icarus also flew
Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph.
-Jack Gilbert, Failing and Flying
This morning do i: 1) work to reverse 14+ erroneous “prohibited product” violations levied against the seed company TikTok - an app that is currently in a state of limbo and not even available to download right (prompting a runup on iPhone prices with the app preinstalled); or, 2) hammer out some interdisciplinary take on the endless stream of stories about the early days of Trump’s shock and awe assault on the administrative state; the moral panic around sex and gender, the Southern California wildfires that exemplify the meaning of the term polycrisis?
The latter path echoes creativity (albiet doom oriented) but also feels like a callback to a life i could have chosen as an academic or a working journalist.
The former path is just getting exhausting.
The seed company is at a very mature phase of its existence. It will turn 14 this June. I guess i can reluctantly call it an “institution.”*
Something that’s sunk in over this past year or so is where there was once creativity in the administrative work required to run the seed company - namely, the challenges of problems to solve and finding then implementing solutions - this has now mostly settled. On the day to day, most seed company work is a series of repetitive routines with little variation. And even as it is quite busy right now - and i’m grateful for the ease on my finances - the workload feels hollow because 2024 was the first down year in the company’s history and it if the opening of 2025 is representative of things it looks like it isn’t coming back.
So this morning both paths feel absurd.
By some measure i am probably exemplar of the American dream. I made a seed company from virtually nothing, save a few loans (one which was forgiven, thank you Caroline) and crowd funding. No intergenerational wealth. Perhaps even an entrepreneur in the more traditional sense (not the version government policy and tech giants use to erode worker rights and break unions.) Self made, meritocracy, bootstrapping my way to a mortgage and land.
By other measures i am a product of macro economic structural forces completely beyond my control. And these forces are frankly fucking over the vast majority of the people i know at an (for my life anyway) unprecedented pace. Far worse than me.
Free will is such a hallmark of an individualistic society (it’s also a useful rhetoric to craft regulations that diminish labor power and atomize human begins while tricking them into thinking they have agency). No likes to think their life is out of their control. However, it is undeniable to me that the logic of the economy carouses through my body and my positioning viz a viz market capitalism feels evermore determinate of the choices i make. Much like current events have a dark, nihilistic feel to them (even if most of the stuff that is happening under Trump II also happened under Biden in the cover of night), the overt lack of empathy and any complete detachment of humanistic rhetoric from nation and government imparts an extra level of meaningless and is emblematic of a world that feels utterly out of control.
Phenomenologically, in a few short years i’ve gone from having my hands on the wheel of destiny to being a perpetual series of reactions to a series of brush fires i can only pray won’t develop into a conflagration.
It’s just not fun anymore. i want my joy and levity back. i want to be in love and find a home. But by my own choice and circumstances above me this has never felt farther away.
*Speaking of institutions, Ivan turns 20 next month. I beyond grateful to have him as a companion for nearly half his life! Best thing that ever happened to me. Coupled with the age of the seed company i do feel like i have learned something about care and longevity.
