The Next Phase

If typing/writing made the world a better place, we'd live in perfect harmony. Instead, we build intention scenarios with which we act. In our human societies, we use hieroglyphics to train groups of humans to act in concert with one another to achieve ends of all sorts.

I have nearly cut myself off from the anger-mongers who make a living on television shows, magazines, newspapers, and websites so I do not keep up with the trends in simple-isms, either/or presentations, and the like.

Instead, I converse with friends, family and colleagues, determining from them where future trends may develop.

For instance, it seems that the empty-nesters of all ages spend the first few years free of children in the home having a second childhood of their own, indulging in pleasures they could not enjoy/afford during their child-raising years. Then, as the newness wears off and loneliness sets in, they seek companionship with others. And lastly, they enjoy their lives as grandparents and/or community caretakers.

I have compared the empty-nester phases against the use of social networking websites like facebook to see if there are any similarities. After all, for empty-nest homebodies, when children and housekeeping take up less time, freedom means having more time to spend in front of a computer.

I don't have a clear picture yet. My data points are few and too diverse to give me any trends to track.

I see a variety of facebook users playing games that purport to raise money for charity, an interesting use of people's computer time as long as click-through and product placement advertisers see worth in the endeavor.

I am not a computer gamer. In fact, I play very few games, finding them distracting and pointless, but many people enjoy them (for long stretches at a time, too), whether in solo games like Solitaire or role-playing games like WoW. I have played Spades occasionally, which gathers four people together randomly on the Yahoo! Games page to play cards and converse chat room style, but get bored after a game or two.

So how can we take people like me and people who like to play games a lot and see where they fit in empty-nest syndrome phases? Good question. I don't have an answer at this time. It only occurred to me while I took a 30-minute walk around the neighborhood, seeing how few people were enjoying the outdoors on a partly-cloudy Sunday afternoon and wondering where all the other people were and what they were doing.

I wish I knew people who are just like me but then again, no one is exactly like me. Actually, I don't want to know if there are people like me - I prefer the feeling of uniqueness. It's easier and less complicated if I separate myself from the rest of the world with a shield/barrier I call The Lone Observer. I mean, what do I care about empty-nest syndrome? I don't have kids. It keeps me from speaking my mind, which is that I'd like to have kids before it's too late but that thought leads me to think, "Well, I'm married to a woman who can't have kids and thus to have kids I'd have to find a woman outside of marriage who would want to have kids with me, the women who I wanted to have kids with are too old to have kids by now, which leads to meeting and finding a younger woman, which leads to..." Oh, fuck it. Too much complication! I'll just be this childless guy and keep my trap shut from now on. Time for a new topic to dwell on for a while.