 Ever have one of THOSE days? You know what I’m talking about. You wake up in the morning and you are already tired—the worst possible way to start the day. One of THOSE days is a day when everything you touch experiences system failure. You try to pay a bill that is due today. You go on line and the computer freezes and the site goes down. How you discover that the refrigerator quit working during the night is by pouring sour milk on top of the last bit of cereal and taking a rancid bite. You go to your car in the pouring rain to find the tire pressure light is on. Road construction is blocking your driveway, and you pull out into speeding traffic like a blind woman in a pedal car with wobbly wheels. Each tiny cut of discouragement leaves you bleeding on the curb of life and you have to pretend you booked this location just to take in the view from below. I am not talking about a full blown state of clinical depression. I am just talking about one of THOSE days. On one of THOSE days, you lose all knowledge of how the world works, except this: you know from experience that it is not a good day to weigh yourself. You have been around long enough to know that there are things you should never do when under the influence, but adding insult to injury is what you do under the influence of one of THOSE days. You try to talk yourself out of it. You are long familiar with this particular brand of self-harm, this proof that you are a loser but not of pounds. You know you should just get into your car and start driving to a Betty Ford Clinic to address this relapse in your addiction to self-hatred, but you don’t. You step on the scale instead, and just as you knew would be the case, the needle moves up. And then you chastise yourself for having been a fool when you should have known better, and you curse the gods that gave you a slow metabolism, a hefty bone structure, big feet, and a serious water retention problem. You know the number on the scale can’t possibly reflect the portion-controlled few morsels you ate yesterday. It is all more evidence of the cosmic injustice that is your life. You can never admit any of this inner drama to anyone, and so you try to act like a normal human being. The demands of life propel you forward into the day. You dress and face the weather and the traffic. You blast some old Motown hits from your playlist and sing along as you drive. You get to work and get busy. You engage with people you like. You solve problems. You make plans. You take a walk. Slowly, you forget that you hate yourself and the world. By lunch you convince yourself that your morning fast and the calories burned in the fire of angst make it safe to eat lunch. And you do. And you feel better still. And the work day ends, and you realize that slowly, while you weren’t looking, one of THOSE days became a GOOD day. You offer thanks to the Great Day Trader who gave you a better day than the one with which you began. And you do not weigh yourself when you get home.
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 The votes are in, and there is no doubt in my mind that we have a legitimate winner. The best word won! And in my book, it is the best invention since deodorant. It is just too good to keep to myself. Earlier this week, in a “eureka!” moment I clicked on the link supplied by a friend who is also a lover of words, a thinker, and a seeker. Being from the school of If You Can Name It, You Can Tame It, I am thrilled to have a name for the disease that has overtaken society and an answer to my incessant question, “What the hell just happened?” I feel like a scientist who has spent a lifetime looking down into a microscope or up into the sky and who suddenly arrives at a cosmic breakthrough. What I don’t understand is how this has stayed so quiet. Why hasn’t the inventor rocketed to fame? Applause please for Cory Doctorow and the American Dialect Society word of the year: enshittification. I am no John Maynard Keynes or Milton Friedman, but my take on economics is that unchecked capitalism moves toward greed and corruption. There are no “free markets” where supply is created by demand. The suppliers psychologically and physically manipulate us into “demanding” their products and services. This is why we need government—to keep us all socially responsible, but enough about online platforms and the state of the economy and American politics. I am bringing this new word of the year into common use to include anything that once was good but has been degraded by negative social forces. Like a kid who just learned the power of dirty words, I find opportunities everywhere to use my new vocabulary. Scrabble anyone? My children will be pleased to know that I am finally replacing the F word in my daily speech, something else that has gone to ruin as I age in this time of general degradation. If you knew me in the past, you might think I am a prisoner of war making coerced statements, but no, it’s really me, another case of the rot done by technology. Enshittification. Say it once more with feeling! We know what we’ve got. Or what’s got us. Get out some hand sanitizer. Put on some gloves. Let’s clean up this mess! |
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January 2025
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