Alternate Reality

This month, work took me to the windy city. Though sleep was hard to come by while there — with the sirens sounding, cars racing around at all hours, and industrial equipment turning on and off all night long — the change of scenery was still wonderfully refreshing.

I also enjoyed the opportunity to engage with colleagues on topics related to emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and copyright concerns (as more and more of what counts as “creative” relies upon engagement with algorithms and machine learning).

And when I returned from that work trip, just three days later, my home of nearly nine years seemed like a strange, foreign, and utterly magical place.

An overwhelming sense of having stepped into an alternate reality took hold.

Stumbling into other worlds is one of my favorite literary themes. But to experience it, just by coming home to a place I’d left only a few days prior, was completely unexpected plot twist.

The residue of “otherness” — of having been transported to an alternate dimension — lingered long after I’d settled back in.

It allowed me see these old places in new ways.

Around every corner, something so striking and other worldly stood out and I began to believe that leaving and returning really did somehow change everything.

That few days of distance has changed my perspective entirely.

I am no longer seeing our landscape from the perspective of thinking of myself as it’s creator.

I am now seeing it with fresh eyes, like a traveler, exploring some exciting new destination.

Although, come to think if it… Woody (my pet turkey) does look remarkably like an alien being from another planet. So, maybe I have been transported to an alternate reality after all!