Death Of An Optimist: A Review

The soft waves gently tickle the ears with their melodic frequency, the distant warm glow of the sinking sun presses the face. It was a glorious day, but now it was time to say goodbye.

Happen to stumble on something that reminded me of good old Steem Hive and I had to reread this post. For some reason, of all of the posts I had written all those years ago, that was the one that I kept recalling, thinking about my past writing. Perhaps, it was the honesty, the lack of cryptocurrency references, or that it was just pure writing. Or maybe that memorable line about training the puppy to be ignored. That was definitely it. Although there's some other really good stuff in there.

While some of my prophecies I have written have come to pass, I find the one hidden in this story the most profound. I definitely wrote this as an allegory to some feeling I was experiencing at the time, but now I find it a compelling description of my current state.

He had saved up years for the car, yet it sat in his garage for months as he took his older car back and forth to work. The vehicle spent most of its time underneath a brown tarp, like a present forgotten, waiting to be unwrapped.

I spend many hours building this account from which I now write. I have written before and since on different accounts and mediums, but I definitely put in the most work here, especially during those first dedicated years in 2017 and 2018. But its been at least 3 years since my last post. The account dormant, the keys collecting dust.

One weekend, he decided enough was enough and wanted to take the car out for a drive. He didn't have plans for the weekend, but he often never had plans anyway. His friends were always busy or out of town. So, he sat in his house and waited out the weekend until it was time to go back to work again.

Like the protagonist, I find myself with no plans waiting to go to work on Monday. I've been trying to kick the social media habit and internet addiction and happened to relapse back onto the web to mindlessly entertain myself. I made it over a week, which was longer that I have done in the past.

But this weekend, he was breaking this routine. The routine was getting old and some fresh air would cheer up his glum mood. Sure, work was boring. But now he had the weekend to himself and he was going to take his dream car for a spin.

I was bummed out that I broke my consumption fast, but mindlessly scrolling, I somehow came across this website. And then I remember this story and find some inspiration to write. I just had to give it a whirl.

He took the scenic route up the coast and found an extended shoulder that had a pristine view of the Pacific. He got out of the car and was welcomed with a nice warm breeze. There was a guardrail that divided the gravel shoulder from the steep open drop into the ocean below.

Opening up this editor on this old laptop was something. The years of writing these articles and the ups and downs of the bear and bull markets and all the fun discussions and arguments I had this past. All those memories came rushing back.

He stared at the waves for awhile watching them crash against the cliffside beneath. He thought he would be happier now that he was here, but he felt nothing. The scene was beautiful, but something felt like it was missing.

The issue with nostalgia are those feelings are concentrated in the past. These are definitely positive feelings, but I'll never be able to recapture that hunger from the early days and the second I think about coming back, I know the weight will come back. The curse of the perfectionism makes the pen heavy.

He drove further up the coast until he found a deserted beach where he could get closer to the ocean. He took off his shoes and walked barefoot in the sand until he reached the edge. The sand was cold as his feet sunk slightly in the moist sediment. The waves crawled to his feet before withdrawing back into the ocean. As if they were luring him in.

But to write in this way again. There's a certain freedom to it. It's hard to describe what it is. When you aren't really writing for someone else, but writing for yourself. I think I had dreams of being a writer one day. It feels good, but the feeling doesn't last forever and loses its magic the more you exercise it.

He drove his car back to his house and covered it in the brown tarp to protect it from the dust circulating inside the garage. He slumped into his recliner and fell asleep.

So, with that, I think it's about time I log off again. Not sure how long it will be. The writing is getting hard now that I know I am coming to the close of the story. I want to leave the audience with some lasting point before the magic wears off.

He quickly awoke to the sound of an alarm clock. Monday morning once again. He quickly got ready and grabbed a protein bar on the way to his old car sitting out on his driveway and made his way to work.

Come Monday, how much will I even care that I made a brief stop on memory lane? Back to the keyboard, in the office, getting pissed off at someone's mediocre code, dreaming of greener pastures.

Next weekend, he spend the morning staring at the ceiling above and eventually made his way outside of his bedroom to watch television. His car sat alone in the garage underneath a tarp. Sometimes he wondered why he even bought the car. It used to mean something at some point, but now it meant nothing.

When the next boring weekend comes along, will I remember what I did today? Will I remember what I did in the past? These memories encoded onto the blockchain propagating into future. Can an author's words still touch years into the future? Can the patterns of bits dancing in some computer in a hot dark data center electrify the neurons of digital archeologists of the distant future? Maybe those bits, these words are simply rubbish in the digital landfills that fill up hard drives across the world. Many of my followers are ghosts in this graveyard, I am a ghost haunting the present of a future lost.

All kids dream and as adults sometimes you reach those dreams. Then you realize the whole thing was a myth. You get the puppy, you play with it a little bit and then you train it to be ignored. All that glitters gets dull and thrown in a falling-apart, moisture-damaged cardboard box and then thrown in the attic to accumulate dust.

I started writing for fun in the ninth grade. Most of the writing I do today is technical documentation that goes mostly unread by script kitties who don't have passion for the craft. Sometimes, I wonder if I ever really had passion for the pen. I did like how some combinations of words used to sound when mixed together. The feeling of writing a paragraph of accidental poetry. This place was amazing for a moment. That young, greedy soul had ambitions that were blunted with time and experience. Unlike poor Icarus, I think I decided to cut off the wings and simply watch the sea from the shoreline like everyone else. Time to turn off the laptop and return to reality. It was nice catching up.