The great escape

The epitome of the pandemic is over is that I am finally traveling for work again. I went to Boston and Chicago and Europe last year for a personal trip, but this is my first work trip. The last work trip I took (to Houston, Texas) was cut short, I had to rebook my flight and returned home early. It was March 15th 2020. A day after the border shuts down. A day after WHO declared the pandemic. And here we are.

Through elections, through arts, through tech, everyone loves to pretend the pandemic never happened, that it didn’t change us forever, and that our collective human minds just collectively forget that it happened. The optimists will tout our resiliency. The cynical will talk about a conspiracy from a lab. The average person will forget it all. And so we continue, with racial injustice, with transphobia, with borders tightened between nations, forests burning and cities drowning in the smoke.

“Wherever you go, there you are”

Whenever I travel, I always feel a great sense of joy, of rest, of peace, of the unknown and excitement. The optimists will call that curiosity. The cynics will call that escapism. The average person will call it basic since we all love to travel. Me? I call it melancholic exploration. I call it story collecting, memory forming, and experience synthesizing. 

Ah, what a loaded bullshit way to describe things. 

My boss told me yesterday “AI has finally hacked humanity. Let’s not worry about nuclear weapons or robots uprising. The moment AI has our storytelling ability, it can get us to do what it wants us to do. Look at the pandemic, elections, capitalism, organized religions, public policies, tech startups, it’s all baked in stories. It’s our storytelling ability that makes us human”

AI is already generating cover arts for my stories. When will it be ready to tell my stories too?

The optimists will call this a revolution of AI to unlock humans’ full potential. The cynics will call this a mass extinction event that will turn the tide. The average person will gleefully continue to ignore this, voting for tax cuts and big tech. Me? 

I will escape to see the world and weave my own stories 

(and who cares if AI is the one who tells them)