My cover is blown

“Are you a spy?” is a question I get surprisingly often.

Yes, I was raised in the Soviet Union and have spent much of my life making relatively little sense to anybody anywhere. Still, the question surprises me mostly because regular people, tickled by the possibility that they are standing next to a maybe-spy, seem to expect a meaningful answer.

If I were a spy (and I never confirm nor deny), I would have been fielding that question since I first learned to regard a pacifier with suspicion. Also, if I were a spy, I wouldn’t have any accent at all. Haven’t people seen The Americans?

Anyway, with AI taking over the world, I can no longer hide the truth.

Spotify has taken in hundreds of hours of my choices across music, podcasts, audiobooks and, yes, recommendations from friends — really, really watch who you allow to contaminate the evidence — and noticed something many of you have treated as a running joke for years.

I have spent much of this summer noticing.

Since I am currently based in North America, summer is only now coming to a close, leaving me up to my neck in unprocessed evidence.

I have spent most of my professional life observing people, organizations, systems, movements: what changes, what stubbornly doesn’t, and what happens between intention and reality. Observation is practically an occupational hazard.

But my PhD has been forcing me to distinguish more carefully between looking in order to reach a conclusion and looking to acknowledge what is there. Age may also be playing a role. Not chronological age, necessarily. I don’t remember who said it first, but I was with a group of friends when it was established that I was 76 on the inside. That was at least ten years ago. When I got perilously close to an internal 90, I decided something had to change or I’d soon be the oldest person anybody’s ever met. Lonely.

I have been attempting a “Benjamin Button”: methodically reverse-aging my inside person.

I reluctantly accepted that mac-and-cheese is legitimate food. Tried and was smitten by a weighted blanket. Gradually—over months—crept my bedtime from 8:15 p.m. toward 10. Committed to phone puzzles. Got hair tinsel. Glitter. A dog bed. All for myself.

Impressive, I thought.