Bix dot Blog

Somehow I missed Om Malik’s subtle funk: “This is mostly because, like most men in their early 50s, I have been struggling to reconcile the past, the present, and the future.” It was Colin Walker’s angsty anomie that resurfaced it. While I know, intellectually, that it’s bad form to engage in competitive funk, I can’t help but read about Malik’s in particular and want to shout, “Try adding a midlife autism diagnosis which retconned your entire life.” Malik, at least, is self-sufficient and supporting himself, not to mention engaging in therapeutic photography of far-off places like Iceland. Not only do I have to suffer whatever it is we suffer in midlife, but the autism’s recton of my past, as well as not just a lack of self-sufficiency but a lack of any belief that my prospects for it will change. Walker I somewhat can identify with more, yet I can’t simply let go of the fact that, well, he’s employed and at least relative to me, thriving—whatever his experience from the inside where it actually counts to any individual human being. Even with how far lost my life is, I recognize that even I’ve got privilege to burn, but clearly I’m not a sufficiently advanced person to be at the point where I can read posts like Malik’s and Walker’s and not scream, “Yeah, but at least you’re not me!”