Today it strikes me that the future is here, has been here, and I barely ever notice. Not just Thee Future but My future, the weird projection glimpsed briefly and imagined as a child, a teen, a miserable college student. Is this a gratitude journal? Not quite, but just trying to take the time to say “Oh, hello.”

Daily I step away from my little home office in a house I own, with my dog, my partner, in a place that’s not Utah. That alone is several assorted dreams fulfilled, and somehow I don’t wake up each day freaking the absolute fuck out about it, jumping for joy, kicking down the door, etc. I step away from my little desk, in my little home office, and make make myself a little lunch. Fresh greens blanched and roasted in the oven. Make myself a garlicky little yogurt sauce with lemons I pluck directly from my tree in my back yard, mixed with seaweed from a tin bought on a trip to Wales, fried spicy shallots from a neighborhood shop, and pistachios I split with birds each morning at coffee at the shop down the river from my house.

And yet no “holy shitting” myself, constantly, endlessly, until I am hoarse? How did I get here?

While I am picking my lemons I dismiss a spammy phone call from the watch on my wrist, and respond on the same to a text from a coworker. I do some drawings while I eat on a sheet of glass and the ghostly white facsimile of a pencil that has more computational power in it than the computer I grew up playing Lode Runner on. I am frustrated that the little voice assistant I can talk to to turn my oven on and off is a little too chatty. You never saw the Jetsons ask Rosie to politely shut the fuck up, and yet I’m confident now it would be an almost daily utterance. “Your timer is cancelled Mister Jay! And by the way, Mister Jay, if you’re curious about the weather you can say “Hey Rosie! What’s the weather tod—” “Jesus Christ, Rosie, can you please can it? No one asked for the play by play.”

I message some friends from a couple continents away, I will see them in two weeks I say, and I look forward to the third 10 hour flight in as many months I am taking for fun and my own money with more a mix of boredom and annoyance than sheer fucking wonder.