Interacting Couple Oil Painting

This piece was painted in oil on wood. It was donated to a charity auction.

I've recently been working hard to finish my next novel. Last night, I finished it! There is of course a bunch of stuff left to do before publication. I've got to do a final editing pass, typeset the thing, figure out cover art, order a proof copy for an editor to go through, etc. But the most pressing item on my todo list is deciding on a title. I still don't know what to call it.

Today was mostly spent catching up on little things. Work. Rstory communications. Adjusting my open exchange orders in light of crypto's volatility. Now I'm all caught up and plan to spend the night tinkering more with my book.

If the final editing process unfolds as it did for my other books, I expect to have the new one up for sale in October. That'd make six novels in three years, a writing pace I'm happy with, though it remains to be seen how sustainable it is.

I'll be turning forty in a couple of days. My big plan for the occasion is to go out to eat at a decent place in my neighborhood. I used to go out more regularly, every other week at least, but since covid began it's been less than once a month. As with my last few birthdays, this one doesn't feel like that big of a deal, though the round number would seem to lend it some symbolic import.

I did feel a little old at the coffee shop today. Some friends and I were talking about 9/11 and the neocon coup that happened twenty years ago, trying to explain the climate of nationalistic tribalism that enveloped the country then to someone currently in their early twenties. We covered Paul Wellstone's mysterious plane crash, the manufacturing of consent leading up to war, and the 2000 election debacle. It's hard for me to believe that that stuff happened so long ago.

Considering this, I wonder how my views have changed during this period. In many ways, they're the same. I'm still against war and the militarization of police. I'm still against old growth logging and other forms of unsustainable resource exploitation. I still think crooks and liars run Washington and Wall Street. Much remains the same.

The biggest thing that's changed is probably my views on technology. When I was younger, I saw technology as mostly a tool of oppression. But I've studied society's relationship with technology extensively since then and my perspective has evolved. These days, while I still see tech used to oppress people in all kinds of terrible and increasingly sophisticated ways, I also can't deny the broadly good impact it's having on society as a whole.

For example, crypto has greatly improved my own life and the lives of countless others. It hasn't make me rich, but it has made it possible for me to do business in new ways, which has effectively lifted me out of poverty. But it's not crypto alone that did this. It's crypto plus computing and communications technologies that are getting better every day.

In another twenty years, my perspective might have shifted again. But for now, I see technological advancement as one of the most hopeful trends of our era. There's a reason why despotic regimes interrupt cell service and the internet in moments of unrest. The reason is that the new tech makes it easy for people to work together to further common interests.