Published October 21, 2024

I’ve been spending time in the early to mid-1980s lately. In my thoughts. In dreams. As I work on a couple of long-term projects. It’s prompted reflection, as you might guess. What do I do or have or know now, I thought to ask myself, that I didn’t do or have or know back then?

Plenty. I didn’t:

• Write blog posts.
• Pick up my phone to check notifications.
• Look at my laptop to check notifications.
• Reset my modem.
• Check the news every few hours.
• Chat with people around the U.S. in real time.
• Ride a stationary bike.
• Sleep without my breathing stopping.
• Wear contact lenses.
• Care about what I wore.
• Look at myself in mirrors.
• Live in the Pacific Northwest.
• Live on the second floor.
• Sleep with windows open.
• Check job listings regularly.
• Have groceries delivered.
• Wear a mask in enclosed spaces.
• Pay with plastic.
• Pay with autopay.
• Have to worry about autoplay.
• Reposition the antenna now and then.
• Wear my hair in a ponytail.
• Wear headbands.
• Wear jewelry.
• Wear … well, lots of things.
• Feel the estrogen.
• Worry every day about fascism.
• Have to think about pre-existing conditions.
• Get mammograms.
• See a therapist.
• Worry all the time about money.
• Use body lotion and other scents.
• Drink coffee.
• Deal with so much misinformation.
• Talk out loud to myself.
• Subscribe to more than one newspaper.
• Think so much about dying.
• Fully appreciate diversity.
• Challenge my long-held beliefs.
• Question who had planted those beliefs.
• Question whether belief was ever a choice.
• Get popcorn at the cinema next door.
• Live downtown.
• Wish so often for do-overs.
• Do battle so often with outdated thinking.
• Scream in a pillow so often.
• Live alcohol-free.
• Have she/her pronouns.
• Hear ignorant takes on pronouns.
• Swipe up, left, right and down.
• Surf the web.
• Have so little faith in humanity.
• Love cats.
• Eat kiwifruit.
• Sort of like my face every now and then.
• Love my low testosterone.
• See language and grammar prescriptivism as a problem.
• See built-in racism in so many places.
• Care so little about who wins the game.
• See how often winning is losing.
• Laugh out loud.
• Bypass small talk for big talk almost exclusively.
• Keep room for church music although I no longer go.
• Granny Smith apples all the way.
• Love quiet so much.
• Think to be grateful.
• Trust that I know who I am.
• See so much hypocrisy everywhere.
• Think that horrible man would ever affect my life so much.
• Have so many friends with new-to-me names.
• Like chorizo.
• Know anything about chorizo.
• Care how the chorizo is made.
• Believe so hard that integrity is everything.
• Hate that so many people still believe the myths.
• Know the real lyrics to so many songs.
• Know how to spot disinformation so quickly.
• Have this much patience with honest effort.
• Say “You’re doing great” as much as possible.
• Realize how full of shit so many adults are.
• Love so many people and things I was taught to fear.
• See “Red Dawn” fans loving an anti-American president of Russia.
• Know who most systems are built to protect and reward.
• And who they’re meant to exclude.
• Love the music of so many names.
• Fully appreciate what living in the subtropics took out of me.
• Feel how much safer the queers are for me than the straights.
• Say “lovely” so much.
• Know the devastation toxic masculinity brings.
• Wish so hard that we’d try new ways.
• Live this much in fear of so-called Christians.
• Have this much empathy and still wonder if it’s enough.
• Know that not all rain leaves bruises.
• Know that not all air is chewable.
• Recognize how perception is reality.
• Know who works overtime to create perception.
• And why.
• Know that those who control the language control the conversation.
• Wear clothes without giving them “man smell.”
• Love my face every now and then.
• Wake up every day curious what fresh hell awaits.
• Wonder so often what is wrong with people.
• Read about pandemic amnesia 100 years ago.
• Understand the Roaring Twenties better.
• Figure I’ve seen favorite ’80s movies enough times now.
• Use a computer without greeting it: “Computer?”
• Scan for viruses and not for life forms.
• Hear iPhone as iPhone, not “eye phone,” which would be cool, no?
• Embrace my neurodivergence.
• Sleep entirely under the covers.
• Feel so vulnerable.

This list is subject to growing over time.

Photo of person writing on paper by gowithstock via Shutterstock.