Mixtapes
Since stepping off the rickety rage coaster of social media, I’ve found the inside of my skull to be a whole lot quieter. Like the wind after a nor'easter, still and strange. I was born back in the twentieth century—back when the world still creaked like old floorboards and you could hear yourself think between commercials. I remember when HBO showed up like a Mormon with a pamphlet of eternal joy, and when cable TV felt like magic you had to pay for monthly. We had laserdiscs the size of wagon wheels, VHS rentals from Blockbuster where the clerks knew your name, and answering machines that swallowed cassette tapes whole. And mixtapes—brother, mixtapes—recorded from vinyl and played loud in a ’77 Buick Regal with a weather-worn Landau roof. The year was 1984. Van Halen was hollering from the speakers like an enraged feminazi.
Pay Phones
I remember walking to a pay phone when the car coughed its last, and a paper map crumpled in the glove box like an old friend with bad advice. We took turns at the Asteroids machine, one quarter at a time, death gripping the control arm and hammering the fire buttons.
Algorithms
But the century turned, and with it came the deluge. The bells and beeps became deeper, louder. Bass you could feel to your core. Screens got brighter. Information arrived not in letters or evening broadcasts but in torrents, relentless, godless in their pace. There ain't a mortal who can take it all in. We drowned in knowledge and called it progress. Algorithms sniffed out what we liked and fed it back to us like hogs at the trough.
I watched Star Trek as a kid. Thought the tech was pure sorcery. Now Captain Kirk’s communicator looks like a toy from a cereal box. Hell, he had to twist a knob just to phone the ship. Now we carry in our pockets more power than Kirk ever saw from the bridge, and we use it to scroll all of humanity's collective knowledge with an index finger.
But there’s a toll, same as any road. As Thomas Sowell said, “There are no solutions, only trade-offs.” And the price we pay—our time. Your most sacred possession. Non-renewable. You give up minutes of your life in return for flickers of dopamine. Bright little sparks. Gone before you know they came.
Time numbed. Time expired.
Sometimes I wonder what road I’d be on if I hadn’t farted away so much time. But I don’t live on that street. That land’s fenced off. The past is a country that issues no visas. All a man can do is face what’s left, count what coin remains, and not throw more of it into wishing wells.
So—what’s worth your time? What’s its highest use? What could make your last years your best?
There is one road. Not a shortcut, not easy, not fashionable. But it’s solid. Stone beneath your feet. Master a hard skill. One that takes thousands of hours. One folks will pay you well for. It’s a lot. Sure. But every mountain is climbed the same way: one breath, one step, one inch.
A Jolt
Your thoughts’ll want to jump, flit, run wild like colts across the prairie. You’ll have to train them. That’s why I built Shedooby. A tool. A lash. A cattle prod for your higher self. A jolt when your mind starts driftin'. “Hey McFly,” it says. “Can what you're doing be monetized? If not, do that which can.”
After a year of using the thing, I hardly need it anymore. When I catch myself drifting, I speak a lash I’ve memorized. Tech ain’t free. Its cost is hidden in plain sight. It’s your time. And you ain’t got but so much of it.