I know hindsight is 20/20 but it feels nearly embarrassing to think I thought anything would ever change for the better.

Obama was one hell of a drug, particularly to a liberalized college-brain. What's the old adage?

If you're under 30 and you're not a liberal, you have no heart. If you're over 30 and you're still a liberal, you have no brain.

There's a real appeal to liberalism. It plays on a kind-of naive optimism that shit is going to work out because people are fundamentally good and all our goals are reconcilable with the right technical expertise. And as you grow up, you gain all this competency and agency, and its easy to think that your personal development will mirror the rest of the world around you.

Knowing this is all meaningless now is very freeing

Its frustrating to me, because I felt like I had a plan when I was younger. Now that I'm older, I feel more helpless and exposed in a way I never did as a younger person.

I do feel better not being plugged into the circus. None of the anxiety that wracked me after 2016 - literally keeping me up half the nigh just staring at the ceiling in stunned horror. Now I can just not care.