When the lights go out

Dear Diary, 08/24/2103

Sometimes, but not very often, I miss how things used to be. Before everything went to hell and got messed up. I miss being able to drive everywhere I wanted to and fly everywhere a car couldn’t reach. I miss listening to electric lofi music with my Airpods. I remember how stoked I was when earbud headphones went wireless. That was one of my biggest issues back then. Getting my headphone cords snagged throughout the day. I miss my phone too. Being able to learn anything at the speed of light. Calling or texting anyone anywhere across the world. Nowadays, I can’t even begin to imagine where some of my friends and families are. I know where they were when everything went down, but now I have no clue. I miss my parents a lot and I have tried to write letters to them, but I never seem to get any back. Maybe the Postal Service hasn’t figured out how to fully revert yet. Not very many things have been able to revert back to the old ways quite yet. Actually, I think reverting is a relatively new thing that is still kind of catching on. Like slang and Silly Bands. Or One Direction. God, I even miss One Direction. I just want music back... Anyways, not many people have been able to figure out a way to use old, pre-modern techniques to replace the huge loss of modern-day technology.

I’m pretty proud of myself though. I have been able to figure out some cool reverting hacks. My cooking might be even better than before technology died out. And I am a hell of a lot more in shape. Having to walk or bike everywhere really keeps you fit. All that had to happen was for all electricity everywhere to go out. I am thinking about getting a horse sometime soon though for more long-distance travel. I have seen a few people out with horses and it’s a pretty cool idea. I completely forgot that horses were like the main mode of transportation in the old days, but I guess there is a reason they have been around so long.

There have been some pretty wild new things I keep hearing about that different extreme revertist groups have been pushing. But there are also some wild pitches from the rebooters promising they can get technology back up. Every other day or so I hear that they promise it’ll be back within the next week. That week seems to get longer and longer each time I hear about their announcements. The revertists are starting to push getting rid of all different kinds of currencies and converting to one worldwide currency since the banks have basically imploded. I think that makes some sense. I mean, if people do eventually get back to traveling, they have to be able to pay for stuff and it makes sense that what we all would pay with is easier to find and doesn’t need to be manufactured using electrical equipment. I honestly think technology will be down for a long while, but I am ok with that. Humanity did just fine long before technology popped off and I am sure we can be fine without it once again.

Watching it all get wiped out was pretty crazy though. I was working in a simple sit-down restaurant when everything went to shit. I actually got to see it all play out because I was out back of the restaurant, smoking on my break. I was scrolling through the app Twitter, watching these crazy weather updates. Earth at this point had been having crazy weather updates for like 70 years prior due to climate change and environmental issues, but this year had been especially bad. On that day, the clouds where I was, in Nebraska, were the darkest grey I had ever seen. They were nearly black. They swallowed up every ray of sunshine that even attempted to get through. Scrolling through Twitter, I found out that Nebraska wasn’t the only place with these storm clouds. They were all over the US, scattered randomly. The thunder came shortly after the clouds filled up the whole sky. We got lots of storms in Nebraska, so thunder wasn’t anything new to me, but this thunder literally vibrated through my bones so hard I thought they would disintegrate. Tweets about the abnormally loud thunder flooded my timeline as more thunder rolls shattered the afternoon sky. One of my managers came out and looked up at the sky before cursing under her breath and ducking back inside. Right as the door clicked behind her, a giant lightning bolt hit a car in a nearby parking lot, sending it up at least 7 feet in the air and onto another car. I screamed super loud, but it was covered up by the lightning and thunder.

Within the next 48 hours, everywhere in the world was hit by that monstrous thunder and lightning. The lightning was so bad, it completely wiped out all electricity and technology. Scientists supposedly say that it created some kind of electrical atmosphere on Earth making it impossible to boot up any kind of tech again, but I can’t exactly Google that anymore.

So now I am living in a world without technology. Or electricity. Everyone is still losing their minds. It’s been six months now and people are still acting crazy. There are all kinds of fights every day over things like property and commodities, things are being looted, no one knows what is happening. And everyone is scared. It doesn’t help that everyone in my town is in denial about technology coming back. They all put their trust in the governments and scientists and people they don’t know to restore everything. I was never a huge technology fan in the first place. For me personally, it created more problems than it fixed. So I am perfectly content living in a no tech world, though it did take some getting used to. I slept a whole 18 hours one day in the first two weeks because I didn’t really have any way to mark time. I couldn’t think of anything to do either. Eventually my body kind of adjusted to rising and falling with the sun. Then I started painting more to fill my days. I found an old empty art store that had hardly been touched where I stocked up on stuff. After I got better at painting I started drawing and sketching more. Then I found a card playing partner in a nearby park. We talked about trying chess next week, so we’ll see how that goes. Now my days go by pretty fast and I actually think I enjoy them more than I enjoyed spending all my free time on Instagram or Facebook. Most people in my area still haven’t figured out how to revert and they are driving me nuts. It’s getting real rough here. Lots of fighting and angry attempts to imitate technology.

My plan currently is to pack up all the things I need and want and head towards the Northwest coast. I have heard some stories about communes that have set up camp there that I think I would really like. Apparently, at one of them, they wear heart-shaped lockets. I saw that as a sign because when I was 11 my mom gave me a heart shaped locket that was engraved with her favorite quote. “Always follow your heart”. I think she would like to live in this technology-free world too. She was never really a big technology fan. She only dealt with it because she had to I think. She always used to take me on hikes and tell me that the wind blowing through the tree leaves was the wind and trees singing together. She was also a really big advocate of speaking against climate change.

My parents were divorced so I bounced back and forth between living with them. I eventually chose to stay with my mom full time because she was a green freak and I loved it. She recycled religiously, and made sure to compost everything, she made art out of recycled products and sold them, donating the profit to green projects. We even had chickens in the backyard to get eggs from and goats to keep the yard maintained. People loved coming to parties she held in the backyard because it was decorated with really cool couches and pillows and twinkle lights. You felt like you were in a relaxing paradise on that patio. It was my favorite place to hang out as a kid. That is one piece of electricity I miss. Twinkle lights. Candles are a good replacement though.

Maybe if I follow my heart, it’ll lead me to my mom. I just want to make sure she is ok. I haven’t heard from her in so long. I’m sure she is totally fine though. She would love this, getting to play Survivor. That was her guilty pleasure show that we would watch together every week. I always made fun of her because she took notes. She always said, “you never know when all the lights will go out.”