I was out in the woods rather desperate to walk and saw some of the spring trash. Since I was desperate I kept walking after feeling annoyed and judgmental, a little Well, I’m better than that. When it happened again I kept walking except I slowed down and thought, Why do I think I’m better just because I’m not littering right now?

Why do I think I’m better when I drove to get there, consuming time and gas, adding my exhaust and footprints. Which made me remember how clumsy I’ve been at weeding this spring, my big feet crunching Iris stems, my hands pulling out flower bulbs with cheatgrass.

Why do I think I’m better when every week I haul my share of trash to the garbage service, which drives it to the transfer station, where it gets mashed up with everyone else’s trash, then loaded into a bigger truck, then driven a couple hundred miles to I think a landfill in Mountain Home, not really sure. How is that better than any other way?

And why do I think I’m better just because I drive a teenager Prius, which might give me weird permission to drive a little more and be self-righteous.

Let’s go back to the woods, where I’d rather be anyway. I think I’m better because I love to walk, versus the guy who loves to motor bikes on the trail that we all help to make dusty. He might think he’s better because he brought the chainsaw to chop the fallen tree so the trail is open. He moved the tree pieces out of the way too and paid for whatever gas blend the saw needs so he can motor through and I can keep walking.

I think I’m better because I don’t use AI which might be why I’m writing all these run-ons because I’m kinda pissed about it using up so much energy and likely to ruin things I’m not able to predict. Except every time I do a Google search which seems like more and more and open my gmail or now messages they have that little AI preview I never asked for, don’t want, and feel too busy tired lazy to figure out how to switch off.

I don’t think I’m better any more. I think I’m really behind, uninformed, and dated, maybe obsolete. I was thinking the other day about the book I’ve been writing for a couple decades or so all on my own, and how if I gave AI a prompt it would probably spit out the whole thing. That rather terrifies me.

And now I’m not sure of my point, which thankfully keeps me as a human. Oh, something about the ridiculousness of thinking I’m better when I’ve been a fool the whole time. And maybe there’s some kind of relief or something nice about that.