Maybe I’m so preoccupied with my own birthday that I ignore anyone else’s. But despite posts to the contrary, I’ve always been pretty indifferent about each year’s turning of the mortal page, maybe with an exception for genuine milestones. No, the problem isn’t that I’m a selfish birthday bastard—it’s that I just don’t remember birthdays any more.
I was reminded of how bad a friend I am by two messages in the past fortnight, both from friends among my oldest and most cherished. The first—via Instagram, which seems very apropos—simply wished me a happy birthday but sparked immediate guilt, because I know it’s the sender’s birthday right around the same time as mine. But is it April 26? April 28? Or April 30?
The second came last week with an apology: “If I was any later, you’d be 52!” I appreciated the humor and best wishes but again immediately felt guilty for the same reason as a week earlier. I know it’s also the sender’s birthday right around now but, no, I can’t for the life of me remember when.
It never used to be this way. I mean, I remember the handful of birthdays of family and other loved ones. But I recall diligently keeping a list of birthdays in my beloved Filofax back in the 1990s, which I’d acquired with an irrational sense of pride and a wistful thought it’d look pretty sweet sitting in on a restaurant table at dinner with some hottie Sloane Ranger (ignore the fact that when I had the chance to live and work in London as a 21 year old, I cowardly fled back to Brisbane).
Every year, I’d take the single Filofax page with the birthday list and transcribe it to the individual diary days. For people getting a card and/or present, I’d make a note two weeks earlier: “Get present for x.” It went this way for more than a decade, until I traded the Filofax for a Palm VIIx around 2002, which marked the beginning of the analog end. From there it was a string of Blackberry devices (so good) and then into the iPhone universe.
Yet somewhere along the way the birthdays disappeared. I reinstated those I could remember, but that left out a bunch—including my friends who messaged in the past two weeks. The immediate fix is easy: I emailed my friend, said thanks, and added “Can you do me a favor and send me a list of everyone’s birthday?”
The longer term solution is tougher. On the one hand, having birthdays dropped onto my digital calendar is easy peasy: I put them on an annual repeat and never have to worry about it again. Ultimately, it’s more efficient in terms of the outcome. But what’s beneath it worries me much more because I’m now at a point where I joke “It’s only real if it’s on my calendar!”, except it’s not a joke at all.
What the hell has happened to me? To all of us? I can’t recall phone numbers or appointments. I miss critical grocery items if something’s not on my shopping list. I need Google Maps for almost everything. In theory, digitizing my life is supposed to be a good thing: not clogging my mind with phone numbers, appointments, shopping lists, and street names should free it for much more important, creative tasks. This is, after all, what we keep being told is the upside of artificial intelligence.
Yet I haven’t used all that liberated mental capacity to write the great Australian novel. I’m not sure anyone has. Even Silicon Valley’s finest minds haven’t used the wonder of the supercomputer now sitting in everyone’s pocket to make the world a better place or solve it’s most intractable problems. Instead, we’ve got apps that crush candy or make birds angry or short videos that steal our most precious commodity—time—while simultaneously rotting our brains with constant dopamine hits encouraging our worst habits.
Do we just find it easier to default to what’s easy and familiar, irrespective of how destructive it is? We know processed foods are horrendous to our health yet shrug, inhale a bag of Doritos, wash it down with a Coke, and then treat the symptom rather than the cause by developing drugs like Ozempic. We know mobile devices wreak havoc with our attention span, personal relationships, and self-esteem, yet it takes companies offering $10,000 for us to give up our smartphones for a month. We know the environmental impact of driving, eating meat, or wearing fast fashion, yet keep indulging in all three, kicking cans down the road rather than foregoing these apparent necessities.
I even see the impact politically. For the past couple of weeks, Donald Trump has been in a courtroom in New York City, and we’ve been treated to stark reminders of what an amoral, pathetic man he really is: a wannabe Hugh Hefner, cheating on his wife with a porn actress who reminds him of his daughter, luring her with vacuous “I can make you a star!” promises. At the same time, we have fresh allegations of tax cheating, dozens of other charges awaiting trial, and daily reminders he can’t string together anything resembling a coherent sentence.
And yet. A big chunk of the American public seems willing to elect Trump again, and is even looking back at his time in office with increasing fondness. Forget the hundreds of thousands of additional Americans dead as a result of his COVID response. Forget the cratering of the US economy. Forget the ridicule on the world stage. The self-dealing. The nepotism. The daily assault on decency, democracy, and sanity. Instead of taking the opportunity to rid ourselves of Trump, we’re using our freed-up brain capacity to slide back, irrespective of how destructive that may be.
At some deeper level, I suspect the cumulative effect of rapid technological change is just outstripping our evolutionary capacity to adapt. We’re no longer developing or maintaining the skills that, ultimately, help us think critically or simply make better sense of the world around us. And what do we do when we’re overwhelmed? We lapse toward what’s comfortable and easy.
Hamburger. Coke. Game. TV. Trump. Sounds like a cognitive test, and we’re all failing.
A note about whatever this is …
After writing a few thousand articles for newspapers and magazines, I spent a long time trying a bunch of other stuff. I guess I figured what came (relatively) easily must by definition be less valuable, so I wandered in the corporate wilderness, becoming increasingly frustrated and doing work that felt increasingly lousy.
Sometimes with age comes wisdom, and I’ve realized finding something (relatively) easy ain’t a bad thing. So, this is a space where I’m resurrecting writing for myself, on topics weird and wild and wonderful.
Posts will appear when the mood takes me, but I do try to be consistently inconsistent—sometimes it’ll be a couple of days between drinks; sometimes a week. But if you subscribe, you’ll get a email letting you know I’m ranting. Again.