September Sweater Weather

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, hello world. How are you? 

It's good to be writing on a good day off work today on a Saturday. Here, I'll jot down some notes on what I've been up to, plans, and things I'm looking forward to. 

First off, work has been good, steady, and doable. It's been about a year in now at this new job and its going well. I'm been reading a lot in between my shifts, jamming guitar with a heavy metal drummer, going for walks, eating well, and playing video games. I've got a lot to be thankful for, and I thank God for the life I'm living. 

The last book I read was a long slowburn of a read, Felix Gilbert's From 1890 to the Present, A European History, pretty amazing that a history book could span from 1890 to the present, but wow, that book really gives you a long overhaul and view of Europe from the years right before the First and Second World Wars, and the information is invaluable especially as an American for me, because, most of the information in that book is not taught in American grade school or high school, and only partially covered in college history courses, but not all, as not all college courses even will cover Europe, particularly Europe in all this much dense overdetailed information. A major criticism of the book online was that readers felt that Felix Gilbert didn't discredit and shame the Nazi's enough, and that he didn't explain with more inherent detail, why the German people were so willing to just commit Nazi atrocities and crimes against Jews, simply because they were told to do it, and they were readily and willing to do it, but it isn't really explained why with more full details. Well, why, then? Only the shadow knows. 

Moving on, now I'm reading a book about the history of France, a book entitled Revolutionary France 1770-1880, and this book is a lot more drier and more dense and facts based, despite being about a very revolutionary era of French government. Also, I'm reading Bram Stoker's 1897 modern novel Dracula, inspired by this current weather change and spooky Witching Season that we're currently thriving in, especially with this cold weather change. The change in temperature from 100 degree overheating at work to this 84-86 degree days, it's quite amazing. 

In addition, I've still been looking around at other jobs and seeing what's out there in my area, and it's not looking good. If you're not at a job currently it is very difficult to get in with a job anywhere. I had a job offer recently to a job closer to where I'm at, but circumstances being what they are, I'm not inclined to leave what I'm doing and try to start something new, given that there is a lot of uncertainty right now in the job market and the economy. I've been doing well, but I'm on a strong budget and I'm following my budget religiously, so its hard to want to try to dip out of a job that is going well, and try to do something different, even if it may be better in the long run. I'm saying, that jobwise, things are full of so much uncertainty, that even looking into working somewhere else might not be a good idea unless there is some massive benefit to working there. Like for example, in my case, this job offer I got is closer to my place, which is a massive benefit, but, even that being the case, I still have to stop and think about it for a long time, because everything is so much up in the air nowadays. 

Lastly, I can't end the rant without mentioning AI. LA and NY public schools decided to ban AI in the classrooms. This is good. Also recently, social media companies agreed to pay a massive fine and admitted that they have been treating kids wrong with allowing them too much social media use. These are good sociological things happening in the realverse. I do like AI and I do think more and more AI will take over and more and more we'll just be controlling the information it provides and goes with, like we'll be the AI's boss, and use the AI, but all important real decisions will be done by real people, and I notice that's the way its been going, even myself personally, using AI in the workplace. 

I use a lot of AI personally at work to look up products/donations and check what they're worth. I almost never go with what the AI prices the items, rather I think about it, check all the parameters, quality, condition, item type, etc, and then I make the ultimate decision over how much the item gets priced. But you can kind of see how even using it at this low level retail level, it gives you a lot of leverage over the amount of productivity in the work you do while using the AI. Obviously, I can do my job without using AI, all I'm doing is pricing donated items and reselling it, but using the AI allows me to have more control in my productivity, if I can figure out what an item's worth faster without thinking as much or as hard personally, then I have a tool which allows me to work a lot faster than I was able to before, last year, since before I started using AI at work. 

That's a lot to unpack there. But yeah, so it basically comes down to the fact that the low level retail personnel, the low level office worker, these are the basic employees running a business, working at a business, and they're using AI in a way that benefits their job workflow, and I do think this is the future of work using technology in America. In a way its an exciting time to live, breathe, and do work in America. On the other hand, you do tend to see a dehumanization of the worker in the workplace. If AI gets better at a much faster more exponential rate that it has been going in, this could spell disaster for more detailed tech work employees, workers, and bosses, because it could mean that lesser skilled and less tech skilled workers could outpace them, develop more, and become better much more skilled workers, armed only with AI, the willingness to learn new more advanced technology, and a curious mind. 

Note: Keep in mind that without the temperature changing to like 86 degrees here, I wouldn't even want to talk about AI, using it in the workplace, and the future of it in the workplace via newer smarter employees. If the temperatures kept hitting 100 degrees I would've been stuck kept to talking about barely surviving working with poor AC, and incoming blackouts, like what they had in Gary Indiana, which went underreported in most areas. Remember, this is still post-covid, and that means incoming cold, flu, and post-covid amongst young people. Get ready for Halloween.

RE: Post July 4th

 

Good evening, denizens of the internet. It's been a long time since I've written any blogs, and it's good to be online tonight at 2 in the morning, jotting down thoughts and ideas. 

    First, post July 4th, I can't help to have the blues. Yes, life is good, as long as you don't weaken, but looking at everything in terms of our government, our environmental challenges with global warming, job security, and even just basic life's necessities like rent, food, and gas, its like Americans have really been pushed to the farthest limits. The War with Iran seems to be winding down and there's security and so called peace talks but nobody really knows what's going on for sure with this current second Trump administration. Trump has become the ultimate right-winger's dictator. 

    Everyday, there's some new scandal involving Trump, what he's doing, this and that, and almost every other day you see it on the news TV or even news online headline readings, and you just know that any one single incident of these are grounds for removal of the Presidency, termination of the Presidency from him, and impeachment. The fact that nothing happens and he walks away unscathed is a stain upon the US Constitution, which is not being upheld by this current administration. 

    But the main problem I have with Trump is that he's become a fascist demagogue controlling a vast amount of the US population through Fox News, social media, cable news media, and a vast array of extreme right wing MAGA republicans, who seem to not only be extreme right wingers that want a fascist dictator strongman, but who may unknowingly and begrudgingly be doing harm to the US constitution, government, and even ethics itself. 

    Think of all the right wing MAGA idiots out there, some of them I've physically encountered myself in the workplace, on social media, and various personal associates of mine. Most of these people aren't complete haters, they love America, some of them are racists and nationalistic, but you'll find that among the extreme right wing in any country. A lot of the MAGA crowd people are simply not guided by the facts, reason, evidence, and proof. 

    Instead, you'll find that the MAGA population have a limited worldview, they all watch from the same news media sources, they don't read books unless its some sort of Ayn Rand. Once you get to know them individually you find that some of them have some sort of vendetta against certain things of the world: they hate immigrants even if they are immigrants themselves, they have low information tendences, they watch Fox News and listen to right wing podcasts, and almost all of the information they get from these sources are all very much low information things. For example, a right wing podcast would talk about something Biden or the Democrats did a few years ago and say what a controversy it was, and that it went unreported. I see that type of thing from the MAGAverse all the time. It's a cheap, crappy tactic. 

    So, forgive me if I'm watching England destroy Mexico during the World Cup 2026, and right after the Fourth of July, forgive me if I feel that a sense of right wing extremism of imperialism has taken over the day. Those weird Ayn Rand kids from the early 2000s I used to disagree with in history class are loving the Trump era. But I think for those of us who know better, who had to work harder, who had to learn much more, and struggle and persevere more, those people, those are the people know that something is not right. But hey, that's not to say that you can't have an easy life and still be cognizant enough to know that this second Trump administration is hastening the destruction of the American experiment. 

      Okay, so I'm kind of rambling a lot about Trump tonight. But even bigger than Trump himself is the cult of personality that surrounds him. Isn't it a little strange that people who like Trump seem to love everything about him and his close government officials praise him like a lapdog? To quote Adam Schiff, here is a guy who's using the highest office of the land for his own, private, personal, political gain. That being said, I worry about the future of this nation, if it will really still stay a nation in the same characteristic sense that it always has been, but for those who know, we know that the American experiment was never supposed to include everyone, all the time, and allow everyone the right to vote. So there's a bit of a sour taste to this year's Fourth of July. Consequently, I spent the Fourth just chilling by myself, reading Kafka's first unfinished novel entitled Amerika [with a k, ironically], and its funny, because I find myself feeling like the young German immigrant who just freshly arrived in America, because I find that my country, this modern America, is almost alien to me, and a lot of MAGAverse people probably wouldn't want to allow me to be in it and living a good life while they are struggling. 

    That's a lot to unpack there. So yeah, I've been bummed out with this Fourth of July. I've been trying to put more of my focus into my reading, continuing to read the western canon as well as history, philosophy, artbooks, and books on culture and ideas. I've found that with this job having less hours, it's given me a lot more time to work on my personal pursuits like reading, music, gaming, walking, and listening to music for relaxation. I've found with this job budgeting is a lot harder, but who knows, perhaps this is good for me, having less money to spend and go crazy going out all the time with. Next time you see someone giving cash to homeless person, stop them and say, 'Don't delay the revolution!" 

    Lastly, with all seriousness, I think the comedown on AI is coming because now we're at the point where most Americans are realizing that although the stock market is focused in on AI, the truth is that AI wasn't really what it was supposed to be. It's rather a lackluster tool to generate ideas based on words, most are our advanced AI are chatbots, regurgitated language and ideas from the internet, or who knows from. AI video ended up being a bust, and AI generated video content isn't that fun, creative, or exciting. AI chatbots tend to be useful only for specific things but not things that most average people need them for. For me personally, I've found a lot of creativity and utility in using AI for images and I've sort of gotten a thrill out of doing that since the beginning of AI image generation, but in terms of actually doing anything serious with AI or AI actually becoming a mainstay in peoples' lives, or even buying a CHATgpt subscription? Forget about it. More and more Americans are realizing that if you couldn't do it without AI, having the AI won't really change much for you, in a sense, the AI is overhyped, overplayed, and its so 2000-and late, as the Black Eyed Peas song goes. 

    If you read through this, you're probably pretty smart and a bit of a reader. How does it feel to be smart and read things? Keep playing on the A Team, folks. Thanks for reading. Below are several of the AI images that I've had a lot of fun creating in terms of the word descriptions used to create them, a lot of my prompts are sometimes tons of paragraphs long, much like this sort of spontaneous dialogue online here. Watch this space.

October Thoughts

 

Good evening ladies and gentlemen. I had a day off from work today and decided to jot down/share some ideas. 

First, ever notice that time is moving way too fast? I spent some time in between jobs and it was like a blur. Now I'm in a new job and every workday just zooms by. I feel like, especially as I get older, that time is increasingly escaping me. Even now, I'm writing this at two in the morning on a weekday day off from work. I usually don't get to stay up this late anymore and its been more difficult to get into the mode for writing asI prefer to do writing late at night. 

There's been a time loop thing ever since covid. Ever since covid time just seems to fly by. I'm struggling to keep up with all my old hobbies and work seems to get even more in the way nowadays with changing shifts from closing nights to opening mornings the next day[s] after. As the Grateful Dead ask in a song, "Where does the time go?" 

Second, I've seen better days, like the song by Smashmouth. "Missed the bus, but I'm in no hurry." It's been harder to stay consistently happy all the time because it seems like everything is turning, "We're turning again," -Zappa. The truth of the matter is that I'm actually doing very well and have most of what I need but there's always that sense that something's missing, or that I'm missing out on stuff.

For example, I like my new job but overall, its somewhat more stressful than what I was doing previously. Also, it's less pay, more responsibility, more stuff and details, and more intimate work setting with co-workers. Not exactly fan favorites of a work environment, especially when you're not running the place yourself as manager. But I'd rather be optimistic about things that aren't going well in this moment. I do realize that I'm doing well, have decent health, and a roof over my head. Sometimes you have to be grateful for what you have even if it could be better. For example, even when I wasn't working for a little while, I wasn't really struggling as much as other people I know, even when those people were employed working at their jobs, they were still doing worse than I was. "Back in the USSR, you don't know how lucky you are, boy." 

Third, I realize that I've kind of been procrastinating and squandering a lot of time. I've been way too involved in online video gaming. However, I've also been reading a lot too. Just before writing this now, I finished reading Leon Battista Alberti On Painting, an amazing historical document written during the Florentine art era. It is an eye-opening read, albeit very intellectual, but difficult to understand because of the historical translation from Latin and Italian into something a modern English reader could understand. Yes, it's readable, but not all of it flows easily into a modern english meaning. Prolix, and way too intellectual in describing art, however, Alberti was almost more of a humanist learner than a painter, and was better at doing architecture. 

Another book I read before that was Herzog by Saul Bellow. It won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction and the Prix International. This was a great book as it describes the downward spiral of a very Jewish intellectual professor as his wife and kids leave him to shack up with his psychiatrist, ouch. Herzog goes somewhat crazy, manic, and at one point puts his father's old loaded gun into his pocket and goes to visit his ex-wife and pick up the kid. He doesn't do anything with it, but he gets caught with it and booked by the cops. The book even ends on a manic note when he's back at his estate in a remote area, and he hires this nanny to clean up his house, and he's just watching her clean. I had a Jewish best friend that reminds me of Herzog. He had everything he could have wanted at one point and it all just went away and he went into a manic episode. Never saw him again after that. This book was very realistic. 

Lastly, I've been trying to stay focused. I've been reading a lot and listening to a lot of jazz music. I do think I need to lay off the video games for a while to make more time for more creative arts, writing, and music. For example, I'm still interested in AI but have yet to make much progress in AI art or video, mostly because I haven't been devoting too much time to it and I feel like AI has been eclipsed by the commercial state of American advertising through media on the internet, TV, smartphones, and in real life. 

We're so programmed to just buy and consume to make up for our lack of happiness, why would anyone think using AI would make them happy? In a way I would say AI has already been eclipsed by consumerism, even the overconsumption of say right-wing and left-wing news that taken a toll on our society. I do think we as a people, as The Culture, need to become more self-aware of things we're buying and the media we are consuming. 

I know that sounds like a intellectual outsider sort of rant but I think there's something to it there. Like for example, when I mentioned earlier that I've been playing too many videogames, I think the first step is being aware that you're spending too much time on that sort of media consumption, and then going forward you can adjust your plans to do other things and not give all your attention to it. In addition, I mentioned that time seems to be speeding away from me, well, in a way, yes it is. I'm getting older and my health is getting worse here and there. I will use that as motivation to do more of what I really want to do, and spend less time overconsuming digital content. These are basic ideas but not always discussed. Watch this space. 

The owl of Minerva appears at dusk. 

Liu Cixin's Three Body-Problem

 

The Three-Body Problem took the western science fiction world by storm when it was translated from Chinese into English in 2014. Liu Cixin not only wrote an amazing science fiction [and he's the most critically acclaimed Chinese science fiction writer] novel but the novel is also the first eastern novel to earn the prized historic Hugo Award [the best award for science fiction novels], thus becoming a bridge between western and eastern science fiction. 

The Three-Body Problem challenges the western conceptions of science fiction, thus introducing us to different ways of seeing science fiction writing, and showing us how very different the idea of Chinese science fiction can be. Science fiction from different cultures are all very different. British science fiction, French, Polish, German, Russian, and American science fiction are all different, well, Chinese science fiction might even surprise us even more than all of those, simply because we, as westerners have never read any Chinese science fiction. 

Keep in mind that I'm an avid science fiction reader, having read all the golden age science fiction short stories [starting with the 1950s stuff], and all the important sf writers of the 60s, 70s, and 80s. And The Three Body Problem is much different from all of that. This book is great because it is different, it introduces us to a new cultural genre. The Three-Body Problem is just the first part of Cixin's series, there are two other books in this series after, The Dark Forest, and Death's End. 

The story begins with the Chinese Cultural Revolution and follows with protagonist Wang Miao's investigation in a list of suicides. There's this mysterious video game where you have to wear a haptic suit and its virtual reality. The game is connected to an alien civilization facing extinction. The story takes place throughout different points in space and time that keeps the readers engaged to the end. The characters in the game have to dehydrate their bodies in order to survive these great periods of draught and darkness, a unique feature of the game. 

There are a lot of hard science elements. Liu Cixin is an engineer, uses complex astrophysics in an accessible way for the modern average reader, in order to dive deep into the philosophical nature of man's place in the universe. The novel explores how first contact with aliens would go, alongside the ethical dilemmas if Earth was destroyed by the aliens or other humans. 

The story opens with the turbulent violent era of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, which is much different from the western American Cultural Revolution of the 1960s. However, because of the history of America's Revolution in the 1960s, we can see/compare/contrast that with the Chinese Cultural Revolution and learn something from it. There's a deep Chinese cultural connection to this novel that transcends most Americanisms in American science fiction. Liu Cixin loves China, and its easy to see that even from the first page's violence of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, which, by the way, gets you hooked right in from the get-go. We can learn from the way Cixin uses the Chinese Revolution as a way to explore deeper elements of science fiction in an emotional way. 

The book is very strong from the get-go. It keeps your curiosity high and the element of the virtual reality video game is sort of like an anime, another eastern import. The only weakness I can see here is that the English translation may or may not be as strong as how the book really is in Chinese. A lot of people have critiqued the translation and said that it feels wooden, but I think this is how Cixin actually writes and sounds. He wouldn't have wanted a wooden translation put out into the west, and The Three-Body Problem would not have earned a Hugo Award if the translation was off. 

However, I do think that because some of the elements of science fiction aren't your traditional hard American/western science fiction elements, I do think some people will simply not like it. But it's their loss, as the book shows you how different and how great Chinese science fiction can be. While Western science fiction often frames humanity as exceptional and destined for the stars, The Three Body Problem humbles us with cosmic indifference, suggesting we may be merely insignificant players in a universe governed by forces beyond our comprehension or control.

Adam Bede, by George Eliot

 

He's in love with her, she's in love with him, he's mad at him for being in love with her, and she doesn't realize he loves her. Set in rural England in 1799, the hardworking well-respected carpenter Adam Bede falls in love with the dairymaid Hetty Sorrel, as the upper-class Arthur Donnithorne also falls in love with Hetty, and pursues a relationship with her in a classic tragedy of seduction and betrayal that ends with a happy ending for some but not for all.

First, this novel focuses on psychological realism. Eliot's free writing style allows us to inhabit each and every character, from Dinah, the preacher, to Hetty the dairymaid, to the old folks, the Church goers, the upper-class Donnithorne, to Seth, Adam's brother, and their parents. You get to live within the world of these rural English people. They may not be rich or have much, but they have values like church going, family, eating good home-cooked meals with the family, and hardwork. The other side of this realism is the inner mind of Hetty later with this novel, when she is charged with the crime of letting her baby die and eventually ends up being hanged.

Second, this novel has moral complexity. Hetty isn't exactly a crazed lunatic killer when she lets her baby die of exposure in the woods. She's a tragic character that didn't know where to turn. Arthur isn't exactly innocent when he finds out Hetty is pregnant and he ends the relationship and goes abroad to Ireland, only to come back to find that Hetty let the baby die after she ran away from marriage with Adam. Dinah the preacher seems to be the only true god-blessed person in the book, as she's a preacher and ends up marrying Adam at the very end. So there is some happiness.

Third, this novel has a lot of pastoral imagery of a rural England of old. From Adam working at his carpentry workshop business and working a farm, to Hetty doing chores around the house, to the Church dinner celebrating Adam Bede's success, even the scenery and backgrounds where the characters live in and interact in, is almost like additional characters in and of themselves. 

In addition, this novel includes a lot of Church and Methodist preaching, a lot of it by a character named Dinah. There are many preaching chapters in the novel. Oftentimes, this can slow down the narrative of the novel and prolong the novel. You'll find that Dinah's preaching often overrides the novel itself. This display of religious preaching fervor takes over much of the novel. However, this could be because that's the world in which these characters inhabit, and because that was the world of England in 1799, ultimately making the novel much stronger in its realism.

Ultimately, though, we find that in the end this is a very rewarding experience. We find that Adam's love interest in Hetty was genuine, but that doesn't mean that other men couldn't have been interested in her and courted her. Arthur's remorse after the death of the baby and Hetty's death is lifelong, and Hetty's tragedy is a reminder to society that poor women have no safety net; if they do something wrong and have no money or help like to say, raise a baby, they might have no choice but to give the baby up or worse, a sad reminder that poor women are often the most neglected members of society within any time period throughout history. 

Lastly, although written in 1859, Adam Bede reads like a modern literary novel, albeit even with all the Methodist preaching. I would also recommend reading Eliot's The Mill On The Floss, for a more biographical take also in a rural England setting. And of course, you should've already read Middlemarch, if you've read any of George Eliot's works. 

Summertime, and The Living is Easy

Good evening, ladies and gents. Back at it with another writing experience, writing about life.

Times have been rough. I've been unemployed for about five months. I was recommended a cashier job at a grocery store from a co-worker from the job I got let go from and it ended up not working out. In addition, I went on an interview for another cashier job at a different grocery store and didn't get the job. I'm trying my best but getting a little discouraged, realizing that getting a job will be a lot harder than I thought. The job market is getting increasingly more difficult and I'm finding that AI is involved in the hiring process, making it harder to land the job. 

The first couple months I got let go, or technically, fired, from my retail grocery job of twelve years, I was pretty depressed. I started sleeping in till 3 or 4 PM and although I was still applying and going into businesses to checkout jobs, my mind was in the gutter. I was finally able to overcome that depression by setting up an earlier schedule and staying consistently busy throughout the day.

Usually this entailed waking up, cleaning up, and searching for jobs online everyday and applying to as many jobs that were suitable to me as possible. Then I make lunch. And do some reading and going out to the library. Then coming home and getting some dinner with family. At first, my stepdad was upset I got fired and he was almost equally mad at the fact that my managers I worked with for twelve years didn't have my best interests at heart. But you know, as they say, c'est la vie. Nowadays, my stepfather is more easy going about what I'm going through right now, because he knows that the job market is tough, and doesn't want me to end up working in a warehouse breaking my back or flipping burgers at McDonalds, lowering my ranking on a resume. He still believes in me, oddly enough, and that I can pull myself into another decent cashier position. Luck of the draw, he says.

As for myself, I'm not really quite sure. I have enough cash for food and rent for now but I'm noticing more and more that as gen z'ers say, this job market is cooked. We're cooked. Things are so bad that my co-worker from the last job that tried to get me a job at this different grocery store says that I should try to apologize my way back to my old position, which sounds like a terrible idea, although a manager said I was probably blacklisted when my brother asked them about it. So I'm not really sure when I'll land a job or if I will find employment anytime soon. Things are sad right now in that aspect. I'm pretty upset at the entire situation but being angry or trying to get back at people who misused and abused me in the old workplace isn't the answer.

In the meantime, I'm trying to find peace and balance in the universe. I'm reading a lot, going to the library, still searching for jobs, and now finally tonight, getting back into writing. In addition, I created a Substack, which is sort of like a social media for intellectuals and sharing ideas and writing. At some point when I build an audience on there, I'll probably charge a small subscription fee per month, try to add some coffee money to my wallet. 

Lastly, in other news, this second Trump administration has been the worst years of my living in the United States, and in my life. My actual life is comfortable and I have food and rent money but the future is more and more uncertain and I have no means of employment, most of my friends are marginals, my only good work contact couldn't help me out as much as she wanted to, I can't afford to move out or strike out anywhere on my own, we're basically in world war 3, there are Ice Raids here in LA and I have a hispanic name, I live with family, and I can't get a job. Things could be a lot better and I wonder what will happen in even say three months time. But hey, it's summertime, and the living is easy. [I got it so bad, I got it good.]  

Beware the Ides of March

Well, here we are. 2 13 AM on a Wednesday morning. It's March 19, 2025. Something like day 60 of the Trump recaptured White House. Here, I'll go into some details about life, music, AI, and politics. the usual subjects as of late. 

First, life is what you make it. Regardless of the fact that the United States has entered unchartered territory, life is still somehow amazing. Why? Because I have the capacity for happiness. That's not to say that bad things won't happen, I mean, that's Murphy's Law. But, what I mean to say is that regardless of all the bad things that are happening in the world, or possibly even in our lives and in our loved ones' lives, we should all learn to have the capacity for happiness, and realize, and see/acknowledge, that regardless of how much or how little we have, we all have a lot to be grateful for, in one way or another. Even if you don't believe in God.

Case in point, I'm not necessarily in the best position right now. I'm currently unemployed, after working as a retail grocery cashier for the last ten years straight. This is a mega-change for me, as I'm used to working nonstop 5-6 days per week. And now? Nothing. No weekly paycheck, no cute girl coworkers to talk to or hangout with, no affirmation from customers [mostly beautiful women] telling me I'm doing a good job, no steady schedule of any kind. The biggest problem is that I lost a good form of structure in my life. I miss it and am trying to get back into the job market as soon as I can. 

So, the response to this has been to create a new sort of order to my life. In whatever way I can. For me, this has meant turning more inwards towards books, music, AI, exercise, and cultivating a good clean headspace for me to be in as much as I can. I've found that a lot of my friends/associates from the retail grocery world are much more miserable than I am. Not only that, but they have a lot of health problems like drugs/alcohol, behavioral issues, they don't have money, and the ones that do, they tend to not enjoy their lives because of various reasons like: relationship troubles and lack of purpose working within retail grocery. On top of that, most of them whine and complain like there's no tomorrow. So what's the issue, doc? They simply lack the capacity for happiness. That's right! 

Second, music. I'm finding that music has more often than not, has become more of a background experience for most listeners. Like how all these years I've been going to the bar for music, almost all of the music never mattered, because the audience just uses it as background to drink beer to. This has been true for a long time now, but I think it will become even more so in the coming months and years. 

Why? Because of the advent and widespread usage and acceptance of AI by intellectuals, techies, nerds, artists, musicians, writers, and even the GOP itself, we're finding that AI content is not only accepted, but people are more and more willing to use it for, well, pretty much anything and everything. This includes using AI content for music generation and video generation. And once that content becomes more commonplace and accepted, I think real, live, musicians will be in trouble because people will say, "If I can get an AI orchestra to play Mozart, why would I need to pay a real orchestra?" It sounds a little off but I think it's already happening. Case in point, music production software that increasingly replaces live musicians, although that's been happening for a long time now.  

Third, going back to AI. Right now we live in a world where the Tech Bros are winning at everything and anything. Contrary to popular opinion, while I think AI is a gamechanger and a must use tool for creatives of any kind, I also acknowledge that AI is another weapon in the tech oligarch toolbelt, that can be potentially used to intentionally AND unintentionally harm people who don't use it and understand it. So yes, all this AI stuff is mind-blowing and amazing and it will make you more creative and techy and more computer savvy, but what about all the people who are opposed to it, either they don't like it or they just don't want to use it or acknowledge it? 

Well, unfortunate to say, those people will simply get left behind. People that don't acknowledge, use, or stay informed on AI will find that other people around them will eventually start using it more and more, adding it to their daily routines, and they will catch up to where the Culture is on AI. Right now I think most people are still asleep at the wheel when it comes to AI, as I also believe most people are asleep at the wheel in terms of politics. It's especially important to keep in mind that right now, in some aspects, AI and politics are interlinked, as some liberal thinkers believe that it's because of AI's algorithms that Trump was able to recapture the White House. That's right folks. Beware the Ides of March. 

Lastly, politics. So you see all these things are interlinked [Bladerunner 2049, Ryan Gosling: Interlinked]. The Tech Bros were at the White House inauguration. That's because technology has always been a tool in electing public officials, probably starting with the printing press back in Europe over hundreds of years ago. But now, with the power of AI algorithms, we're finding that controlling the flow and access of various forms of media, in fact, controlling ALL of the flow and access of media, has been very easy for the Republican and Democrats to do, utilizing the new emerging technologies like AI algorithms created by these Tech Bros like Open AI's Sam Altman, who was at the inauguration at the White House when Trump was re-elected. 

It would be nice if people who were using AI were all nice well-to-do dandy intellectual techie guys who want to make the world a better place. But increasingly, more and more, I'm finding that its usually always the opposite, especially when you tune into the media and the news daily and are really reading and paying attention to what's going on. In a truly fucked up way, I think, increasingly, people who use AI look down upon people who are unfamiliar with it and/or don't know about it or don't use it, they're being looked down upon, as like cavemen, as country hicks, or lesser than, simply because they aren't in tune with what's going on with the emerging tech and how it's being utilized to help destroy our late period capitalistic society. 

But for the most part people are asleep at the wheel. We still believe in the Rule of Law. We believe that as long as we go to work, listen to our bosses, do a good job, come home to our families and take care of our wives and kids, that everything's going to be alright, as long we got cash, a car, a home, a wife, and our 2.5 kids and a dog. Well, what if we're asleep at the wheel and we're Caesar and we're about to get stabbed? "And you too, Brutus?" 

Good news for people who love bad news. Watch this space.

[image AI generated] 

June Five, Minds Alive: Explorations in the Intellect's Dive

Good evening ladies and gents, 

Just wanted to write, about anything here. 

First, what I've been up to lately. I've been working a lot at the retail grocery job but I'm also producing a lot of ai generated art featured on my Instagram, which can be seen here. In addition, I'm reading a lot. Right now I'm reading through George Eliot's Middlemarch. I'm also still practicing instruments, mostly guitar and piano. It's all time consuming. Plus sometimes I go out to the bar after work and chill with people there. In between I try to stay updated on what's happening in the news and whatnot. 

Next, Middlemarch is a very dry book. It's fiction but its so dry its almost like reading Gibbon's History of the Rise and Decline of the Roman Empire, which I happen to also be reading, but on my phone when I'm on work breaks, traveling on the bus, or laying down before bed. In those moments I finished Gibbon's volume 1 of the series. Fascinating material. I mentioned the Gibbon book to a customer the other day and he said, 'yeah, but did Gibbon write about how the Romans debased the currency?' I thought it was a minor thing to mention considering all the other stuff they did, but yeah, I sort of felt like the guy said that because he's trying to somehow form and correlate a modern day theory that we're like the Romans because the government has, in its own various methods, sort of debased our American currency. It was an interesting comment for him to focus on, or so I may think. 

However, Middlemarch is much more dry than the Gibbon because fiction isn't supposed to be so dry, it's supposed to be lifelike, literally coming to life off the page, that's what people go to fiction for, its infinite mana, its endless creativity, that drives us to keep turning the pages. What can I say about George Eliot? She writes about well off British people in the country, their marriages, their relationships, their struggles and contradictions with everything including their own personalities and shortcomings. Eliot is so brilliant that she even writes about upcoming technology, factories, and agriculture within the book, which takes place in 1829. In a sense, I think Eliot is almost too brilliant to become a beloved favorite writer or author, rather it is her authority as a voice and her brilliant observations that command respect even if most people will never read the entirety of Middlemarch unless they're a English Graduate student. 

Next, work has been grueling. Working at the grocery store has its ups and downs, and interactions with customers can sometimes be less-than-pleasant, and even with your managers. The late night rush lasts a very long time till midnight sometimes. The customers are impatient and angry and are always willing and ready to start fights beginning with name calling and yelling and sometimes escalating beyond that if they feel so inclined. And boy do they steal. They expect quick service and when they don't get it they sometimes rage. There's a lot of disrespect from customers and managers alike. One common thing I notice is sometimes when customers are in the regular checkout lines they're being rung up, they're ignoring the cashier and they're on their phone yapping. 

In addition, there's the emotional labor within the job. The job is grueling and there's few people that are actually cool with you while you're there. Some of the closest associates and managers I've worked with for years I'm not really cool with them and in fact I think they're shirkers hiding trying to get out of work most of all the time. I usually ignore them and just do what I want. When managers are pretty dumb and not really taking care of business, you find that them doing that allows you to pretty much do what you want, albeit with some caution. 

Remember, most people, including your managers are too dumb and lazy to really pay too much attention, make the most of it. After working in this business for 12 years, you learn that most managers are fake and manipulative so you have to learn how to fake them out in order to do what you want. I had a friend who became a manager and he became another one of those managerial drones that hates his job, maybe his life, maybe himself, but boy does he love being a manager. They ain't reading Middlemarch I'll tell ya that. Another tip for working grueling jobs like this is that if everybody's having a bad day and the work is going to utter shite, and they're all bitching to you, remember you're still having a better day than everybody else so act like it. Act better, be better.

Moving on, the news has been pretty much what I thought it would be. There's really no new news, just more of the same, on a loop, on a 24/7 timescale. I don't care if you're a democrat or a republican, the media and the government has you believing that we're all divided, 'us versus them,' gay versus straight, abortion vs the family, rich versus poor, white versus brown, worker versus ceo, democrat versus republican, this versus that.' I sincerely believe that this is what the government, the media, TV. movies, music, this is what I think they're saying at this impressionable time period in American democracy. 

Just think about the fact that you probably don't even know about BarbenHeimer unless you are a person of a certain kind of persuasion, a certain kind of class, a certain kind of taste. Kind of a random thing to mention but I want to hate on BarbenHeimer because I think it caught the zeitgeist at an important moment in American history what with so much going on with politics. The average American probably saw Barbenheimer but what about the people that didn't? Are they not as American as the rest of them? It's an odd but important question I think for an important reason. Who are the other people? 

Lastly, to wrap things up, we're living in a timescale where pretty much the only way to be safe from most harm in the world, is to have money. Either be born rich, get rich, or work your whole life till you accumulate enough of it because the way the world is going now, the world is turning itself into a money empire, money is the only thing that is important. I think, at this current juncture. I have my hippie element at times, because I'm a musician, but most people would agree with me, that money has pretty much taken over as the most important value of a thing in this world. It's bleak, man. 

Here's a story about money. I have a friend who's rooming with an old friend of ours for $1,000/month but he doesn't want to be there, and he wants to get out, but he can't go back to his parents out of fear or shame, and he can't afford to live on his own, and he prefers not have roommates so he's rooming with our old friend and its not going good. These are the real modern day American problems that the media doesn't talk about. My good pal is stuck with this other guy, supposedly a pal, but he's really an asshole and my guy wants out but he's stuck because the American economic system is setup so that you can't really move out of your parents place unless you have a very good salary at a good job with 40 hours plus benefits or more. That's the reality the media doesn't talk about, instead they usually just force-feed the 'us vs them,' slogan repeatedly. Of course, most conservatives would say my friend isn't doing enough to help himself and that he might need two or three jobs, but at that point, even if he did get his own place, that would be putting an even higher price on life, wouldn't it? 

In conclusion, time to wake up. Only caring about yourself will only get you so far, usually in an organization, but in real life, outside the workplace you have to learn to think smarter and harder about how you can improve the world around you, and think for yourself, rather than listening to the media, your parents, your boss, your friends, your acquaintances. You have to learn to think more about how to correctly justify the differences between right and wrong, and the moral grey. I'm telling you right now, most people don't know how to do this, even some people I know in their 40s and 50s, who you would think would have become smarter by now but it's already too late for them. They've been indoctrinated into their systems of belief, usually the wrong system, you can tell because they're still fucking up even if you don't know or hear about it too often. They're fucking up in the shadows, lol. 

ps, covid might make a comeback this summer in LA

New Year, New Me, [Not Really]

Hello Universe, 

How is it going out there in the free world? It's a new year, happy 2024! It's time for all those happy go lucky social media posts where people make their new years resolutions, like to get a better body and become more healthy and sexy and find their dream spouse, and get a lotta money, amiright? I'd like to jot down some thoughts on what's been happening with me, my personal activities, working in retail, and more. 

First, I moved into a new house recently. It was a hard move that was strenuous but now that it's done I can finally relax. At the end of the month I took time off from work just to get settled into the new place and unbox everything. The new house is in a better location to get around on foot or on the bus if needed. I've been waking up earlier, going out to lunches at nearby establishments, going to the library, and more. I'm still working at the grocery store and it's going well. Since the holidays are over, things have slowed down there, for now. Covid still lingers there from time to time, so I've still been wearing my facemask.  

I kept up playing piano and drums. Now, I'm finally making good progress on piano, at least trying to move from beginner to something like intermediate, although it will take a while. My dad decided to keep our late step-mom Maureen's Yamaha grand piano, so I've been playing that piano. Today, I recorded an eight minute grand piano solo, [which you can hear piano solo no. 1] With the piano, I'm trying to focus on playing jazz chords and improvising. I practice everyday, and actually have preferred practicing piano as of late, because my guitars and amp are all backed away and it's easier to just play the grand piano for now. 

Likewise, I've been keeping up with drums. I go to guitar center and just play the drums there. You can hear my most recent drum playing here.

Second, I'm still reading a lot and doing a lot of AI art. You can check out my Instagram page here. The picture featured at the top of this page is an AI art creation. At the end of last year I read a lot of science fiction novels by Iain M. Banks, who died early in his 50s. Terrific writer, but he writes terribly long science fiction space opera, albeit it's amazing writing and great space opera, but the some seven books I read of his were definitely time consuming and not easy reads. Space opera for the literati. Right now all my books are packed away so I just bought for a dollar, a paperbacks editions of Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky and Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. I'm keeping up with the western canon, now I've read about 300 works. But I feel like I've barely scraped the surface in terms of what can be learned within knowledge, within the realm of imagination, and the curiosity of man himself. 

At the end of last year, I kind of went into deep hibernation bear mode. The bear knows when to sleep but the bobcat knows when its time to hunt. I find getting up earlier and going out more has been better for me, being productive keeps me energetic, and I'm liking the atmosphere of the new house better and more easily able to adapt to this. Sometimes on Mondays I go to this open blues jam at the bar, and I sit in and play guitar. I go out to dinners with family on my days off work. 

Lastly, I've found that life is made up of thoughts, actions, and plans for the future. There's a lot to do. Work is still time consuming, but with a schedule for the day, the week, the month, the next three months, the next six months, the next year, things are much more manageable within a smaller timeline and with hard goals split and separated into smaller and more manageable goals.

I want to get better at piano and be able to play jazz standards on it, keep reading, write more short stories and perhaps a novel [I actually have written a novel, but nobody's seen it], keep blogging about everything, and keep up with my guitar and drums too. Work has been good, the hard work keeps me awake. 

That's it for now, see you later, space cats. 

In sylvan realms where twilight's whispers creep, The bear, a sagacious entity, seeks a somber keep. As autumnal regalia, the leaves cascade, He intuits the impending winter's serenade.

With fur of resplendent aureate hue, He embarks on a quest for a snug haven's view. A sanctuary, where crystalline brooks freeze, In dreams of honeyed combs and berries with ease.

Yet by the babbling stream, where moonbeams wink, The bobcat prowls, a phantom feline in sync. His eyes, aglint with nocturnal savoir-faire, In stealth, he traverses the tapestry of air.

For as the bear in dormant repose lies, The bobcat, vigilant, neath the celestial ties, Stalks in the silent hours of night's embrace, A sovereign of shadows, embodying grace.

In nature's ballet, a harmonious ballet, The bear succumbs to rest, the bobcat to ballet. One cradles dreams of vernal rebirth, The other, a custodian, prowls the moonlit earth. [AI generated]

Retail Report January 2023

Good Evening, 

How is life treating you? In this crazy, topsy, turvy world one can sometimes not tell. Here I'd like to jot down some notes of what retail grocery has been like so far, this being the end of the first month of 2023. 

First, business is booming but inflation has hit our store shelves harder than ever. These are the most egregious prices for food that I have ever seen in my entire life. Many customers complain about the prices all day long and honestly, I can't blame them. We are, at this moment, selling a carton of eggs for $9.99. Meat prices are also very high. Most people stock up on the cheap stuff: grains, noodles, junk food like chips and soda, beer and wine. I don't think Americans are eating very well. And on top of that, a lot of them are beginning to become obese. Only in America. 

Second, this is sort of minor but it's little things like this that get ignored that eventually grow into bigger issues getting ignored. The store's front door that opens and closes electronically when customers walk through has been broken for the last ten days. Meaning it won't open/close electronically anymore, therefore, the store manager has decided to leave the front door open at all times. Now, this isn't too big of an issue if you're a customer going for a quick beer run but for us employees this has become a big issue in the middle of winter, where cold windy air blasts are hitting you while on the checkstand, some nights its been like 47 degrees. You can justify the fact that the door's been like that for ten days anyway you want, but I see it for what it is, cutting costs at the employees' expense. Brrrrrrrrr! 

Also, on top of that there's always the covid issue. Most management and both upper management have not been wearing facemasks since the beginning. This set a bad precedent for all the employees, so that when covid hit our store hard, many employees simply didn't even come back and we lost a lot of workers. At one point there was some 32 employees sick with covid. I was surprised but at the time the vaccine was out so I felt safer, especially with mask wearing. 

In addition, another bad precedent that the upper management set was that they decided very early to remove the plastic barriers guarding between the cashiers and the customers, both inside the checkout lanes and on the side self-checkout lanes. This is especially bad because covid isn't over and most customers don't wear facemasks, meaning they could easily spread particulates into the air by talking loudly. Although we have vaccines there are some employees and managers that don't have the vaccine, and have been infected with covid several times over, making the store still a potential place to catch covid.   

Third, business is booming and the lines are never ending, leading to tiring, long work days. Despite high inflation prices, the work is still intense and nonstop. I would say the work became much more intense since covid 2020, and has stayed that way ever since. As a cashier who mostly works self-checkout most shifts, I would say the work is at its most intense, since I've started back in 2013, shockingly. Although the work is easy and self-explanatory in most cases, overall, when you consider how many customers I'm going through and helping individually, it's a nonstop never-ending rollercoaster. 

In fact, I've had to take more time to rest and sleep longer during the day to deal with it. All my shifts are usually 330pm-12am shifts so working late all day and staying up half the night doesn't help. I'm getting older, but getting older doesn't hit you this fast. A part of it is the fact that the work I'm doing is intense, nonstop, and very fast. Most of the day you don't get time to think, reflect, or have time to think of things to say to people, including the people you're helping in the moment in real time. You learn to sort of grunt or say stock phrases and just press buttons, thus making the job more manageable. Life in big city.

Lastly, the good thing about my retail grocery gig is that I'm full time, I'm in the Union, and I've created a work persona that's somewhat popular over there. I mostly just get brownie points for being an agreeable guy and helping customers but I've become so good at it and so well known, that even my management and upper management commend me for it, whereas in the past, that wasn't always the case. Sometimes it takes a while to win over your bosses. But it is my capacity for happiness that is carrying me through what is an obviously grueling job day in and day out. 

Sometimes I think about doing other things: going back to college, getting a degree, doing something with it, going to trade school, doing something with a trade, or working harder on music and a band and touring, or just writing like I am now, only writing books and selling them. There's a myriad of things I could do, or not do, but none of that changes my degree of happiness or capacity for happiness. Surprisingly, I'm happy doing what I'm doing now. I sort of see that the work has become a one-note samba, but I won't let that discourage me from my path. The only path I see right now, is the path moving forward, into tomorrow. 

image ai generated 

The Age of Voltaire by Will Durant

 

The Age of Voltaire is volume 9 of Will Durant's Story of Civilization series. So far I've read four of Will and Ariel Durant's Story of Civilization series of books: The Italian Renaissance, The Life of Greece, The Age of Reason Begins, and now finally I've read The Age of Voltaire. 

Closing this book, I felt that this was an extensive and comprehensive history of the age right up to and leading into the French Revolution, the Age of Enlightenment in France, roughly 1680s-1780. Voltaire was born in 1694, ensconced in education through the Jesuits. The Jesuits were the main educators in this period and had a lot of influence over schooling of children [boys and girls] and even sometimes in government and various occupations. They were known for being very educated and lenient towards their people, although they themselves were also quite dogmatic about Christianity and its spread throughout other parts of the world like in Latin America and even China. Despite this early great education from the Jesuits, Voltaire grew to increasing dislike the Church as he gained more fame and influence. He spent a lot of time running around to different homes and even the home of Frederick the Great because of his critiques of the church and nobility.  

However, there was a lot more going on in the Church other than Jesuits. There was the growing disputes between church, the peasantry, the aristocrats, the nobles, and the church's feuds with protestants [Jansenists], Catholics, and atheists from the philosophes, the intellectuals [writers, philosophers, scientists, artists, mathematicians, playwrights] like Voltaire, Diderot, Rosseau, Montesquieu, and d'Alembert. These named in particular would have the greatest influence on France and in the world. 

It should be named that being a philosopher in 18th century France isn't the same thing as being a philosopher in the 21st century. These intellectuals delved and wrote in a variety of fields and styles in order to reach their audience in the best ways they could. Voltaire didn't think much of giant books like the Encyclopédie [famous 18th century book from France by the philosophes], rather he thought that small books easily concealed would serve him better. So he ended up writing a lot of small works that contributed to his vast body of works. So Candide ended up becoming his most famous book.

But not every intellectual was an expert in a particular field. Rather a philosophe, was someone who was expected to know a little bit about every subject, even if they themselves weren't a master in each field. In order to write the Encyclopédie, the writers utilized and employed different philosophes for different phrases and words that they didn't feel adequate enough to cover themselves.

What caused the French Revolution? This book doesn't entirely aim to answer this question, rather it focuses more on historical detail. But after reading The Age of Voltaire, you can figure it out.

France was deep in debt from wars and the debt fell upon the peasants more and more, as the nobility became more and more corrupt. Tensions increased between the nobles and the church, and eventually even the Jesuits who had educated all the best minds of the time, were expelled from France. On top of that, the educated people were being more and more exposed to the works of the intellectuals of the time, the philosophes, and now, more than ever, people were more willing to become atheists, little by little, influenced by these great men with big ideas, ideas that changed the world, would eventually lead to the world we live in now. A world of more religious toleration, human rights, democracy, and equality.

Although the Age of Voltaire was published in 1965, it seems to somehow resonate in the scatter-brain afterimages of 21st century 2023. There's something there in this book that has an everlasting effect on the time it is describing, the time it was written in, and the time I live in now as I write this. It seems that now, more than ever, we're living in a world increasingly fraught with the same problems, plus a bunch of new additional ones, that weren't quite resolved from the French Revolution and perhaps never will be solved.

It has occurred to me after reading four volumes of Will Durant's Story of Civilization series, that the problems of any age seem to follow and recur in many others. There's always an endless cycle; renewal, back to the classic ages, onto a newer more advanced, more intellectual more philosophical more scientific less God, then an eventual regression back into a simpler mode of civilization, except we never really find out or perhaps we never can find out, that the civilization itself has already and always collapsed, only to be rebuilt by other people anew.

It is said that on his deathbed, Voltaire, when asked to return to the faith of his fathers and renounce the devil, responded with, “This is no time to be making new enemies.”

111 Day 2023, Happy New Year!

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, 

Happy new year! Today is 111 day, it's January 11th, the first month of the year, on the 11th day, 111 day. What a nice number. I hope you have been well. Have you? Is everything alright?

Things are spectacular right now. I'm on day 3 of my vacation week. This is a quiet vacation. I'm not going to travel anywhere or do anything too fancy. I just wanted time off from my busy retail gig. The store has been busy since the pandemic began in 2020. I requested this week long vacation every month since September 2022 and have been denied every month. That is, until now. 

The vacation has been fruitful and relaxing. I have been reading a lot, practicing drums everyday, creating a lot of AI art, and eating out at my favorite restaurants. But contrary to most vacationers I haven't been overeating, rather I feel like I've been eating less, which has been better for the body. Refreshing and rejuvenating.  

First, I spent the first two days reading The Age of Voltaire by the historian Will Durant. It's an analysis of England and France before and around the time of the French revolution. Amazing historical detail. And I've learned a lot more about Voltaire, who although was trained by the Jesuits, was a sore wound in the side of Christianity and he was often persecuted for his views against the Church and the nobles as well as other intellectuals. 

I nearly finished the book but decided to take a break because my dad recommended this new space opera that came out back in 2019. It's called A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine. It's a homage to early Ursula K Leguin but it has a vibe very similar to Cecelia Holland's Floating Worlds, a 1970s space opera. It has all those space opera bells and whistles but it's also got a cultural and linguistics thing going for it as well. Some of the naming systems are middle eastern and the cultures within the book are Japanese and Chinese. It's quite good and I'd recommend it to any science fiction fans or anyone who's interested in reading a good space opera, a brand new one rather than the old classics. 

Second, I've also been practicing drums with my new hi-hat cymbal. Tomorrow I've got a jam session with my friend who plays a Selmer alto saxophone. So tomorrow I'll use my makeshift 4-piece drum set, which includes a kibaga practice snare pad, a pearl limited edition snare, a meinL cymbal, and a ziljin hi-hat. I would have a bass drum and a tom, but space is limited here at the moment so I have to play with what I have.

Third, I've been creating a lot of ai art. You can view my work here https://www.instagram.com/jazzerrocker779/. I've created a lot of my AI generated art using www.mage.space, a wonderful tool that recently came out with a payment model because so many people were using it and enjoying it. I've found that with AI I've been able to find out that I have an eye for art, the eye of an artist. 

Furthermore, I had no idea that I had an eye for art until I was recommended to read Vasari's Lives, The Illustrated Lives of the Italian Painters of the Renaissance, I was recommended the book by my friend's wife, Elizabeth. From there I looked at and studied all the Italian Renaissance art I could and then after that my dad saw that I seemed interested in art, so he recommended that I start using mage.space to create AI art. From two older people with more knowledge I was able to find these things out and the rest is history. Now I do AI art often and I have over 5,000 images [gasp!]. 

Lastly, what does life feel like now, and furthermore, going forward? Even though there are cyclones over Los Angeles and 90% of the state is in fear of flooding I feel great. I'm happy now because I'm on vacation and doing all the things I love with unlimited free time but in four days I'm back at work and it will be tough. How does one stay happy? 

"There is no definitive answer to what makes humans happy, as it can vary greatly from person to person. However, some things that are commonly associated with happiness include having strong and supportive relationships, feeling fulfilled by one's work or hobbies, having financial security, having good physical and mental health, and feeling a sense of purpose or meaning in one's life. Additionally, people can also experience pleasure and enjoyment through different types of activities, such as exercising, traveling, or listening to music.

It's important to note that there are also other factors that play into happiness, such as genetics, which can account for up to 50% of the variance in happiness levels among people, and daily activities and practices can also have a positive impact.

Therapy and meditation, positive thinking, and gratitude are also known to be beneficial for one's well-being and may help some people increase their happiness levels." [openchatGPT]

"Beneath cherry blossoms pink and white, I find happiness in simple sights. A gentle breeze, a babbling stream, The rustling leaves, a peaceful gleam.

With every step upon the path, I feel my spirit start to lift. And though the road may have its twists, I know that joy and peace exist.

As petals fall and dance around, I'm filled with beauty that astounds. And in the sunshine and the rain, I find my heart is free again.

So let us all take life in stride, And let our hearts be open wide. For in the end, it's not the end, But the simple joys that make us blend.

With the world and all its wonder, Happiness will always be under our feet, a constant companion, guiding us to a brighter horizon." [openchatGPT]

image ai generated