I'm a loser, baby.

(But please don't kill me.) I just feel like I'm...losing things.

OK, first things first: When I looked up the lyrics to Beck’s Loser (that’s the song I’m quoting in the title of this post, Mom) to see if there were other tidbits I could borrow, I was bowled over to see that the line just before “I’m a loser baby, so why don’t you kill me” is “soy un perdedor”— “I’m a loser” in Spanish. I never knew what the hell he was saying, but never bothered to look it up. Por qué did he throw a random Spanish phrase in the middle of the song? We’ll never know.

I’m not actually a loser. Not in the sense that I’m a lame-ass sad sack. Au contraire. What I mean is that lately I feel like I’m losing a lot of things. Or am about to. And I don’t mean my good pens—the Uni-Ball ones—although they are often elusive. I mean people. Routines. Normalcy. Collagen.

Seems like in the first half of your life, you gain and gain and gain—experiences, knowledge, teeth, scars, height, people. So many people—including, sometimes, ones you grow in your own body! But once you reach middle age, there starts to be a hell of a lot more losing. (Except when it comes to belly fat.)

Last week, my kids graduated from high school. And while I’m certainly feeling the gravity of this milestone on a broader level—the ending it represents, the new beginning it signals—I’m also aware of the many little losses that will come in the wake of it. Bake sales and open houses. Concerts and plays and proms. Homework papers and textbooks on the dining room table. Permission slips. (A welcome loss). The need to occasionally buy posterboard. Chatting with other parents at school events.

And let’s not forget the emails! Why, just a couple of weeks ago, I got an email from the superintendent saying that cucumbers involved in a recent salmonella recall may have been distributed to over 400 school districts in New England, including ours, and that the district had taken immediate action to remove all cucumbers from the recalled lot, as well as any others currently in rotation.

This is exactly the sort of treasured, parent-of-kids-in-school moment I’m talking about: being informed about deadly bacteria and the fate of rotating cucumbers.

At this point you may be thinking: Dios mio, maybe she *is* sort of a loser. But all those little losses, and cucumbers, add up to something very real. And when I think about the fact that it’s all vanishing, it’s a little punch to the heart.

I can’t post a pic of my kids at graduation or they’ll kill me, so here’s me—in one of their mortarboards, with my head looking weirdly large because of the angle—and my husband (with his eyes closed. Sorry, honey).

More and harder heart-punches lie ahead. Like the kids actually leaving for college. Like the accelerating death of the generation ahead of mine: parents and aunts and uncles and family friends I’ve known since birth. You know—the grown-ups. And Paul McCartney. Paul McCartney is going to die, and where does that leave us??? (Ringo too, but, well.)

There’s the ongoing sense of loss (and anger) that I’ve been feeling as I see the current administration and its supporters going after so many of the things that make (made?) our country great: checks and balances, due process, science, academic freedom, diversity, stable alliances. And decorum! I mean, I am no prissy ole pearl-clutching priss, but reading about the the public Trump / Musk slap-flight last week I just kept thinking: Could we get a little fucking decorum back in the executive branch?

So much is being lost, thanks to those actual losers.*

I think my recent feelings of sadness and anxiety around AI also have to do with a sense of loss. Writing has always been my superpower. I’ve been really good at it since an early age (just look at my killer poetry!) and over the course of my lifetime it’s become an increasingly bigger part of my identity. It’s also, in the case of copywriting, how I’ve always made my living. But now, with more and more people “writing” with AI (or thinking they can) especially in the corporate realm, my superpower doesn’t feel quite so super anymore.** And that’s a loss.

I guess I’ve also been feeling a sense of loss with regard to our digital existence more generally. I miss seeing people reading books and magazines on trains and in waiting rooms, instead of staring at their phones. (I miss me consistently doing the same.) I miss snapshots and photo albums. Postcards and letters. I miss seeing the infinite variety of people’s cursive handwriting, and the little window it offered into their nature somehow. I miss the feeling that came with knowing that millions of other people were watching the same TV show as you, at the exact same time.

I think what makes me saddest about this is the fact that these things are all still available, all still possible—yet we’ve moved away from them. They simply aren’t valued as much anymore.***

But I guess every middle-aged person who has ever lived goes through this sort of thing, don’t they?

Why did everyone stop wearing knee breeches? Do we no longer value the sight of a man’s calves? The curve of the musculature? The sharpness of the shin bone? Trousers do keep the legs warmer, I grant you, but at what cost, my good man? AT WHAT COST?

Sigh.

So, here’s the part in the post where I suppose I should talk about all the things I will undoubtedly gain in the years ahead (in addition to belly fat). New experiences and relationships and perspectives and projects and liberally red-pepper-flaked meals and blah blah blah blah blah.

Yes. But the losing’s still hard.

OK, fine. I feel a little guilty hitting you people with such a melancholy post on a Monday. So in conclusion, here’s a picture from the baguette contest judging tent at a French-themed street fair in Cambridge that the mister and I went to yesterday, as I am a Francophile and lover of bread. Just as a reminder— to myself as much as anyone—that the world is full of things that are wonderful and good.

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* If you feel the same way, find a No Kings protest near you to attend this Saturday, June 14. If you’re in the greater Boston / North Shore area, you might check out this one, which I’ve been helping to organize.

** I do not, by any means, think that generative AI can write as well as I do, and luckily, it simply can’t write personal writing of the sort I do here, on account of it not being a person. I don’t think it will ever be able to write truly good novels either. Crappy ones, sure. But there are already people who write those, too. :-D

*** Thank you to a climbing friend of mine, who may be reading this, who helped me articulate this notion of things we value no longer being valued in our culture / society, especially by younger generations, and the grief we feel as a result.