I Keep Forgetting What Year It Is
This is, quite obviously, a pandemic-related problem. Plus due to the fact I haven’t worked a “real” 9–5 type job since March 2020. And then due to the fact that days just melted into each other, weekends stopped making sense, the news was similar almost every day. I met the announcement of every day, every month, with surprise. When the calendar changed to 2021, I met the announcement of that with surprise as well. With wonder almost.
It used to be that you’d write a few cheques with the previous year on it, your bank would tell you, and the idea implanted itself. The resistance to the change in year was just a matter of muscle memory. But who writes cheques anymore? Everything’s online. What is a day on the internet? How does it look any different from any other day? And really, we’re not online so much as on our phones. And the phone never changes. It’s an eternal black box (well, my iPhone’s white and the case is black but you understand what I mean, and if you don’t you’re being difficult), unchanging (another thing: cell phones used to look different; it was part of the branding. Now? Not so much.). I have a calendar, and I use it — I’m a busy guy! — but the calendar is flat, unchanging; the calendar on my phone does not yield to the passage of time, nor does it acknowledge the seasons. It is a form into which to input data.
