Today is the future.
There's probably a lot of people around the internet talking and writing about it, but feck them. This is my place. This is where I occasionally talk and write.
I can honestly say I've been waiting for today for as long as I can remember. I first saw Back to the Future Part II at some point in the early nineties. I can't have been older than seven. At the end I had to ask my Mum what "To be concluded" meant. I probably used that word a lot in the next few weeks. New words are fun.
Here's a new word: Extropalgia - noun - A fond reflection, thought or memory about the future. At least that's according to one reddit user.
I loved Back to the Future's future. Not just because of the flying cars, hover-boards and miniature fusion reactors but because it was so close, not like Star Trek. I remember working out the maths in my head, failing, and then getting a calculator instead. Wow, I'll be 28. That's so oooooold. I was going to live in the future and it would be great.
I'm not going to claim that this movie is the reason I'm a nerd or anything like that. That ship had long since sailed. I was reading at two, always loved learning about new things and when I was given my first football I used it as a chair so I could read in the garden without sitting on the grass.
That kid knew what he liked.
So here I sit, in a future I've longed for since I was knee high to ... a thing that has knees at a child's head level. An elephant maybe? That's beside the point. The future's here. What's next?
I'm not where I thought I would be but looking back on it I probably wasn't cut out to be a scientist studying jellyfish in Sligo. For one, I'm not really that fond of swimming in the ocean. What was I thinking?
If not that, then what? Who knows? That little kid, sitting enraptured on the sitting room floor didn't have all the answers. He didn't stop looking for them though. I think I'll keep looking. My future hasn't been written yet. No-one's has. It's whatever you make it. Let's make it a good one.