A long absence

I'm making a tentative return to blogging. I'd been thinking about it for a while, and also deactivating my Facebook account, but hadn't passed some sort of imaginary threshold that would cause me to make those changes until this past week.

I turned 30 on the 11th of January. I don't really feel any different, but when my friend Jacob asked me how 30 was, "things suddenly feel more dire" fell out of my mouth.

The weird thing is, that since this Fall I'd been trying to get my life back into order. Getting work done, climbing a bunch outside, attempting to cut off contact with my ex. But somehow none of it worked. I lost motivation at work, the rain cut short some of the climbing season (thanks El Nino), and my ex kept trying to sneak back into my life for God knows what reason. Basically, I wasn't totally committing to any of these things.

The climbing thing is a product of the lack of new things to do. I can't just project the same shit over and over again and stay stimulated. Plus Pipeworks, despite what they say, does a shitty job of keeping the routes fresh.

As far as work goes, conservation biology/ecology/genetics is a losing battle. I've been wanting to feel like what I do gives my life some sort of value, or that what I do in and of itself has some sort of intrinsic value that is unassailably and unquestionably GOOD. But it's not. What I do is just something to do. Feeling like I'm doing something "good" or that I'm a "better" person because I am "saving" endangered species is a fallacy. First of all, I'm not saving anything. The processes that created biodiversity will continue to create biodiversity in the future as well as cause extinctions, in spite of human activity. Evolution will simply work with the selective pressures that we impose on organisms, and this includes any sort of climate change, or anything that can be attributed in any way to human actions. So why do we do it? Not only that, but we're not really even doing anything that is going to ultimately make anything better. We want to "conserve" things, because we like them. But if we are simply conserving things that we like, then what if what I like is different than what you like? That's not science, it's aesthetics.

Part of why I decided to go into conservation is because I wanted to contribute to the "greater good" whatever that means. But more and more I'm coming to the conclusion that we're swimming against the tide, and maybe the "greater good" can only be defined as "do no harm", or in our case, because our very existence does "harm", then maybe "do less harm." And I'm liberally using quotation marks because even those words in quotes are open to interpretation.

I took these thoughts to a famous professor at UC Davis who is active in restoring the bay/delta ecosystem, salmon restoration in California, and dam removal on California's rivers. How does he deal with these things? First he told me that he just stays busy. Grim. He told me that I had every right to be depressed, but that staying involved in local problems and focusing on the trees rather than the overwhelming forest helped him stay positive. In addition, re-wilding rivers gives people, and children especially, a chance to play in the rivers. So simple. But really, I grew up on a tidal marsh watching the tides come in and out, seeing flood years, watching trees grow and die. Just watching the inexorable change of the natural world I think gives people perspective on what's NOT imporant. Maybe that's what we want to give to future generations. The gift of discovery that we were given. It's intangible, and it's just a feeling really, but it seems good. That's as close as I can get to the truth right now.

Speaking of truth, do you think there is such a thing as truth? Or reality? Is there such a thing that isn't open to interpretation (it seems that by definition truth and reality should not be open to interpretation, but I don't believe it)? More and more I don't think so. Not only because humans aren't equipped to detect reality in its entirety, but also because it's colored with our own biases that simply cannot be removed. So even if there is a truth, if it's unknowable, does it exist? Or does it even matter? Another thought I had is the theory of special relativity. Doesn't this theory even dispute the existence of an object in a fixed time and place? Physics people help me out here. So then there can be alternate realities depending on the mass and speed of objects?

So after that tangent, I'm going back to Facebook and my decision to deactivate my account. I need to fully commit to prioritizing the important people in my life. All of the people I want contact with have given me their email addresses and/or phone numbers. Facebook fosters superficial relationships, while at the same time making superficial relationships appear substantial. That's not to say that I don't communicate with people on Facebook that I have deeper relationships with, but that it introduces a level of static on the line that is intolerable to me right now.

I would rather pick up the phone or go over to a friend's house right now than waste time wondering what other people are doing, or posting soundbites on peoples' walls that I haven't even seen in months. This is how I'm feeling right now. Who knows, maybe tomorrow I'll wake up and realize all of the things about Facebook that make my life better. But I doubt it. I've been drifting through life and letting people affect me way too much. This is my attempt to take some control back and make my contact with people have greater quality, even if it is at the expense of quantity.

So maybe this is why I'm back to blogging. I'm still debating whether or not to lock the blog. I have not yet decided. I know that I'm opening myself up to criticism by being on the interwebs, and truthfully, I don't want to do that, which isn't terribly fair. But that's where I am so here I am.

What I do need is a forum to vent and put all of these crazy thoughts and questions that have been swirling around my brain somewhere. Why not here?