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Today's Keyboard Smash
Feb. 19th, 2021 05:08 pm[Content warning: mention of suicidal thoughts as a general concept]
I had truthfully forgotten about the Mars Perseverance project, though I'm sure I heard about it when it launched back in July. So it was very exciting to see all this coverage about it when I got home from work yesterday. I am, unsurprisingly, endlessly charmed by all the rovers.
One of the things that struck me was when they started talking about the timeline for the rover's work. It's going to be about ten years before the samples taken are sent back to Earth for analysis. (And let me just say, hearing anyone say "the 2030s" and have it mean "in about ten years" gave me a real kick in the head in general.) And hearing that, a voice in the back of my head said, oh, well, that's something worth sticking around for.
To be clear, I'm not in any way depressed or suicidal at the moment or even in general for a while now. It wasn't about that. Though it did remind me of a post I saw about trying to resist suicidal feelings by leaning not on optimism but on curiosity--staying alive just to see what happens next. I wasn't looking for or in particular need of a specific reason to stay alive for any given length of time.
It was, nonetheless, a very strong, clear thought of something worth looking forward to. I've talked before about the value of having something concrete to look forward to as a tool for maintaining my mental health. I guess this is just more musings on that idea.
It's also a musing on the deep weirdness of time perception thanks to the pandemic. Because there are suddenly a lot of things that, if you want to look forward to them (without risking the health of yourself or others), you need to be on a timeline measured in months or years. I've never been someone who had a five-year plan or anything like that. (See exhibit A, my arrival at something resembling a steady job/career at 35, floundering about a decade behind the timeline I was led to expect.) Meanwhile, current events also move so fast that our entire social structure seems liable to be upended from one hour to the next.
So the idea of waiting to hear back on those Mars samples in ten years doesn't sound all that distant. Oh, okay, that's a little bit of a wait, no big deal. In ten years, it seems equally likely that I'll finally be back to going into public buildings for something other than food or that we'll be governed by a race of superintelligent rats who rose up during the 2024 election cycle to conquer humans. Ten years is no time at all, and also anything could happen in ten years. I can wait and see.
I had truthfully forgotten about the Mars Perseverance project, though I'm sure I heard about it when it launched back in July. So it was very exciting to see all this coverage about it when I got home from work yesterday. I am, unsurprisingly, endlessly charmed by all the rovers.
One of the things that struck me was when they started talking about the timeline for the rover's work. It's going to be about ten years before the samples taken are sent back to Earth for analysis. (And let me just say, hearing anyone say "the 2030s" and have it mean "in about ten years" gave me a real kick in the head in general.) And hearing that, a voice in the back of my head said, oh, well, that's something worth sticking around for.
To be clear, I'm not in any way depressed or suicidal at the moment or even in general for a while now. It wasn't about that. Though it did remind me of a post I saw about trying to resist suicidal feelings by leaning not on optimism but on curiosity--staying alive just to see what happens next. I wasn't looking for or in particular need of a specific reason to stay alive for any given length of time.
It was, nonetheless, a very strong, clear thought of something worth looking forward to. I've talked before about the value of having something concrete to look forward to as a tool for maintaining my mental health. I guess this is just more musings on that idea.
It's also a musing on the deep weirdness of time perception thanks to the pandemic. Because there are suddenly a lot of things that, if you want to look forward to them (without risking the health of yourself or others), you need to be on a timeline measured in months or years. I've never been someone who had a five-year plan or anything like that. (See exhibit A, my arrival at something resembling a steady job/career at 35, floundering about a decade behind the timeline I was led to expect.) Meanwhile, current events also move so fast that our entire social structure seems liable to be upended from one hour to the next.
So the idea of waiting to hear back on those Mars samples in ten years doesn't sound all that distant. Oh, okay, that's a little bit of a wait, no big deal. In ten years, it seems equally likely that I'll finally be back to going into public buildings for something other than food or that we'll be governed by a race of superintelligent rats who rose up during the 2024 election cycle to conquer humans. Ten years is no time at all, and also anything could happen in ten years. I can wait and see.
