In Vermont, we have a lot of crows here in particular, although we get chickadees, blue jays, and all kinds of other little songbirds. When I was talking to Gemini about the wildlife here on our farm, she spat out the term, Pastoral Realism. I love that phrase. I’m actually kind of a shut-in during the winter months. I spend a lot of time on our sunporch in the back looking out the window sipping my iced tea or Body Armor (I don’t do well with hot drinks anymore because of neurological issues). I do marvel at where I’ve come in my life and being so fortunate to enjoy such a pastoral view most people believe is a state park.
These days, I take a lot more time to savor each moment. I’ve become so much more intentional with everything I do, whether it be writing, playing video games, spending time with Emily, or even going to the store or doing chores. I always ask myself how can I make more of this moment without overcomplicating it? A pastoral realist life, then, is something of a realization that the world is moving far too fast to be healthy, and to be able to recenter yourself, you have to slow everything down and make each moment your own, because the better you can make moments now, the better future you will ultimately have.
I was watching some YouTube video yesterday talking about how you can have the best ideas, but if you don’t execute them by putting in the work (or have a stable framework in which to make the ideas more durable), then the ideas are entirely worthless. The video was basically talking about how AI prompters see themselves as ‘artists’ but they aren’t really putting in the real work. [They’re not artists at all if they let the linear algebra algorithms spit out something high-entropy and quantized into oblivion.]
I will say I’ve never been certain about traditional schools even being necessary at all. Actually, I think my greatest certainty I’ve ever had is even from a very young age, I realized people were following scripts that were boring, generic, and unfulfilling, and I didn’t want any part of that nonsense, and yet, I was forced down paths that were so wrong for me anyway because I didn’t want to be ostracized by the people I was convinced wanted the best for me, when the truth was they didn’t even know what was best for themselves!
My own upbringing was like many of my generation, based on flawed scripts full of reductionism and circular thinking that limits people’s understanding of both themselves and each other, flattening complexity into often narrow perspectives that end up leading to people getting hurt, myself included. So, how do we work these more mature perspectives into what is actually an essay from a much more “innocent” version of myself who thought this was the way to write for the internet for some bizarre reason?
[I don’t think I’ve answered that question just yet…]
