my mother is ancient. she thinks buying cheap shit online is productive. i try to emphasize to her gently that consumption isn't productive, but the boomerism is real.

when we're in the same place, ill often find her speaking into her cell phone on speaker phone (max volume of course) with somebody in a call center going in circles about where some doodad nobody wants or needs ended up. she calls with no information and barely a memory of where she ordered it from or when.

i used to work in a call center and it sucked. hearing these conversations happening makes me have to leave the room so my blood pressure can go back to normal. she's friendly at least, but it just goes in circles as some unlucky person has to help her wade through her clusterbang inbox to find an order number on the phone she is using to talk, all to find out that she ordered the wrong thing that didn't match the other wrong thing but it all arrived weeks ago and is sitting in some closet she forgot putting it in.

when i found out she had started doing water colors i bought her a nice set of beginner supplies and a big print art book demonstrating techniques. she loved it and told everyone who would listen how thoughtful i was, but hasn't done anything with it in years. she promptly went back to her real passion: just buying junk online, losing track of it, and occasionally spending an afternoon on the phone chasing the foggy memory of it through her phone.

she has a laptop with a stable linux on it for email and browsing, but never thinks to use it for anything computer. just wants to try and do everything on tiny phone screen she can't read while talking on speaker.

for all those call center peeps that get stuck with her, thanks and im sorry. im trying to get through on this end. i used to be that call center person for others and while sometimes it was OK, frequently it was a concentric, expanding madness requiring one to find some upanishad-grade connection to a non-dualistic reality so as to avoid completely losing one's shit.