Folding Laundry

Lazo got reprimanded for being on Instagram. ‘People are truly productive for about 2-3 hours a day’. ‘How to respond to ghosting’, ’23 ways to retire by 40’. He thought, ‘you should take your supplements consistently or not at all’. Otherwise, remember that your grandfather had none of those pills, tips and reels and relied purely on church once a week. There was no 30-day trial, nor was it sponsored (it was heavily sponsored), but he relied on the ritual of it. Never late, always in some brown-grey suit. He sat there for hours, I mean what a flex. He could sit with his thoughts. Then came mum’s generation. A little smothered from rules. Then in the 80s, that generation was seeing tobacco ads every two blocks. Now the thing is wellness. Drinking 2 litres of water and the like. Tobacco ads were banned by my birth year but parents wouldn’t lose it if they caught you smoking. But no more God. That was it. Secular, orderly and a bit deranged here and there. Everything was cool. Now nothing’s cool and everything is on Instagram. Everything you can desire: sandwiches, trainers, protein powders, vegan fur, functional mushroom gummies, models, war footage, financial trend-setting, fashion weeks, meal prep recipes with fermented lime, podcast revelations (thoughts girls have around 13), rainproof bike seats, premium ear plugs, beta testing of alarmingly shitty interfaces, antibacterial underwear, Snoopy merch, all-in-one lip gloss and liner, international news and so on. Give me an ad about Salomon hiking boots and I will desire a hike. In fact, I will believe I always desired to hike, I just lacked the right artisanal footwear. “What you want is already yours”. But imagine wanting something that no one else told you to want. Where would you even buy it?