The Adventures of 2024: A Multiverse of Enshitification
What started as a seemingly uneventful year turned into a volatile wooden roller coaster of Chaucer, stoicism, totalitarianism, mental breakdowns, and an attempt at career progression—all while my relationship and the U.S. teetered on the verge of collapse. Oh, and aliens
"That which does not kill us makes us stronger."
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols
Alright, everyone, let’s pause for a moment and take a deep, calming, energizing breath. The holidays are over, the year is now complete, and if you're anything like me, you're probably exhausted. In every aspect of the word, down to your soul tired. So, rest up, nurse those wounds, and shake off the trauma this year dumped on us. It’s been a wild ride, no doubt, with so much happening that it feels surreal just recounting it.
But first, a foreword: if personal info-dumping isn’t your thing, I apologize in advance. This blog is part reflection, part catharsis, part story about the year that nearly drove me to becoming a “villain.” By villain, I mean someone so burnt out, so far past their threshold, that torching their old life to the ground and embracing chaos feels like an enticing alternative. The less dramatic option? Just giving up altogether and coasting through life on autopilot. And honestly, no one would blame you. But if you’re still here, reading along, then my warmest thanks—your attention and time mean so much!
We began this year with a book. I decided to write a literary analysis essay to unpack its lessons properly, but as with most things in my life, this idea spiraled into a grander mission. The book was Atomic Habits by James Clear—a fantastic read for anyone aiming to build better habits and break bad ones. Halfway through, my ambitions grew: an essay wasn’t enough. I was going to write a thesis. Spoiler alert: it’s still not finished. Who knew our brains could only handle so much information at a time, especially when you’re trying to cram centuries’ worth of material into one year?
"You have power over your mind—not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength."
— Marcus Aurelius , Meditations
When you were a kid imagining your "official adult life," how old
did you picture yourself? For me, the age is a blur, but I always
assumed I’d feel... different. Wiser. More capable. Over the years, I’ve
embarked on countless self-discovery journeys, working on mind, body,
spirit—passion projects, books, therapy, and an unrelenting curiosity.
No stone unturned so to speak. Yet here I am, at 40, still unraveling
what it truly means to be an adult.
Picking up Atomic Habits felt like embarking on yet another epic quest to tackle my shortcomings, one more tool to add to my arsenal in the journey toward finally becoming the fully realized adult I had always thought I’d be by now. On top of that, I subscribed to several weekly newsletters from authors whose books were recommended by James Clear, and later in the year, I dove into those suggested reads myself. Well folks, I felt like Dorothy at the end of Wizard of Oz, when Glenda says, "You don't need to be helped any longer. You've always had the power."
How often do we miss the truth, the answers, or the signs staring us in the face; when we're too distracted, desensitized, or unready to accept them? Which is essentially why we must go through some shit before we can find out we had the inner strength the whole time.
Simply put: we can get hung up on the idea of becoming an adult without actually knowing what it is we are even trying to become. Some argue the concept of the label adulthood is a social and legal construct, and they’re not wrong. We get so wrapped up in these boxes, jumping between wanting out, wanting in, and demanding our own custom box. Worse than Schrodinger’s Cat, honestly.
Anyway, on with the program! Avoiding the novel-worthy details, here’s the condensed version in a delightful spin of words for a more enjoyable read: They say most things come in three's and I would certainly say there's some truth to that, especially if we're talking physics. My birthday trip was cancelled and I was being sued by a debt collection company for literally $700, and the first of a few more bumps in the road of my three year living-together-with-someone relationship. Oh yeah, and the start to the enshitification of everything (Look it up; the term’s apt.) I'm just applying it as a broad spectrum term to describe this year as a whole. Not every moment was terrible, but you’d be hard-pressed to call it smooth sailing.
By now we're moving into the end of spring that brought us a solar
eclipse, tornadoes, Northern Lights made an appearance all over the
world, Epstein List Dropped, and the Trump Trial. I was beginning to
feel more and more like Chicken Little—not only by consuming all the
books, and my relationship getting rocky, but alongside a complete
overhaul of all of my daily habits, implementing new ones and
going down a rabbit hole of Stoicism and Chaucer somewhere along the
way.
By summer, life was a blur. My relationship was
crumbling. On again, off again, with a breakup/not-breakup that felt
more exhausting than cathartic. At the same time, I was diving headfirst
into content creation, launching my first official TikTok video of
myself, and navigating moments that seemed pulled straight from a novel.
That same night I posted my video, a friend and I helped this 6 yr old
girl who snuck out of her house at 11:00 at night because her parents
were fighting again and she was scared. She wandered several miles
before she walked up to the gas station that my friend and I just
happened to pull up to moments after she walked up. I called 911, her
and I chatted til the police arrived about the events that led to her
sneaking out—Oh how that broke me, it sat with me and still does to this
day. Then there was that assassination attempt on Trump, Biden dropping
out Kamala thing, Climate stuff, Ukraine, Israel and Palestine—but
aliens.
"Experience is not what happens to you; it's what you do with what happens to you."
— Aldous Huxley, Texts and Pretexts: An Anthology with Commentaries
I’ll admit, I considered making a series of TikTok videos to
info-dump all of this onto the internet in hopes of going viral, but I
thought better of it. I wasn’t in the right headspace for that kind of
exposure, so I leaned into what I knew best: staying as realistically
positive as I could, sharing that energy with those around me, and
focusing on maintaining the momentum I’d started to build on social
media. All of this was with the hope that, when the time came to launch
my future business, I’d have a solid following to help propel it toward
success.
Lucky for me, my mental breakdown unfolded in spurts over a few weeks rather than hitting all at once—there’s that pesky physics rule of threes in action again. Eventually, though, I reached my breaking point. Everything was catching up to me with horrifying speed, like a tidal wave crashing over my head. It was this thick, heavy, wet blanket of pent-up emotion, weighed down by my crumbling relationship, the relentless study of Stoicism and the creation of Capitalism, the never-ending stream of chaotic events—aliens, the American Revolution, Totalitarianism, content creation—and on and on. "The sky is falling! The sky is falling!" cried Chicken Little in my mind, flapping his wings in a frantic panic, convinced the world was ending.
Fall hit like a hurricane, literally. Hurricane Helen left a path of destruction you could see from space, nearly wiping Asheville, N.C off the map, sparking a Fujiwara Effect that dumped record-breaking rain across the Eastern U.S. It mirrored my inner world eerily. My relationship in shambles, my mental health frayed, and the chaos of the year reached a crescendo. It was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. But amidst the chaos, something else emerged: clarity. Clarity that life is messy, unpredictable, and utterly human. That we’re all just doing our best to survive this roller coaster ride.
I put the brakes on everything—except my daily pages, a habit I picked up over a decade ago thanks to The Artist’s Way workbook. And guess what? I finally hit a major milestone: writing one page every morning for over 400 consecutive days! That was a big win for the year. The rest, however, I took a step back from, especially during the holidays. My relationship was finally mending and better than it had been for ages, and the dust was starting to settle in the chaos of my mind. Though the same couldn’t be said for the U.S. or the rest of the World for that matter. At some point, I decided I just couldn’t care about everything all at once anymore. I still keep up with things because they fascinate me, but only to a certain degree. There comes a time when we have to choose what we can and cannot care about and let the rest go.
"The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance."
— Alan Watts
Now, it’s time to return to this epic quest with a little less vigor and a bit more balance. Reflecting on my original mission to make myself uncomfortable, I’d say it was a smashing success, wouldn't you? After all, we can’t grow if we stay in our comfort zones. To discover who we truly aspire to be, we sometimes have to suffer, embark on incredible journeys, or even blaze our own yellow brick roads. Growth often comes from motion and things in motion tend to stay in motion.
If you made it this far, kudos—you deserve a medal! If nothing
else, I hope my ramblings offer some solidarity. This year may have been
a whirlwind of enshitification and existential crises, but we’re still
here, still breathing, and still trying. As we step into the New Year,
take a moment to remember how much you’ve already endured and how far
you’ve come. You’ve always had the inner strength; sometimes, you just
need a reminder. As for me, I’m leaning into the chaos with a little
more stoic grace, a lot more curiosity, and an occasional glance toward
the stars. After all, the sky might be falling—but we’re still standing.
Happy New Year, and may the odds be ever in your favor.
If you're interested, here's a list of the books I read this year. I will admit, some I haven't fully finished, but I would do my research, read the summarizations and material out there to better understand them:
Atomic
Habits — James Clear
Meditations
— Marcus Aurelius
An
Introduction to Chaucer — Maurice Hussey
Chaucer
and His Poetry — George Lyman Kittredge
The
Art of Living — Epictetus
Socrates:
A Very Short Introduction — C.C.W. Taylor
The
Origins of Totalitarianism — Hannah Arendt
Fascism: A
Very Short Introduction — Kevin Passmore
Capitalism
and Freedom — Milton Friedman
The
Ideological Origins of the American Revolution —
Bernard Bailyn
The
Midnight Library — Matt Haig
p.s. seeing them listed out like that, now I know why my therapist recommended around late summer that I maybe read something a bit lighter.