Personal Update: Camping Trip, Deep Reflection on our Bleak Future

I just got back from a few days of camping. I stayed at Balsam Lake Provincial Park.

I have a few photos I took from the trip:

I love my Portable BBQ I bought last year!

The tent site I had setup for myself

Campfire I had started using the “reverse pyramid” campfire technique

I took the trip for a few reasons:

1. I was sick of being quarantined at home for so long

2. I was feeling kind of burned out from everything pretty much

3. I want to enjoy my life while I’m still in my 20’s!!

4. I kind of felt like I needed to get away and experience some nature to really think through some high level stuff I’ve been thinking about the future

I had some insights, but also it was just relaxing. I was thinking about a lot of personal life stuff, but today, I wanted to include some of the relevant topics I was thinking about over the trip that you might find interesting:

1. Inflation - where I live in the Greater Toronto Area, the average price of a 3 bedroom detached home has gone up from about $800K to $1.3 million just this year alone. It’s really, really, starting to look like most people my age will never able to afford a home (that’s even with the new kinds of disgusting 30 year debt slave mortgages the banks here are starting to offer). The rental market is starting to experience some very adverse, deeply unfair behaviour too. Also, I bought a bottle of Mayo for my trip and was shocked to learn that it cost $10. Everything is just becoming way more expensive. What does this mean about the next 10 years ahead of us?

2. Government ineptitude - I have never been big on government bureaucracy as it is, but I really don’t expect government to change or help people in an any meaningful way this decade. Things will not change. The price of housing and essential goods will continue to go up. They will leave us to fend for ourselves. This is especially true for millenials in their 20’s like me. I have a firm belief that the government of Canada protects all minorities except young people. We are the forgotten minority that has no actual protection and is openly exploited in every meaningful way in our society.

3. The end of programming? - Github copilot is nascent now, yes, but what will I be doing 10 years from now when there’s the possibility that AI may be writing a lot of the frontend code I currently do now for a living?

4. COVID-19 - I can’t say much here as I am not an expert, but what do the variants mean for life going forward this decade? From what I’m reading, The Black Plauge lasted several years. Could we see a whole decade of booster shots, outbreaks, and more firefighting with emerging COVID-19 variants? Is, “life going back to normal” just an illusion? Keep in mind, many parts of the world do not have access to the vaccine like Canada and the US, what kinds of variants are forming right now?

5. Life after baby boomers - will baby boomers finally start to retire? What will the effects of baby boomer turnover mean for government leadership, the housing market, city life/urban design, and taxation policy?

6. I have a lot of projects going on at the moment, but I’ve been wrestling with the idea of just going full YouTube. I can imagine 10 years from now YouTube will be even more influential and powerful than it is now. What sorts of opportunities will be available if I spent more time on the channel?

Even though many of these are dark topics, the trip was still really enjoyable. I think I have some vision forming in my head about what the next 10 years could be like. I encourage you to not only enjoy the summer weather now, but to take time to reflect on the future and more importantly your role in it.