Welcome to the Sudden Changes I Probably Needed...

...but didn't really want.

A few years ago, for LGBTQ+ month, I took the time to watch the six hour HBO miniseries "Angels in America" adapted from the play with the same name by Tony Kushner. I knew very little about the play other than a recommendation in one of Lindsay Ellis's YouTube video essays and by watching Kyle Kallgren's YouTube analysis of it.

I immediately fell in love with the 2 part, 6 episode production. If I ever get the opportunity to see the original play on stage, I will take it in a heart beat.

One of my favorite quotes from the play comes at a point where one character, Harper, is being forced to reevaluate her life and figure out what she wants. She ends up having a conversation with an animated mannequin of a pioneer Mormon woman that goes as follows:

 “Harper: In your experience of the world. How do people change? 

Mormon Mother: Well it has something to do with God so it's not very nice.
God splits the skin with a jagged thumbnail from throat to belly and then plunges a huge filthy hand in, he grabs hold of your bloody tubes and they slip to evade his grasp but he squeezes hard, he insists, he pulls and pulls till all your innards are yanked out and the pain! We can't even talk about that. And then he stuffs them back, dirty, tangled and torn. It's up to you to do the stitching.

Harper: And then up you get. And walk around.

Mormon Mother: Just mangled guts pretending.

Harper: That's how people change.”

I was laid off this past week.

It's a little easier to type those words out, now that it's been a few days. When I first got the news, I tried my best to not cry in front of my boss (though I think he knew I was going to), but I couldn't stop all of the tears. I spent the next few days alternating between feeling numb, crying my eyes out, and screaming away my pain.

I knew my current job wasn't going to be forever, I just thought I'd stay on a few more years. I really liked my coworkers and bosses. I liked the work. I wanted things to go a lot differently.

I was content with how my life was going, even if it wasn't perfect.

Tuesday came, and the universe decided I needed a good hard b!tch slap.

Thankfully I'm in a better position than I thought, even if it's been difficult for me to see that through all of my emotions. I have a very loving and supportive family, even if it sometimes feels like they are trying to smother me. And I have some of the most wonderful friends a person could ever ask for.

Everyone is giving me really good advice and assuring me that it's not the end of the world...even if I still somewhat feel it is. I need to process all of my emotions before I can take my next steps.

I have no idea what's going to happen over the next few weeks, let alone the next few months. Well, I do know that my sister needs help with her wedding, so I have that on my agenda.

And I do have some good news to come out of this week. I received my first publication contract. One of my short stories will be appearing in the anthology Hell's Highway. It was wonderful news to come after being laid off.

The Mormon Mother's words on change are graphic, painful, and spot on. My body felt like it was being ripped to pieces on Tuesday.

Today, though I'm still sad and scared about what the future will bring, I'm doing a lot better. I'm more hopeful and positive.

Change is a constant of life. I may be resistant and try to avoid it, but I may have needed it.

Thank you all for reading and if you haven't seen it, please go watch "Angels in America".

If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off) please like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope you guys like hearing from me.

I might take next week off from writing since I need to dedicate some time to my sister's wedding. So I'll simply say, until next time.

Welcome to the Age of Machines

Happy Easter and Passover everyone. If you don't celebrate either well, Happy Sunday. I spent today cleaning and binge watching Supernatural (while cleaning). I mean I probably should have gone outside and enjoyed the nice weather (actually I did go to the gym, but that's still an "indoor" activity), but I really wanted to get my place ready for when my mother comes to visit next week. Watching Supernatural all day was an added bonus.

When I haven't been watching Supernatural, I've been enjoying watching the original Mystery Science Theater 3000 (thanks to Netflix). I'm going to try and finish the original series that they have up before starting on the new one. Luckily Netflix seems to enjoy a guy and his two robot friends criticizing bad old movies as much as I do.

Currently I'm watching an episode that features a Public Service Announcement on farming and how fresh vegetables are now available all year long in every part of the USA. Not going to lie, watching the the guy and the robots sing the praises of the almighty truck drivers is hysterical. Granted the PSA was probably made in the 1950s (give or take a decade as I'm never actually sure when it comes to old PSAs).

Despite the humorous antics from the robots, I can't help but notice how automated the farming process is, even back in the 50s. When you juxtapose it to the two robots making fun of it, it really hits home how much technology has changed.

Because let's be honest with ourselves, the greatest threat to our workforce is machines. 

If a robot or a computer can do it faster, better, and more cost efficient, you can bet they will replace the imperfect, slow human. You can see evidence of this going back to the turn of the century. Seriously, look at a picture of a bowling alley 100 years ago and you won't see machines resetting the pins, you'll young kids doing it. Once the bowling alleys were able to automate the pin setting process, the kids who set them were obsolete and had to find new jobs. Now you only see bowling pin setters in gym class.

That's just one example. There are hundreds of others and these types of changes have been accelerating since the industrial revolution. Horses have been replaced by cars. Lamps are used instead of candles to keep the lights on. Everyone has a laptop.

Being apart of a science fiction community has me almost constantly thinking about what types of machines we will have in the future. I mean it's hard to write science fiction without imagining the future machines we will have. Then again as soon as I dream up something to help me with my life, someone has patented it and started selling it within the year.

We are living in an amazing time. We have computers that fit in our back pockets and vaccines that have helped eliminate deadly diseases. And the future is even more exciting. Soon everyone might live in a Smart House (remember the Disney channel movie?) and have self driving cars. Drones will probably deliver the items we order online within minutes of us purchasing.

That's great, but it does raise one big question. What sort of jobs will there be in the future? If there aren't manufacturing jobs or jobs that require people to do the same thing over and over again, will there be something else for the people who originally had those jobs to do?

Certainly the age of the Internet has opened up a wide variety of possibilities, that is if everyone has access and can afford the costs. Many people have become Famous on YouTube without the help of TV executives or have started their own successful website without the use of a brick and mortar store. 

However, if robots can replace one set of jobs, isn't it theoretically possible that they could replace all jobs? Humans therefore wouldn't need to work, but they also might not have money/resources to buy the things that are being made by the robots.

Would humans therefore become obsolete?

That's a scary thought. 

I mean Mystery Science Theater 3000 has already demonstrated that two robots can replace humans as snarky film critics. Yeah sure, the robots aren't actually robots in the show (they're puppets), but we've seen examples of movies and TV shows influencing the types of technology that will come out in the future (see Star Trek for details). The Nostalgia Critic might have to worry he'll be replaced by a robot with a sarcastic program chip sooner rather than later.

Perhaps I'm reading too much into the technology available today. Perhaps I am worrying too much about the future and what sort of jobs will be available for the next generation. Or perhaps I am using my blog as a world building exercise for my own novel as I try to figure out what the economy is like 50 years into the future and you guys are my unfortunate captive audience.

Anything is possible in my mad world.

If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off) please like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope you guys like hearing from me.

And I swear I haven't been replaced by a robot...yet.

Until next week.