Goooooood morning, people.

Or whatever your timezone is.

I was just going through my notes—total chaos, by the way, I seriously need to organize them ASAP—but that’s not the point here. So, I was sifting through this glorious mess and found a note simply titled Thursday. Opened it, and it said: “It is already November, eh?”

Clearly, I was trying to write something profound, opened Obsidian, created a new note, typed this one sentence, and promptly gave up. Probably some existential dread set in, and I had to lie down for a bit.

Well, guess what? It’s freaking January 2025. How’s that for a depressing thought? The last year of the first quarter of the 21st century. A quarter of a century. It’s… wild.

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Yesterday I found myself mindlessly scrolling through Instagram reels, as one does at my age, when I stumbled upon a video from a woman roughly my age (I’m guessing, based on the existential exhaustion in her voice)(jk jk). She was talking about how in 1999, the world was preparing for absolute annihilation. When the clocks struck midnight and we entered the dreaded year 2000, the sky would fall, computers would fail, and society would crumble into chaos.

I barely remember the headlines—because, well, I was 10—but believe me, they were WILD. And remember newspapers? Yeah, they were full of it.

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Anyway, speaking of questionable predictions about the future, my fiancé and I recently rewatched Highlander, and after we finished it, I read the description for the second movie. Let me just paste it here for you:

Set in the year 2024, the plot concerns Connor MacLeod, who regains his youth and immortal abilities and must free Earth from the Shield, an artificial ozone layer that has fallen under the control of a corrupt corporation.

Mind you, this movie was made in 1991.

And that’s what I’m trying to say—my generation grew up surrounded by movies set in the “near future”—2000, 2010, 2020. And guess what? Every single one of them was kinda apocalyptic in one way or another. Haha.

Even that gem with Wesley Snipes and Sylvester Stallone, Demolition Man. My dudes and dudettes, I think we’re just about ready to finally use the three seashells. We’ve got seven years left. (Because, you know, the movie is set in 2032.)

And don’t even get me started on Minority Report. I swear some people watched that movie and went, “Oh, a to-do list! Let’s make all of this happen!”

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SO WHAT I’M TRYING TO SAY IS:

The year is 2025. Millennials, in particular, have been subjected to years of cinematic trauma. We were young, impressionable, and pretty much convinced the future would be grim, dark, and full of ‘enhanced security measures’, robot killers, and aliens using us as hosts… and many more. Absolute banger classics, mind you!

We were also kind of hoping for space exploration to take off by now… Warp drives, deep space missions, maybe a Federation or two. But hey, no luck there either. Still waiting, NASA. No pressure, but where’s my Starfleet application?

But here we are—alive and well—without flying cars, without dystopian megacities, but with social media algorithms that know what we want before we do. So, I guess the future isn’t all bad. Right? … Right?

In conclusion: life’s weird, I’m still waiting for my hoverboard, and I’ll see you all in 2032 when we finally figure out the seashells.

Stay safe out there folks.

Commodore Bo, out.