O.W. Root

Everything and everyone is saturated to the gills with political commentary, hot takes, discourse, and pissed-off snark. People and the internet are so filled with all of this they don’t really have time or space for anything else.

Longtime followers know that I think this whole culture and drift is toxic and erodes the human spirit and the possibility of culture and life. You also know I am most interested in writing about, talking photos of, and exploring life in our modern world. Trying to make, and document, (honest) life as art in our age of clickbait-algo spectator reactive discourse.

For the past six months I have been working on compiling a collection of short essays and vignettes I have written over the years into a single print volume and I am thrilled to share it with you.

In curating this collection for print I was adamant about a few things.

I wanted a classic, simple, beautiful design inside and out.

I wanted a book that you could carry around, toss on your bed, put in your pocket, shove in your bag, manhandle on the beach, write in, write on, and everything else in-between.

For me, the point of this collection isn’t to produce an epic hardcover tome. It’s something more informal and approachable. Something simpler and relatable.

I’ve always loved those little paperbacks. You know, the ones they say they aren’t going to make anymore. Well, I want to still make them or something similar to them. I wanted this collection to be as close as possible to that rugged, personal, carefree spirit.

The book itself is about 5 in. X 7.75 in.. About as small as you can get these days. The design is simple and (hopefully) timeless, the font is warm, the margins are ample, and the pieces honest.

There’s a link in my linktree / bio to Amazon where you can Buy Modern Lives. Or of course, just search Amazon as we all so often do and that will work just as well.

No politics, no hot-takes, no reaction, no discourse; just life.

How a memory feels

There is large scale demoralization propaganda that has been going on for a long time. It infects and covers a massive range. Sometimes all it takes is a few pushes of the snowball, other times it takes relentless pressure.

This is the kind of asymmetrical influence and pollution that is pushed by those who want to see things get worse. It's so nefarious because it may tap into some partial truth but is exaggerated and simplified and then turned up to 11 to have maximum corrosive impact.

A good way to identify this kind of doom propaganda and manipulation is consider how many of the ideas or "observations" you realized on your own by virtue of observing the world vs how many were fed to you by the algorithm. A remarkable amount of the things people take at face value weren't realized independently or learned but were demoralization slop fed to them.

Of course, someone could say, "Well that's just called learning new information! You always learn it from another source." Yes, that's true. That is learning. But we aren't talking about a library here. We are talking about a 24/7 brainrot machine being weaponized to screw you up and make you and everything worse.

You really think it's a coincidence that so many things people have learned online just so happen to make them miserable or mad at the world? You really aren't more enlightened than the normies who are "clueless", you have just been manipulated and think you are the smart one.

One year ago our third was born.

Hilariously and not at all planned that way, all our kids have birthdays within a few weeks of each other and so this is basically our birthday season at the Root House. I suppose our fourth will be the odd one out being born in winter.

The few years in-between our second and third had a lot of really unfortunate things happen. I don’t know why it was but it was and it wasn’t great. So when we found out we were expecting her, our third, it was just such an exciting blessing. That summer was full of such anticipation and happiness. That was a glorious summer. One of our best. I remember that feeling seeing her for the first time after such a hard few years and such a long labor and it felt like such a release or some kind of arrival or reset. I don’t know. It wasn’t only because she is a new human being in our world and family. That feeling is always there with a new baby, but it was also beyond only her and it felt like it was the end of that time, the marking of a new time, a reminder that things can go right, and that life is good. God we cried so much when we saw her.

She is such a good baby and such a fun baby. She smiles so much and loves trying to keep up with the kids. I think she gets more attention than our other kids did because she has more people around her all the time making her laugh and all that. Our kids are homeschooled so the older kids are always playing with her all day. She, more than the other kids, and by virtue of being the third, just slid right into our family routine so easily and happily and she’s just along for the ride taking trips, rocking and rolling, and smiling so much.

We wanted to grow our family and have a third so bad and it was one of the best things we did. She is such a special blessing. Me and the older kids were talking today about how she has brought so much joy to our lives this past year and they are already forgetting what life was like before her.

Every one is a blessing.