Basically, a Basic Story

August 28, 2026 — Pat Bertram
Daily writing prompt
What’s a book you never finished but still think about?
View all responses

A book that I never finished and that I do think about? The Lord of the Rings. I’ve started those books multiple times because I wanted to like them, but I simply could not get immersed into the story even though the series is considered a seminal work. For most people, I think, the books were a revelation, but as one who had been studying myths, legends, quests, and fairy tales my whole life, the books seemed . . . flat. The framework of the story isn’t new — it’s the quintessential hero’s journey story, where a naïve person (or hobbit, apparently), leaves the ordinary world, sets out on a quest, meets allies and mentors, encounters obstacles, fulfills the quest, faces one last transformative ordeal, then returns home with an elixir or boon to transform the ordinary world.

This framework of the hero’s journey is written in our psyches — it’s as old as humankind and goes all the way back to the very beginnings of literature: The Epic of Gilgamesh. Other ancient examples are Beowulf, The Odyssey, and most of mythology; also, King Arthur, The Fisher King legend, fairy tales, The Wizard of Oz, and the tarot (the major arcana seems to be an outline of the hero’s journey). The examples of pre-Tolkien heroic epics are endless, and yet he’s the one everyone holds up as the epitome of the genre.

I should like the books since I am enthralled with quests based on the hero’s journey, but I get mired in his language.

Although language and story are intertwined (because obviously, you can’t have story without language to form the story, create mood, set a tone such as mythic or prosaic), I’ve always thought that story transcends language. A story can be heavy with complex situations, ambiguous characters, and dark themes, yet still be light enough to break through language and rise to a level of reality that the brain treats as true.

It’s this lack of transcendence that makes The Lord of the Rings so problematic for me. I’ve tried many times over the years to drag myself through the books, but the most I’ve managed is to get halfway through the second volume without getting completely bogged down in his words. I simply can’t get beyond the anchor of Tolkien’s language.

The Lord of the Rings has often been hailed as the first, but the first of what, I don’t know. Maybe the first to bring fantasy to the mainstream reading public. He certainly wasn’t the first to write a fantasy. George MacDonald did that. His novel Phantastes, written in 1858, is recognized as the first modern fantasy. Tolkien certainly wasn’t the first to create a completely fictitious world separate from our own. That was William Morris who wrote The Well at the World’s End in 1896. Other writers had created fictitious worlds, such as Jonathan Swift, Jules Verne, Lewis Carroll, but they are not considered fantasy. (Apparently, if a story is written before the delineation of a genre, it can’t belong to that genre.)

Nor was Tolkien the first to create his own languages (a hobby of his from a young age). A Princess of Mars, a science fantasy novel written by American writer Edgar Rice Burroughs in 1912 is considered the first, though Burroughs didn’t create a full grammar for his language. Nor was Burroughs anywhere near the first. Other writers and linguists had been creating languages dating all the way back to the Middle Ages. Esperanto, created by Polish polyglot L. L. Zamenhof in 1887, is spoken by maybe two million people today. (Though come to think of it, any language is a created language. As far as I know, there is no language quarry where one goes to dig up a new language, nor did anyone come down from on high to gift humans with language. Humans and language are intertwined. Humans created language and have done so from the beginning, but also, language created humans. It is language, according to some maybe-experts, that helped rewire our brains and turn us into what we are today.)

What Tolkien did was create entire languages, complete with grammar and syntax, and he grew those languages in conjunction with the mythology and history he devised to support the languages. As a philologist, he believed that language could tell a hidden history; for example, the word “wheel” traces back 5,000 years to a Proto-Indo-European language, which shows at least how long people have know about wheels. In his own languages, he wanted to show that same type of back history. Only then, after he’d built his languages and the myths and history behind them, did he concoct a story (influenced by Beowulf; Celtic, Finnish, and classical myths; Norse and Germanic sagas) to showcase the languages.

And this is why The Lord of the Rings feels so leaden to me. There is no way to transcend the language because the story is not just anchored in language — its whole purpose is the language.

Knowing this, I bought the books . . . again. (The first couple of sets I’d purchased are long gone, lost in the mists of my past.) I figure I’d try to read them, not for the story but for . . . whatever.

Will I be able to get through them even treating them as a study project? I don’t know. What does surprise me is how people are so willing — happily willing — to allow Tolkien his long, drawn-out sections of nothing happening but boring texts of history and geography, yet those same people complain when other authors (such as Tad Williams in his Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn series) don’t jump in immediately with the fast action that is demanded today.

Maybe eventually I’ll find out what made Tolkien rise to such glorified heights as to be forgiven every modern fictional sin, but first, I’ll have to get through the books. Maybe if I rename the series “Lord of the Language” it will help me remember the point of it all. There’s just one small problem with that reminder — I don’t like fake languages and don’t see that they add anything to a story, so I always skip over such things when I encounter them in books.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss o a Loved One

Posted in books, fiction, history/myth, life, writing. Tags: , , , , , , , . Leave a Comment »

Dealing With Uncertainty

August 20, 2026 — Pat Bertram
Daily writing prompt
How do you deal with uncertainty?
View all responses

Some people go through life absolutely certain about themselves, their opinions, their place in life, and life itself. Even as a kid I noticed this. There were some grade schoolers who absolutely knew without any tinge of uncertainty about . . . well, about everything. Those kids tended to be the leaders, the ones others would follow, perhaps, because like me, they were riddled with uncertainty. Unfortunately, for me, my uncertainty about myself, my place in life, and life in general, also encompassed those “certain” people, and so I just sort of “uncertained” my way through grade school, into high school, and into the rest of my life.

Because of that pervasive uncertainty, I learned to learn. I wanted to be certain, but I also wanted to be certain I was certain about things that were true, not just the things that everyone else was certain of.

During times of exceptional uncertainty — such as the years after Jeff died when I was left without an anchor, and so just hovered above life, trying to find something to tie myself to — I simply endured the uncertainty. I even learned to embrace it because after all, life is uncertainty. Some people are lucky, and their faith brings them a certain degree of certainty, but as an adult, I was never gifted with that sort of belief.

And so I deal with my uncertainty today the same way I always did, by trying to find out the truth.

This very idea of certainty and uncertainty is one I’ve been struggling with lately. People seem utterly convinced of the rightness of their ideals and politics and even their own righteousness, and yet, to me, they seem ignorant of any fact or historical context or perspective. Which is where my uncertainty grabs hold of me. If they are so certain of things my years of learning have taught me are wrong, maybe I am the one who’s wrong. So I go back and forth, seeking out the origins of my thoughts, digging deeper into history and finding people who know more than I do about certain subjects, and I seldom find I have to contradict myself, mostly, I think, because any idea I had or have was a long time forming. I try not to jump to conclusions, try not to believe something just because I want it to be true, and yet there is that dichotomy between what I have come to know are facts, and what lies and untruths other people are so certain are true.

I’m not in grade school anymore, and so I see that certainty for what it is — a belief some people hold on to because it’s what they were taught or have come to know through ticktock or wherever they get their ideas, and because they need that certainty. Since they are so convinced of their certainty, they feel free to blindly hate those who disagree without ever looking beyond the dark veil of their own certainty. Most people don’t even see they have a veil.

So what makes me think I don’t also have a veil? What makes me trust myself more than the “certain” ones? The same way I trusted myself in grade school — by not trusting. Not trusting the “experts,” not trusting the “certains,” not even trusting myself. And it’s this uncertainty, I think, that leads me often to a truth, sometimes even to a truth I dare not say because of the backlash from the “certains.” Uncertainty leads to study, to seeing what the “certains” are certain is true, seeing where they got their “knowledge,” and heading out from there.

In a discussion in the novel The Wise Man’s Fears by Patrick Rothfuss, a character defended a story he told that the others found pointless. “Not pointless,” he said. “It’s questions you can’t answer that teach us the most. They teach us how to think. If you give a man an answer, all he gains is a little fact. But give him a question and he’ll look for his own answers. . . . That way, when he finds the answers, they’ll be precious to him. The harder the questions, the harder we hunt. The harder we hunt, the more we learn.”

And that’s why I trust that my truth is closer to the truth than those who scream their epithets and polish the same old “facts,” and publish their vile insults.

Am I certain? No. And neither should anyone else be, but that’s always been the way. The “certains” are heard because they scream loudest while we uncertains quietly stumble around searching for more of the truth.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

Posted in being me, history/myth, life, writing. Tags: , , , , , . 2 Comments »

An Interesting Quote

August 4, 2026 — Pat Bertram
Daily writing prompt
What is your favorite quote?
View all responses

This isn’t my favorite quote since I don’t actually have one, but it’s something I read recently that hit a chord.

In the 1960s, psychologist Frank X. Barron set out to discover what made someone a creative thinker. He discovered that creative people seemed to have certain traits in common: independence; unconventionality; a vast inner life; a preference for complexity and ambiguity; a tolerance for disorder; the ability to extract order from chaos; and a willingness to take risks. He concluded:

“Thus the creative genius may be at once naive and knowledgeable, being at home equally to primitive symbolism and to rigorous logic. He is both more primitive and more cultured, more destructive and more constructive, occasionally crazier and yet adamantly saner, than the average person.”

What hit a chord with that quote is that I have many of those attributes while at the same time, I consider myself a rather average person, and certainly no creative genius or any kind of genius, for that matter. (In fact, a teacher once said to me: “I bet you think you have a high IQ, but you don’t. It’s average.” But she did admit I was creative, so there’s that.) I’m pretty much middle of the road in just about everything, and that’s because I can often see both ends to any spectrum, can often even feel both ends.

I consider myself to be logical, but then, there is that other part of me that is more mystical than logical. Both tend to keep me centered in the middle.

I’m not sure about primitive and cultured. I don’t consider myself either, so perhaps that’s another middle of the road thing?

And I am knowledgeable about many things, but unfortunately, I am also aware of huge blanks in my knowledge base where I know there are things to know but don’t know them.

Then there’s the “destructive” part of the quote — though I am constructive when it comes to gardening, for example, pampering my plants for the most part, I can also be extraordinarily destructive. Yesterday, I needed to prune an overgrown bush, but by the time I finished pruning it, there wasn’t much left but the bare trunks and branches that had been hidden in the middle of the foliage, so I destroyed the whole thing. Well, not completely, just chopped it way back so that it would be years before it grew unwieldy again. It certainly helped me get rid of my frustrations with all that’s going on in the world today.

I do think I’m sane, though during most of my younger years, I thought I was crazy. I can’t remember why, now — maybe because I was so different from people I knew, maybe because certain noises made me frantic, or maybe because my mental processes took me places I wasn’t comfortable with. I remember once being terrified of meeting a psychologist who was new to the family because I didn’t want her to be able to see my craziness. Luckily, I never met her, and now it wouldn’t be an issue. Age does wonders for an uncertain mind!

I’m just as glad not to be a creative genius, because being simply me is hard enough.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

Posted in being me, culture, writing. Tags: , , , , , . 1 Comment »

Decor . . . Um

July 29, 2026 — Pat Bertram
Daily writing prompt
What’s your home decoration style?
View all responses

I thought I’d be clever and try to find some way to link décor and décor . . . um (decorum, get it?), but I really couldn’t find a fit since décor is about one’s things and decorum is about one’s actions. If my house did have the ability to act in good taste rather that simply being in good taste then, yes, the two are linked.

Still — décor? Um . . . what do I know about décor? Not much. My decorating style is whatever was donated or what I could scrounge, and yet somehow, it all fits together in a pleasant, comfortable, and inviting way.

That’s the extent of my decorating style. If left to myself, I’d probably be living in an empty house with a single furnished room: my office. And that certainly doesn’t have any sort of décor — just tables, and chairs and a day bed that I purchased and put together by myself. (I’d probably need help if I were trying to assemble the bed today. It was heavy and the pieces were awkward, but somehow I did it. Whew!)

It is interesting, though, that even without any planning, my living room ended up being so inviting. It’s impersonal enough (I don’t like pictures on the walls and I have a minimum of gadgets collecting dust) that people feel at home from the minute they walk in the door. Supposedly, too many photos and such screams “my place!” to visitors, keeping them at arm’s length, which is why realtors have sellers remove those personal items.

Or maybe not, I don’t know. All I know is whatever my decorating style, it works for me and whoever happens to stop by. (And yes, I know the mat in front of the door is not centered, but it’s where it needs to be for when I enter the house.)

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

Posted in blogging, home, house, life. Tags: , , , , , . 2 Comments »

Dreams I Never Dreamed

July 28, 2026 — Pat Bertram
Daily writing prompt
What’s your biggest dream?
View all responses

I don’t have any dreams, biggest or otherwise. Well, I do have the night kind, but I don’t have many of those either, at least not that I remember. Should we have dreams? I don’t know. I tried looking up dreams on Google, but no matter what my search terms, I always ended up with a list of sites pertaining to nighttime dreams. I even asked if we needed a dream, and what I got was a lecture on the importance of REM sleep.

So, I guess I’m on my own for a definition of this topic.

Do we need to have a dream? It seems to be the consensus (except for Google) that yes, we do. As Harper’s Bizarre once sang, “You gotta have a dream. If you don’t have a dream, how you gonna have a dream come true?

As far as I can recall, though, I never really had a dream, something I was passionate about that I wished would happen or that I could work toward happening. When I was young, I wanted to be an author, even quit a job to pursue the craft, and it came as a shock when I discovered I had no talent. Years later, long after any vestige of that ambition had disappeared, I learned how to write, even had some books published but never became a “real” author, one who makes a living by writing. Perhaps the closest I came to having a dream was after Jeff died when I considered walking the Pacific Crest Trail, or walking cross country, or doing some other epic walk. I called it an impossible dream in my many blog posts about pursuing that dream, and as it turned out, it was impossible, but still, it was something that consumed my attention for many years. I researched, tried to get in shape enough to carry a heavy pack, did so many things to try to achieve that “dream,” though was it a dream? I don’t know. Looking back, it seems less a dream and more of a mental escape or a way of coping with a life of uncertainty.

And my life was uncertain. After Jeff died, I moved a thousand miles from our home to go take care of my aged father, and then after he died . . . well, let’s just say I was untethered.

Still, back then, I did think a lot about trying to find a “dream,” a way of getting through the rest of my life as fully engaged as possible. I did a lot of things in pursuit of a dream, though in fact, I’d never even dreamed any of those dreams. Dancing on stage, for example. I’m not the lightest of folks, not much of one for music or rhythm or bendability or any of a dozen other things one thinks about when you think of a dancer. And yet I did learn to dance, even did several performances on stage before a live audience. Apparently, despite the Harper’s Bizarre song, you can have a dream come true even if you never had the dream.

It’s the same with my house. Until I decided to spend my last bit of savings on a house, I’d certainly never even entertained the idea of owning a piece of property. Once I had the idea, I dreamed the house into existence, and now I seem to be living a dream, one that I never really dreamed.

And my garden. It’s a dream of a garden, that’s for sure, but for sure one that I’d never dreamed. In fact, I distinctly remember thinking (and telling people) that I didn’t want a garden or any landscaping. I wanted a yard that would take care of itself, and yet here I am, with an aftermath of a dream I never had.

Although I still don’t have dreams, I continue to open to whatever comes my way. And who knows, one day I might find myself in another situation where a dream I never dreamed actually came true.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

Posted in being me, gardening, house, life. Tags: , , , , , , , . Leave a Comment »

Promises

July 27, 2026 — Pat Bertram
Daily writing prompt
What’s a promise you made to yourself that you’ve actually kept?
View all responses

I don’t really make promises to myself, at least not using those words. I do wake each day with the idea of trying to do better than I did the day before at taking care of myself, such as eating real food or doing stretching exercises if nothing else. I sometimes played around with New Year’s resolutions, though those resemble my daily betterment intentions rather than any resolution or promise to myself. Oddly, my unintentional resolution of daily blogging (I never decided to do it, never promised myself I would, just started doing it) is still in effect. 208 days and counting!

The closest I ever came to promising myself anything was after Jeff died and I became determined to be spontaneous. The only time in my life I was spontaneous was right after I met him. His very presence in the world made the world feel friendly, and I felt comfortable taking chances. Over the years, I settled back into my worrisome self. Our lives became constrained by his health, our finances, and various other matters beyond our control. He told me once it bothered him that our shared life had destroyed my spontaneity — but he never understood that he was the one responsible for whatever spontaneity I had developed to begin with.

I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life mourning, didn’t want to spend my life regretting that my shared life was ended, didn’t want to . . . well, I didn’t want to do a lot of things that I had to do, such as deal with the pain and go from there. Through it all, though, I kept that determination to be spontaneous as a way to honor him. And to honor myself.

I did many new things and took many chances — visiting museums, taking dance classes, hunting for wild poppy preserves, exploring the desert, hiking — though oddly, a lot of my spontaneity came with preparation and planning. For example, I couldn’t just start driving cross-country trip on a whim — I had to get both myself and my car into shape, stock up on the necessary emergency and camping equipment, notify people of my intentions in case they wanted me to stop by, and so many other niggling details. And yet, despite the planning, most of the trip was an exercise in spontaneity — driving how far I wanted each day, taking side trips when the signs beckoned me off the main road, accepting invitations from people I barely knew.

Even buying my house was as spontaneous as such a purchase can be. I got an unsolicited email from a real estate website saying that they had a house I might like. I did like it. And I bought it sight unseen. (Though I did have a realtor and two inspectors look at it for me.) Although my life has settled into a comfortable stay-at-homeness, and although I still have to live more or less according to a gardening schedule, my life is mostly unplanned. I do what I wish when I wish it, which most often means not doing much of anything, which I’m okay with, although oddly, yesterday I suddenly felt like cleaning house, so that was my big spontaneity of the day.

I suppose, in the end, I did make a promise to myself — that plan to be spontaneous — and I did keep it.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

Posted in being me, blogging, home, life. Tags: , , , , , , , , , . 4 Comments »

Best Purchase Ever

July 23, 2026 — Pat Bertram
Daily writing prompt
What is the best purchase you have ever made?
View all responses

All too often, these blog prompts leave me wordless. Literally wordless. In that I can’t think of a single thing to write. A recent prompt was if I could be an animal for a week, what kind of animal would I be. Yeah, wordless. I have enough trouble imagining myself as a human animal let alone any other sort of creature.

Another prompt was about what book inspired me to travel. How would I know? I’ve read tens of thousands of books. There’s no way I could pick out a single book. And anyway, as far as I remember, no book ever inspired me to travel — reading books was how I traveled. It was being left alone in the world with no place I needed or wanted to be that gave me the impetus to go on the road.

But this blog prompt? A no brainer!

The best purchase I ever made by far has been this house. I honestly never thought I’d be able to own a house, never really wanted the responsibility, but it’s been great, especially since it happened so late in my life. It’s nice to know I am where I will be until the end unless something drastic happens. It’s nice to know where I am going to be sleeping every night. It’s nice to have control of the temperature (the rooms I rented were either too hot or too cold, with no vote on where I wanted the temperature set). It’s nice to be able to do what I want with the yard.

It’s just . . . nice.

I was lucky to find a place I could afford to buy. (That window of opportunity has closed, so I truly lucked out!) It took a long-range move to get me here where I can live life under my own terms. Well, my terms and the weather’s terms. The weather does control a lot of what I do — when it’s too hot or too windy or too snowy, I pretty much have to stay inside where I can control my environment. It’s this modicum of control that confirms (as if I needed confirmation!) that this house is the best purchase I ever made, especially during these seeringly hot days. (Spell check wants to change “seeringly” to “sneeringly,” and while that might also be apropos, it’s not the word I chose.)

I wake up every day feeling grateful. And I give a last nod of gratitude every night.

Apparently, my best purchase was not just this house, but a life of gratitude, and that, too, is nice.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

Posted in blogging, books, dealing with old age, home, house, writing. Tags: , , , , , , . 2 Comments »

Time Eating App

July 21, 2026 — Pat Bertram
Daily writing prompt
What app eats up most of your screen time — and do you even feel bad about it?
View all responses

I had to look up “app” since I wasn’t sure which, if any, of the sites I pay attention to are apps or just websites. While WordPress, does have an app, which I used back in my traveling days, I only use the online website to write, edit, post, and respond to comments. Other than that, there is a hidden object game I play, and apparently, it’s considered an app. I don’t feel bad about playing the game. I used to play a lot, even spent money on game tokens, but I don’t play as much as I used to and don’t spend any money, so I’m okay with whatever I feel like doing. Besides, it’s something interesting to do, gives me a feeling of connection to a few people, and helps keep my focus narrow and away from the world at large.

Which brings me to my other main app. X is considered an app, not a website, at least according to Google AI, so who knows the truth of it. (Google AI is not only terribly biased but I have found it dead wrong on many occasions. As the saying goes, “Garbage in, garbage out.)

The only reason I pay any attention to X once I stopped promoting my books (which, come to think of it was way before Twitter became X), is that a news aggregator I follow is on there. I found him on Facebook originally, but FB has had some issues with the videos the aggregator posts, and considering my own Facebook issues, I followed him over to X.

I don’t feel bad about paying attention to his posts because I like his summaries and commentaries of the videos I don’t have the patience to watch. There is a lot going on in the world today that I am interested in, mostly because the USA is trying to undo generations of globalist control of the country — something I’d been studying for decades. I thought the control was a foregone conclusion, so it’s been great to see the push back. Considering the stakes and how much of the backstory I know and considering how unbelievable the whole thing is (both the long-term, word-wide conspiracy — not a theory, a real conspiracy — as well as what is happening to undo some of that) it’s as if I’m reading a thriller in real time, not just seeing history repeating itself.

JFK also tried to take on the outside controllers of this country. Two and a half years before he was assassinated, he was irate at having been lied to by his own intelligence agencies, and he said, on April 27, 1961, “We are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence — on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice. . . . Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed.”

A hundred years before that, Lincoln lamented that he was fighting two wars, the one in front of him and the one behind. The one in front was his attempt to keep the union together so they could together fight the one behind — the globalists who were already trying to take over the USA through control of its money, as they had from the very beginning. And after all that, in 1913 the USA ceded control of its money anyway.

So, it’s been interesting watching new players in this ancient fight, though I do pray for the people of this administration since those who previously fought this same battle were killed or had their reputations destroyed. It’s a harrowing time, more than most people know.

Eventually, I will have to give up paying attention. For every step the USA moves away from the controllers, the controllers (via the leftists, domestic terrorists, the one-sided media, the money people, to name a few in addition to global forces) pull us two steps back, which isn’t exactly good for my peace of mind since there’s nothing I can do about it anyway.

For now, I don’t feel bad about this expenditure of my screen time because it gives me a modicum of hope, but if the battle is ever lost for good, I will turn off the outside world and go back to paying attention only to what is my immediate vicinity as I did for most of my life.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

Posted in blogging, history/myth, internet, life. Tags: , , , , , , , . 2 Comments »

Outdated Technology

July 19, 2026 — Pat Bertram
Daily writing prompt
Which outdated technology do you miss the most, and why?
View all responses

I’ve been thinking about this blog prompt for a couple of days now, and I can’t really think of anything. The one thing would be the simple internal combustion engine as well as a simple dashboard with no electronic beeps or flashing lights or voices telling me what to do, but I don’t have to miss all that. It’s what I have.

About ten years ago, I had the opportunity to buy a new car, but even the older models had way more gadgets than I wanted. A car with an instrument panel as complicated as an airplane? So many electronic components most older people don’t bother to even figure out how to use? It was just too much, but still I dithered.

My mechanic, of course, wanted me to sell my old car because he wanted it, but he was honest enough to tell me the truth. He also told me that if I bought a new car, in ten years I’d have a piece of junk, but if I kept my VW Bug, in ten years I’d have a gem. I still dithered, but another car guy about had a fit when he found out I was considering getting a new vehicle, and he used the exact words the mechanic did.

By that time, I’d test driven enough cars and paid enough attention to my friends’ cars to realize I didn’t want all that computer stuff. I also didn’t know what lifestyle I would end up with. If I were going to be nomad, I needed a vehicle with a back area I could go car camping in. If I had to move to a big city, I’d need a small car. All that indecision! In the end, I had my bug restored. (Now that I’m remembering, the insurance and license plates tags on a new car would have been out of my budget range, so that pretty much decided the issue.)

I’m glad I kept the car. It’s simple, it works, and it’s a conversation piece. The only problem is I can never get a new car. I’ve told that story so many times — that I bought the car new and never bought another one — that it seems ingrained in my psyche.

So I don’t need to miss having a car with older technology, since that’s my vehicle.

It still seems astonishing to me that a car I bought when I was young, one moreover that I thought was a lemon, is still running. Well, for that matter, it amazes me that I am still running. I mean that my body is still working. I don’t run, can’t run, actually. But luckily, my car does run, even if it is outdated technology.

Oh, wait!! I just thought of another outdated technology that I liked — VCRs. But like my car, I don’t have to miss the technology because I have one or two never-used VCRs so I can play the movie collection Jeff left behind, though to be honest, I haven’t played any of those tapes in years.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

Posted in being me, dealing with old age, life. Tags: , , , , , , . 5 Comments »

Technology in 2046

July 16, 2026 — Pat Bertram
Daily writing prompt
What’s a piece of technology you’re convinced will exist in 20 years?
View all responses

I’m not convinced anything will exist in twenty years. In fact, I truly doubt I will exist in twenty years, so it won’t matter to me what, if any, technology will exist at that time. Chances are, technology will progress as it always has, with artificial intelligence becoming more and more prevalent and changing human lives in ways we can’t even imagine. Of course we can’t imagine — the changes will be coming from non-human intelligence, something so alien that it certainly doesn’t care about anything human. Any pretense at human emotion emanating from those ones and zeros will be just that — pretense.

Besides, we have no idea, really, when and if a cosmic catastrophe will happen. Over the billions of years the earth has existed, there have been many such events, events that seem to have changed the earth’s environment almost overnight. We all know of such events — the dinosaur extinction and the wooly mammoth extinction, to name two. The prevalence of flood myths, of the world standing still, of night becoming day all seem to reference other extinction events.

The truth is, despite all our vaunted science expertise, we really don’t have that much knowledge about how the sun — or any other cosmic body — affected the earth over those billions of years. Our human history is such a tiny fraction of the earth’s history. We live in a rather temperate and stable time, when we think the way the world is today is the way it always was and always will be. What else explains the prevalence of mobile home parks being set up in tornado alleys, towns being constructed on flood plains, and people building cabins in fire zones? When terrible things happen to people in these areas, it’s always a shock, though it shouldn’t be. What is, wasn’t always. A dry flood plain today wasn’t always dry, and it’s still subject to rare and not-so-rare floods.

And if the cosmos weren’t enough of an inimical neighborhood, we have the political situation, too. Here in this country, it used to be the goals were the same, the differences in political parties were due to differences in the means of achieving those goals. Now the goals are so widely divergent they hardly seem to be describing the same country. Most people want us to remain a constitutional republic, but a growing vocal and volatile group wants to tear the whole thing down, get rid of the constitution, the government, the entire criminal justice system, and let chaos and poverty take over. (Which I don’t understand. What do these people think is going to happen to them when they have destroyed this country? They will be living here, too. Or are they so stupid as to they think they will be the ones running things? Or so brainwashed as to believe the country will suddenly become a utopia with no crime and Kumbaya everywhere?)

Some people believe we’re headed toward a civil war. Others think we’re heading toward a world war, complete with nuclear weapons going off everywhere.

I don’t want to believe either of those scenarios, just as I don’t want to believe in a major cosmic event, but what I’ve learned during my many years is that the world does not run on my beliefs. If it did run on my beliefs, we would be living in a utopia because everyone would be spending a lot of time at home, working in a garden, reading, or writing rather tame blogs without a lot of emotion, and certainly no rage or outrage. Just kindness and smiles for everyone — well, almost everyone.

Still, let’s assume there are no major upheavals, civil or cosmic, and in twenty years, the world is more or less continuing on the same road to total technology as it is today. I still wouldn’t have an answer to the question because I’m not convinced of much of anything, though I’m pretty sure technology will have outpaced my need for it. To be honest, it already has.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

Posted in being me, history/myth, internet, life, writing. Tags: , , , , , , , , , . 6 Comments »
« Older posts