It’s usually around this time of year where I start to feel like I’m living alone on a space station. It’s cold and dark outside, I’m working from home so I can sometimes go days without leaving the house, and even when I do go outside I have to suit up like I’m going for an EVA. So I have space on the brain.

When I was a kid I was fascinated with space. When people asked what I wanted to do when I grew up I told them I wanted to be an aerospace engineer (I started out saying aeronautical but at some point someone told me that was outdated. I don’t even know f that’s true but I’ve held onto that “fact” since I was like nine years old).

Eventually I learned about things like the Challenger disaster and lived through the Columbia disaster. I decided at some point that I didn’t want to do something where if I fucked up people could die. So I played on the computer, modded maps in Halo 2, hung out with people from icodeviruses.net on IRC, Installed Linux on what was once family computer, and bought a copy of C++ for Dummies from the Half Price Books.

It led me to a lucrative career. Some still call me an engineer. And even after taking the one required ethics class I thought coding was basically harmless. It probably wasn’t until 2016 that my viewpoint really changed.

Now it is almost universally accepted that software and the Internet has caused the downfall of society or at least a lapse of social progress. We probably wouldn’t be in the situation we are in without Facebook and photoshop and cheap hosting.

But even if I had designed spaceships and airplanes I’d be working for Musk or Lockheed Martin.

What am I trying to say? Who knows. All I know is I don’t feel great. It is cold outside and I’m lonely and afraid.