Cinemorphosis

Tag: life

  • My Watch Hobby Has Taught Me That Consumerism Can Become a Full-Time Job Resulting in Madness

    My Watch Hobby Has Taught Me That Consumerism Can Become a Full-Time Job Resulting in Madness

    Experience has taught me that one more watch could push me from “mild enthusiast” to full-blown horological lunatic. I currently own seven watches I like. Each serves a function, fills a niche, scratches an aesthetic itch. And yet, the siren song of three very specific timepieces keeps playing in my head: the Tudor Pelagos, the Seiko Astron SBXD025, and the Citizen Attesa CC4105-69E.

    These aren’t idle cravings. They’re fully staged daydreams with lighting, music, and a voiceover narrated by my inner Watch Demon. But I resist. And I resist for three very good reasons.

    First: Trying to fit more watches into my already-balanced rotation turns my so-called hobby into a logistical nightmare. It’s no longer joyful—it’s wrist-based Uber driving, shuttling watches in and out of rotation like I’m managing a fleet. I find myself resenting time itself for not giving me enough wrist hours to justify the collection. A hobby should not feel like an unpaid internship.

    Second: I fall into the delusion that this next purchase—the Pelagos, the Astron, the Attesa—will be the final watch, the one that ends the madness and ushers in a golden era of contentment and minimalist grace. But let’s be honest: feeding the Watch Demon only sharpens its teeth. Every new arrival rewires the brain for more dopamine hits, not less. It’s not a cure. It’s a catalyst.

    Third: Whenever I buy a new watch, something twisted happens—I begin to resent the ones I already own. Not because they’ve failed me, but because I need to invent reasons to justify their exit. The logic goes: “This new watch is more versatile,” or “I’ve outgrown that one.” Then I sell a beloved watch, feel instant regret, and enter the soul-destroying loop of rebuying what I never should have sold.

    So what’s the solution? Lately, a single thought has been rising above the noise like a lighthouse in the fog:
    “Jeff, put on your Tuna.”
    Specifically, my Seiko Tuna SBBN049—possibly the most salient, most “me” watch I own. When it’s on my wrist, I don’t think about the next acquisition. I don’t scroll listings or pace the floor of my psyche looking for the next horological fix. I’m just… good.

    Maybe that’s the Truth Path: stop chasing. Start wearing. Let the Tuna do its quiet, oversized magic and get back to the point of all this—joy, not inventory management.

  • Crying at the Sink: The Dishwashing Grammy Awards

    Crying at the Sink: The Dishwashing Grammy Awards

    Don’t ask me why, but there’s something about doing dishes after dinner that turns me into a soft-focus emotional wreck. Somewhere between the soap suds and the rinse cycle, I cue up Rickie Lee Jones’s “Living It Up”—one of my all-time favorite songs—and without fail, it punctures the heart like a stiletto dipped in nostalgia. Tonight, it brought on another weepy micro-moment, which means it’s time to officially give it The Most Likely to Make Me Cry from Too Much Beauty Award.

    This of course sent me spiraling into my own kitchen-sink Grammy ceremony, where I began handing out awards like a deranged emotional sommelier.

    • Todd Rundgren’s “Can We Still Be Friends” wins The Song That Makes You Recommit to Being a Half-Decent Human Being Award. It’s the sonic equivalent of an awkward apology after ruining Thanksgiving.
    • The Isley Brothers’ “Living for the Love of You” earns The Track Most Likely to Be Playing in Heaven When You Arrive Award—assuming heaven has good speakers and excellent taste.
    • Yes’s “And You and I” takes home The Sounds-Like-It-Was-Composed-by-Angels-on-a-Mountain-Top Award. I don’t know what dimension that song came from, but it wasn’t this one.
    • John Mayer’s “No Such Thing” is given The Makes You Happy to Be a Living, Breathing Fool Award. It’s that rare pop song that makes you want to fist-pump your own mediocrity.
    • The Sundays’ “You’re Not the Only One I Know” walks away with The Makes Sadness So Gorgeous You Forget to Be Upset Award. It’s a musical sigh pressed between lace and rain.

    I could keep going—my brain has a whole red carpet lined up—but I’ve got another episode of Sirens on Netflix to cry through. Turns out the best part of my day is a cross between dish soap, beautiful songs, and low-level existential unraveling. What a life.

  • Dreams of Debt, Pastries, and Postponed Purpose

    Dreams of Debt, Pastries, and Postponed Purpose

    I dreamed I was working in a café—one of those indie joints that sells artisanal pastries dusted with powdered irony—while slogging through my Master’s in English. Picture a barista apron slung over a grad student’s existential dread.

    I carried a phone that wasn’t just smart—it was sorcerous. With one tap, it summoned a stream of music from a satellite orbiting somewhere above Earth’s pettiness. This music wasn’t Spotify-tier. It was celestial—otherworldly symphonies that made Bach sound like background noise at a carwash. The entire café basked in it, as if rapture had been accidentally triggered over the scones.

    Then he appeared. A mysterious man—part career counselor, part trickster god—told me that if I attended a career convention, I could buy a van for my family. Not just any van. A magical, dream-fulfilling van priced at $400, which in dream economics is about the cost of a single textbook in grad school.

    The convention was a riot of lanyards and desperation. Voices swirled about the final class I needed to finish my degree: the dreaded seminar with Professor Boyd, a real professor from my waking life, whose lectures felt like intellectual CrossFit and whose office smelled faintly of despair and dry-erase markers.

    I never found the van man.

    The dream logic began to wobble. Doubt crept in like a late fee. I wandered through the convention’s gray carpeted purgatory and began rehearsing how I’d tell my family we would remain vanless, bound to our modest, immobile fate.

    And then—like a plot twist penned by a sentimental sportswriter—I ran into two Hawaiian brothers I hadn’t seen since Little League. We were kids once. They were legends. One of them, Wesley, struck me out four times in a single game, and I still remembered the way the ball moved like it had free will. Decades later, we were all adrift—middle-aged, mildly broke, and marvelously unsure of ourselves.

    We stood there, in that convention center of failed ambitions and discounted dreams, and talked about what we could’ve been. I told them they had enough charisma to turn their names into brands. I hugged Wesley and said, “You struck me out four times, and it’s a privilege to see you again.”

    None of us had a career. But we had memories. And love. And the unspeakable beauty of a satellite song that once played over cinnamon rolls.

  • Kafka Called—He Wants His Nightmare Back

    Kafka Called—He Wants His Nightmare Back

    Last night’s dream was less REM sleep and more bureaucratic farce with automotive stunt work. It started with me sprinting into a liquor store—not for booze, but for groceries, because apparently, in dream logic, milk and bananas are shelved next to Jack Daniels and scratchers. The plaza was wedged next to a police station, and as I pulled into the lot, I grazed another car. Minor fender-bender. Did I report it? Of course not. I had perishables. Yogurt waits for no man.

    Soon after, the cops called. Apparently, they frown upon drive-away accidents, even ones that involve $3.99 rotisserie chickens. Dutifully, I set off for the station, where fate promptly mocked me.

    As I crossed the street, a silver Porsche came screaming down the road like it was late for a yacht meeting. Behind the wheel was a rich guy with the glossy detachment of a man who names his houseplants after Nietzsche quotes. He swerved to avoid hitting a stray Siamese cat—an act of mercy that nearly murdered me. I dodged, lost control, and promptly rear-ended a parked car. Yes: I got in a car crash on my way to report a previous car crash.

    Inside the station, things went from absurd to surreal. The desk captain was none other than Todd, a former San Quentin prison guard I used to train with back in the ‘70s. Todd had the physique of a worn punching bag and the unmistakable face of Larry from The Three Stooges—if Larry had done time in corrections and smoked Kools for thirty years.

    Todd was unimpressed with my double-crash disclosure. He squinted at me like I was a damaged clipboard and muttered something like, “You ever thought of Canada?”

    Canada, in this dreamscape, was not a country but a penal colony for the mildly broken. A rehab center for the emotionally overdrawn. It wasn’t maple leaves and healthcare—it was despair with a windchill. The entire nation had collapsed into an encampment of defunct influencers and men who thought podcasts were a substitute for therapy. No plumbing, no cash, just bartering and tents. People traded AA batteries and protein bars like it was the yard at Pelican Bay.

    A man named Damon—he was 34, depressed, and once had a viral TikTok about the deep state—gave me the grand tour of my future. He pointed to the shell of a trailer I’d be assigned, complete with a tarp roof and a milk crate toilet. “It’s provisional,” he said, as if permanence were even an option.

    I immediately regretted migrating to Dream-Canada. I wanted to go back to the police station, fix the record, beg forgiveness, and reclaim my life of yogurt-based negligence. But that’s where the dream froze.

    I woke up to the smell of coffee. My wife was getting ready for work. Civilization, still intact—for now.

  • The Driveway Diaries: A Confession from the Curb

    The Driveway Diaries: A Confession from the Curb

    I live in Southern California’s golden triangle of suburban prestige: safe streets, sky-high property values, and public schools so highly rated they practically demand tuition. But on weekends and holidays, my block transforms into a theme park of inflatable bounce castles, fold-out chairs, and off-brand DJ booths—all courtesy of neighboring homeowners hosting backyard fiestas for their tiny heirs.

    With festivity comes the scourge: street congestion. Cars squeeze themselves into curbside crevices like sardines in a midlife crisis. They stack and cram and sidle up so tight to my house you’d think we were giving away parking validation and carne asada.

    Every so often, a guest parks with their bumper edging an inch—an inch—into the edge of my newly repaved driveway. A driveway I paid for myself because city bureaucracy shrugged and pointed to tree roots like they were an Act of God. That innocent slab of concrete cost me $5,500. Every time a Honda Pilot sniffs it without permission, I feel like I’m watching someone use my toothbrush.

    Still, I try to be Zen. I tell myself: “People want to be here. This isn’t intrusion. It’s affirmation. I am so blessed to live in a place so desirable, others will risk a petty homeowner’s wrath just to brush against my apron.”

    Then there’s the nightly ritual across the street. My neighbors, bless them, have adopted my driveway as part of their sacred reverse-entry protocol. They swing into my drive like a fighter pilot locking onto a carrier, headlights blazing through my living room window while I’m watching a true crime doc with my wife. Then they shift into reverse and back into their own driveway like they’re starring in a Ford commercial for backing-in bravado.

    Again, I resist the pettiness. I whisper: “What an honor to share my $5,500 slab of artisanal pavement. The city may have abandoned me, but I haven’t abandoned my commitment to grace.”

    But some nights, I spiral. I see my empty driveway (because my Honda is parked dutifully inside the garage like a respectable introvert) and I grow suspicious. “They’re circling,” I think. “Someone’s going to claim this space. They’re going to park smack in the middle of my private driveway, right under the basketball hoop I haven’t used since 2008.”

    In my darkest moments, I fantasize about war. “Let them try it,” I growl internally. “I’ll tow them. I’ll call the police. I’ll lawyer up. I’ll blog about it to my three dozen loyal followers and publicly shame their license plate into eternity.”

    And just when I think I’ve shaken off my paranoia, the sirens come. Always the sirens. I live wedged between two hospitals, so I’m serenaded hourly by ambulance howls and the Doppler wail of emergency response. It’s like being reminded every ten minutes that death is always trending.

    The crowded streets don’t help. It’s not just congestion—it’s existential compression. The world is full. There’s no more room. Civilization is a Jenga tower one move away from collapse.

    And still, I try to be kind. I try to be sane. “I’m not petty,” I tell myself. “I’m not paranoid. I’m just emotionally literate.”

    So I do what I’ve always done: I go to the piano. I sit and play one of the hundreds of songs I’ve written since I was sixteen. The music softens the beast. It wraps my dread in a velvet ribbon of minor chords. Unfortunately, all my songs sound vaguely identical—like clones from the same melancholy womb. But I take what I can get.

    If twenty minutes of recycled piano sadness gives me peace in the suburbs, then I’ll sit at that bench and bleed quietly into the keys. No apologies.

  • Why I Don’t Read Happiness Essays (and Neither Should You)

    Why I Don’t Read Happiness Essays (and Neither Should You)

    Arthur Brooks is a best-selling author, a man of clear intellect, solid decency, and enough charm to disarm even a hardened cynic. I read one of his books, From Strength to Strength, which tackles the subject of happiness with insight, elegance, and more than a few glimmers of genuine wisdom. For a week or so, I even took his ideas seriously—pondering the slow fade of professional relevance, the shift from fluid to crystallized intelligence, and the noble art of growing old with grace.

    And then I moved on with my life.

    What I didn’t move on from, unfortunately, was the onslaught of Brooks’ happiness essays in The Atlantic. They appear like clockwork, regular as a multivitamin—each one another serving of cod liver oil ladled out with the same hopeful insistence: “Here, take this. It’s good for you.” The problem isn’t Arthur Brooks. It’s happiness itself. Or rather, happiness writing—that genre of glossy, over-smoothed, well-meaning counsel that now repels me like a therapy dog that won’t stop licking your face during a panic attack.

    Let me try to explain why.

    1. The Word “Happiness” Is Emotionally Bankrupt

    The term happiness is dead on arrival. It lands with the emotional resonance of a helium balloon tied to a mailbox. It evokes cotton candy, county fairs, and the faded joy of children playing cowboys and Indians—an aesthetic trapped in amber. It feels unserious, childish even. I can’t engage with it as a concept because it doesn’t belong in the adult vocabulary of meaning-making. It’s not that I reject the state of being happy—I’m just allergic to calling it that.

    2. It Feels Like Cod Liver Oil for the Soul

    Brooks’ essays show up with the regularity and charm of a concerned mother armed with a spoonful of something you didn’t ask for. I click through The Atlantic and there it is again: another gentle lecture on how to optimize my inner light. It’s no longer nourishment. It’s over-parenting via prose.

    3. Optimizing Happiness Is a Ridiculous Fantasy

    Some of Brooks’ formulas for increasing happiness start to feel like they were dreamed up by a retired actuary trying to convert existential dread into a spreadsheet. As if flourishing could be reduced to inputs and outputs. As if there’s a number on the dial you can crank up if you just follow the steps. It’s wellness-by-algorithm, joy-by-numbers. I’m not a stock portfolio. I’m a human being. And happiness doesn’t wear a Fitbit.

    4. Satire Has Already Broken the Spell

    Anthony Lane, in his New Yorker essay “Can Happiness Be Taught?,”
    dismantled this whole genre with surgical wit. Once you’ve read a masterful takedown of this kind of earnest life-coaching prose, it’s impossible to take it seriously again. Like seeing the zipper on a mascot costume, the magic disappears. You’re just watching a grown-up in a plush suit tell you to breathe and smile more.

    5. I Like Things That Exist in the World

    I’m interested in things with friction and form—things you can grip, build, question, deconstruct. Music. Technology. Communication tools. Exercise. Love. Psychological self-sabotage. You know, the good stuff. Happiness, as a subject, has all the density of vapor. It’s more slogan than substance, and when I see it trotted out as a destination, I start scanning for exits.

    6. It’s a Hot Tub Full of Bromides

    I have no interest in an adult ed class on happiness led by a relentlessly upbeat instructor talking about “mindfulness” and “centeredness” with the fixed grin of someone who has replaced coffee with optimism. I can already hear the buzzwords echoing off the whiteboard. These classes are group therapy in a coloring book—pastel platitudes spoon-fed to the emotionally dehydrated.

    7. It’s Not Self-Help. It’s Self-Surveillance

    Let’s be honest: a lot of happiness literature feels like a soft form of control. Smile more. Meditate. Adjust your attitude. If you’re not happy, it must be something you’re doing wrong. It’s capitalism’s way of gaslighting your suffering. Don’t look outward—don’t question the system, the politics, the institutions. Just recalibrate your “mindset.” In this sense, the language of happiness is more pacifier than pathfinder.

    So yes, Arthur Brooks writes well. He thinks clearly. He’s probably a better person than I am. But his essays on happiness make me recoil—not because they’re wrong, but because they speak a language I no longer trust. I don’t want to be managed, monitored, or optimized. I want to be awake. I want to be challenged. And if I’m lucky, I’ll get to experience the real stuff of life—anger, beauty, confusion, connection—not just a frictionless simulation of contentment.

    Happiness can keep smiling from the other side of the screen. I’ve got kettlebells to swing.

  • Echo-Chamber Fatigue: When Trusted Media Starts to Sound Like Static

    Echo-Chamber Fatigue: When Trusted Media Starts to Sound Like Static

    For years, I counted The Bulwark and The Atlantic among the few media outlets that seemed to keep their heads above water. Thoughtful, principled, and often sharp in their critique, they offered a sense of clarity during a time when the political center felt like it was collapsing under the weight of tribalism. I read The Atlantic with the same reverence people once reserved for the Sunday paper. I tuned into The Bulwark’s podcasts with eagerness, particularly the sparring matches and tag-team lamentations of Sarah Longwell and JVL.

    But lately, something’s shifted.

    I’ve been struggling to name the feeling exactly—disenchantment, disconnection, even a touch of annoyance. It’s not that they’ve suddenly started publishing bad takes (though no one’s immune to that). It’s more that I’ve come to feel like I’m listening to the same looped monologue. Their arguments are often cogent, yes, but increasingly predictable—a chorus of like-minded voices rehearsing the same concerns, circling the same drain.

    Call it echo-chamber fatigue.

    The Bulwark, once a clarion voice of principled conservatism and a fierce watchdog against authoritarianism, now often feels like a room full of smart people endlessly rehashing the same grim diagnosis: American democracy is circling the drain. The problem isn’t that they’re wrong—it’s that I already see the collapse unfolding in real time. Listening to it dissected again and again isn’t cathartic anymore. It’s just salt in the wound.

    The Atlantic, long celebrated for its intellectual breadth, increasingly feels like it’s scanning for moral alignment before publishing an idea. There’s little friction. Little surprise. Just a gentle stroking of reader confirmation bias.

    Meanwhile, I find myself gravitating to media that feels more alive—podcasts like The Gist with Mike Pesca, Blocked and Reported with Katie Herzog and Jesse Singal, The Fifth Column, Ink-Stained Wretches, and even The Remnant with Jonah Goldberg. These shows don’t always align with my politics—and that’s exactly the point. They’re not trying to usher me into ideological safety. They’re wrestling with absurdities across the spectrum. They’re skeptical. Curious. Sometimes contrarian. Always human.

    And that, I think, is the deeper issue: emotional resonance. The Bulwark and The Atlantic haven’t necessarily changed. I have. Or perhaps the times have. I need more than agreement—I need tension, exploration, contradiction. The intellectual monoculture, no matter how principled, starts to feel like a sedative after a while.

    I’ve even considered canceling my subscriptions. But there’s friction there, too: The Atlantic remains a useful classroom resource, and every now and then, The Bulwark sparks a genuinely engaging dialogue that reminds me why I once admired it so much.

    So I stay, for now. But I’ve moved my ears—and increasingly, my attention—toward media that still surprises me. That still thinks out loud, rather than reading from a polished script.

    I’m not rejecting thoughtful media. I’m just bored of watching it slowly turn into liturgy.

  • The future, we’re told, is full of freedom—unless you’re the one still cleaning the mess.

    The future, we’re told, is full of freedom—unless you’re the one still cleaning the mess.

    Last semester, in my college critical thinking class—a room full of bright minds and burnt-out spirits—we were dissecting what feels like a nationwide breakdown in mental health. Students tossed around possible suspects like a crime scene lineup: the psychological hangover of the pandemic, TikTok influencers glamorizing nervous breakdowns with pastel filters and soft piano music, the psychic toll of watching America split like a wishbone down party lines. All plausible. All depressing.

    Then a re-entry student—a nurse with twenty years in the trenches—raised her hand and calmly dropped a depth charge into the conversation. She said she sees more patients than ever staggering into hospitals not just sick, but shattered. Demoralized. Enraged. When I asked her what she thought was behind the surge in mental illness, she didn’t hesitate. “Money,” she said. “No one has any. They’re working themselves into the ground and still can’t cover rent, groceries, and medical bills. They’re burning out and breaking down.”

    And just like that, all our theories—algorithms, influencers, red-vs-blue blood feuds—melted under the furnace heat of economic despair. She was right. She sees the raw pain daily, the kind of pain tech billionaires will never upload into a TED Talk. While they spin futuristic fables about AI liberating humanity for leisure and creativity, my nurse watches the working class crawl into urgent care with nothing left but rage and debt. The promise of Universal Basic Income sounds charming if you’re already lounging in a beanbag chair at Singularity HQ, but out here in the world of late rent and grocery inflation, it’s a pipe dream sold by people who wouldn’t recognize a shift worker if one collapsed on their marble floors. The future, we’re told, is full of freedom—unless you’re the one still cleaning the mess.

  • WordPress: My Kettlebell Gym of the Mind

    WordPress: My Kettlebell Gym of the Mind

    I launched my WordPress blog on March 12, evicting myself from Typepad after it was sold to a company that treats blogs the way landlords treat rent-controlled tenants: with bored disdain. Typepad became a ghost town in a bad neighborhood, so I packed up and moved to the gated community of WordPress—cleaner streets, better lighting, and fewer trolls.

    For the past ten weeks, I’ve treated WordPress like a public journal—a digital sweat lodge where I sweat out my thoughts, confessions, and pedagogical war stories from the frontlines of college teaching. I like the routine, the scaffolding, and the habits of self-control. Blogging gives me something I never got from social media or committee meetings: a sense of order in a culture that’s spun off its axis.

    But let’s not kid ourselves. WordPress isn’t some utopian agora where meaningful discourse flourishes in the shade of civility. It’s still wired into the dopamine economy. The minute I start checking likes, follows, and view counts, I’m no longer a writer—I’m a lab rat pressing the pellet button. Metrics are the new morality. And brother, I’m not immune.

    Case in point: I can craft a thoughtful post, click “Publish,” and watch it sink into the abyss like a message in a bottle tossed into a septic tank. One view. Maybe. Post the same thing on Reddit, and suddenly I’m performing for an arena full of dopamine-addled gladiators. They’ll upvote, sure—but only after the professional insulters have had their turn at bat. Reddit is where clever sociopaths go to sharpen their knives and call it discourse.

    WordPress, by contrast, is a chill café with decent lighting and no one live-tweeting your every existential sigh. It’s a refuge from the snarling hordes of hot-take hustlers and ideological bloodsport. A place where I can escape not only digital toxicity, but the wider derangement of our post-shame, post-truth society—where influencers and elected officials are often the same con artist in two different blazers.

    Instead of doomscrolling or screaming into the algorithmic void, I’ve taken to reading biographies—public intellectuals, athletes who aged with dignity, tech pioneers who are obsessed with taking over the world. Or I’ll go spelunking into gadget rabbit holes to distract myself from the spiritual hangover that comes from living in a country where charisma triumphs over character and truth is whatever sells ad space.

    In therapy-speak, my job on WordPress is to “use the tools,” as Phil Stutz says: to strengthen my relationship with myself, with others, and with the crumbling world around me. It’s a discipline, not a dopamine drip. Writing here won’t make me famous, won’t make me rich, and sure as hell won’t turn me into some cardigan-clad oracle for the digital age.

    What it will do is give me structure. WordPress is where I wrestle with my thoughts the way I wrestle kettlebells in my garage: imperfectly, regularly, and with just enough sweat to keep the madness at bay.

  • The Futility of Being Ready

    The Futility of Being Ready

    In December of 2019, my wife and I, both lifelong members of the National Society of Worrywarts, stumbled upon reports of a deadly virus brewing in China. Most people shrugged. We did not. I jumped on eBay and ordered a bulk box of masks the size of a hotel mini-fridge. It felt ridiculous at the time—a paranoid lark, like filling a doomsday bunker because you heard thunder on a Tuesday. But three months later, on March 13, 2020, the world shut down, and that cardboard box of N95s felt less like overreaction and more like prophecy.

    These days, I teach college in what I call the ChatGPT Era—a time when my students and I sit around analyzing how artificial intelligence is rewiring our habits, our thinking, and possibly the scaffolding of our humanity. I don’t dread AI the way I dreaded COVID. It doesn’t make me stock canned beans or disinfect door handles. But it does give me that same uneasy tremor in the gut—the sense that something vast is shifting beneath us, and that whatever emerges will make the present feel quaint and maybe a little foolish.

    It’s like standing on a beach after the earthquake and watching the water disappear from the shore. You can back up your files, rewrite your syllabus, and pretend to adapt, but you know deep down you’re stuck in Prepacolypse Mode—that desperate, irrational phase where you try to outmaneuver the future with your label maker. You prepare for the unpreparable, perform rituals of control that offer all the protection of a paper shield.

    And through it all comes that strange, electric sensation—Dreadrenaline. It’s not just fear. It’s a kind of alertness, a humming, high-voltage awareness that your life is about to be edited at the molecular level. You’re not just anticipating change—you’re bracing for a version of yourself that will be unrecognizable on the other side. You’re watching history draft your name onto the roster and realizing, too late, that you’re not a spectator anymore. You’re in the game.