Dear Diary, WTF is Happening

[Listen to an audio version of this blog here.]

Dear Diary,

There is nothing I want more than to be left alone. Of course, that isn’t true. People need people and blah blah blah. What people don’t need though, is to hear other people talk all day, or to hear other people flush toilets, or to hear other people’s music. God made headphones for a reason. He also made noise canceling devices for a reason, too; because there are too many people living piled on top of one another and I’ll be damned if I have to hear another verbal altercation regarding some asinine thing that does not, in the name of all that is holy, matter.

Sometimes people bring Bluetooth speakers on hikes with them. Second to littering, blaring Jay-Z or Lizzo is the worst possible hiking behaviors. Once, I passed a hiker listening to what sounded like gongs. Another time, it was the one and only Joe Rogan, father of all podcasts and king of alien conspiracies. Once, the couple I passed was listening to an R-rated song by Cardi B, if you catch my drift. If I were a mountain dwelling squirrel, I would have aimed a pinecone or two directly at the carrier of aforementioned unnecessary speaker.

I think my job makes me especially tired of people, and not because most of the people I work with and for aren’t lovely, butterfly souls with breath that smells like…