | | |
| |__| | | | |_| | | (_) | |_) | |_| |
\____/_| |_|\__|_| \___/| .__/ \__, |
| | __/ |
|_| |___/
June 8, 2020
Can you keep a secret for me?
Fear is a strange beast. Unique among emotions, we avoid it in order
to feel some sort of "safe," and yet we crave it, seeking out its
unique high through horror flicks and suspense novels. Who among us
doesn't want to feel as if we're "on the edge of our seats" at
times? And yet, so few of us would actually swap places with the
victim in that crime thriller we can't put down.
You see, I don't have that many fears myself, I'm happy to say. I'm
not afraid of death (too young for that one), or the dark (too old
for that one). Water doesn't bother me, and I've (mostly) gotten
over the fear of heights I had in my childhood. And yet, there is
one fear that continuously lurks, ominously infiltrating many of the
things I do, and I'm hoping you can keep this confidential, just
between you and me.
That fear is a fear of entropy.
I can hear your chuckles, dear reader. 'Entropy? The...tendency of
things to move from a state of order to a state of disorder?' Indeed,
entropy - the breakdown of things, deterioriation, disorder, chaos,
the unknown, death. Over time, this fear has animated much of what
I've done, but only recently have I started to realize the grip it
has upon me.
Entropy is the reason that I have a virtual machine of Windows 95
on my laptop (on both partitions), just...in case. Entropy is the
reason I photocopy my daily journal, save it locally, then save it
to the cloud, all while also saving the hardcopy. It's the reason I
have two cloud backups of my files, the reason I own casette tapes,
the reason I save old, unfinished, or amended Gopher posts in the
working drive you're currently reading from. It's the reason I
resist change, new technologies, new forms of social media. And, if
I'm being honest...it's the reason I'm using this protocol.
And unfortunately, dear reader, as I age, its grip upon me increases.
In the past, I only wanted to save...the ephemeral thing that is the
past before I knew it. But now, as I live more, I want to save what
I remember - VHS, flip phones, Windows 98, casettes.
Why? Deep down, if I'm being honest with myself, I want to relive it
in its "pure" state, where these things, these facets of life, are
still...usable. I want to once again experience the feeling of
surprise when they were new. I want to feel nascent words like "vlog"
and "YouTube" once again trill on the tip of my tongue.
And yet, deep down, if I'm being honest with myself, I know that this
will never happen. Entropy is the natural state of the world; without
it, life would be stagnant and dull, even repetitive. I know it won't
be easy to overcome this phobia, but I know that entropy is a part of
nature, and that I must accept it.
So, dear reader: can you keep this story a little...secret, between us?
--EOF--