Millennial Insincerity and Cutting the Crap

Once upon a time, I wrote a rough draft of a novel about a young man who despised the modern world so much, he wore his dead grandfather’s clothes and went to live in his dilapidated house. It was a piece of junk, but after I buried it in my drawer, I realized what I’d been doing all along. I’d been subconsciously teaching myself a lesson: you can’t live in the past. As much as he may be alienated from the geist of the age, a man - and especially a man who fancies himself a writer - must engage contemporary society to some extent. That does not mean he ought to surrender to its errors or laud it over the past, but the present is where we all live, and we must live in it.