Am I Immortal?

How Do Vampires Do This?

Whenever I’m in the “in-between things” phase of my life, I become acutely aware of how short the days are—and how long life is.

I wouldn’t mind a couple of extra hours in the day, and maybe a few fewer years in the long run.

I’d love to keep typing furiously under the glaring judgment of the sun for a little while longer. But I don’t want to be searching, scavenging, and scouring for words for the next forty years. (Optimistically forty. Realistically? Probably longer. And that terrifies me.)

So much is already going wrong. Our reality feels like it’s borrowing too many plot points from movies. It was fun when Conclave started coming true. Less so when Contagion, 1984, Brave New World, and The Truman Show all started feeling like documentaries.

I don’t want to sound ungrateful. I know many people fought hard to extend our lifespans. But still, I sometimes find myself quietly asking: what’s the point?

We used to need more time because life was manual. Existing took effort—and occasionally, amidst all the doing, we got to be. There was waiting, and there was reward: for letters, for seasonal fruit, for the one film that would finally make you feel something. The stories came from life, not formulas. People weren’t always reachable, and that meant something.

Now everything is fast. Maybe that speed has erased the satisfaction that came from effort. I kept waiting for a day to “pick up,” for my brain to click into a story again. But when the answers are only ever one search away, the questions start feeling... boring.

My days blur together. Maybe a few more hours would break the monotony. Maybe fewer years would give the ones I have some urgency.

Or maybe I should just Google, “What do vampires do with their immortality?”