Rec
aka reviewing your (sporadic) journal entries from 2022 after a mild existential crisis
May 31, 2025
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(yes this is a taylor swift AND lorde reference. now go read the verses in death by a thousand cuts like they're a supercut of flashbacks.)
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đź••-> is a quote from my journal that i wrote in a few long months ago. like with what i write, ever, i always expect whatever thoughts and feelings i express to amount to none or be something i cringe at. i don't want that to happen anymore, no matter how seen this account is.
-> i'll often confuse myself as to what being different means, because with black and white thinking it really is like turning an on and off switch. the changes come how i wanted them to be, and everything else different in me gets swept aside or doesn't change at all.
-> deep down, i know change needs to happen. in that same journal, i'd write off-hand phrases of "maybe some on-spirit growth can happen i don't know". i'd sweep my wishes away because they felt too grand for me to deserve or act upon.
-> right now, i'm good at acknowledging my issues and admitting to them, even if its to myself. i'm at a standstill of what to do about them, but i'm hoping to start thinking of it as practice. as a rehearsal, that being better is muscle memory. there's no switch to it and i guess i need to concurrently shape whatever i do.
-> but that's it, for something that i feel like would bring grand change to everything and everyone around me, it feels too little for such a large result. do these things really add up in scale? am i communicating this in legible words this time?
Jan 19, 2025
Rec
It’s short enough, so let me try dropping the text here. Follow the link for an accompanying demo, the 59th unreleased song I’ve shared this year on my Substack newsletter, ’organizing an accident’.
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Wanting to be something you’re not is a form of suffering. If we accept this as true, then life itself, as the Buddhists say, is suffering. This line of thinking has always resonated with me. It also immediately strikes up the beatnik who’s squatting in my soul, saying things like: “Hey baby, if this is wrong, than I don’t wanna feel right.” It’s through our suffering, our yearning, our active participation in it all—that we can pass from that which we “were not” to that which we “are” now. Sometimes, this process is experimentally prodded and analyzed, with each shifting atom felt and celebrated. Other times, probably more often than not, we find ourselves abruptly at our unannounced point of arrival where we either stick out our thumbs and hail a ride back or get on with it, find some comfortable ground, and pitch a tent. Where do we go from here? The human condition is anything but permanent. Any semblance of permanence in our lives should be treated with utmost suspicion. From one second to the next within the microcosm, despite any recognizable turbulence, you and I and the world in which we inhabit are constantly transforming anew. Resistance is futile. Thus, we embrace change. Personally, I love change. I love big change, and I love it incrementally too. Whether it's discovering an entirely new country, writing a piece of music, choosing an unexplored route on a daily commute, or, yes, even the few gray hairs that have appeared on my head this year. It is in our nature, but due to a variety of obstacles and circumstances, some will always opt for or falter to a reality closer to a reenactment of The Sims, continuously walking into walls. It is also in our nature to build bridges we'll later bomb, create moral and aesthetic standards we'll never exemplify, and partake in all manner of acts of self-sabotage. This could lead one to move cautiously through the world or worse, adopt a nihilistic posture towards it. The only greater tragedy than a person beaming with potential but paralyzed by fear is one motivated by cynicism.
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Wanting to be something you’re not is a form of suffering. If we accept this as true, then life itself, as the Buddhists say, is suffering. This line of thinking has always resonated with me. It also immediately strikes up the beatnik who’s squatting in my soul, saying things like: “Hey baby, if this is wrong, than I don’t wanna feel right.” It’s through our suffering, our yearning, our active participation in it all—that we can pass from that which we “were not” to that which we “are” now. Sometimes, this process is experimentally prodded and analyzed, with each shifting atom felt and celebrated. Other times, probably more often than not, we find ourselves abruptly at our unannounced point of arrival where we either stick out our thumbs and hail a ride back or get on with it, find some comfortable ground, and pitch a tent. Where do we go from here? The human condition is anything but permanent. Any semblance of permanence in our lives should be treated with utmost suspicion. From one second to the next within the microcosm, despite any recognizable turbulence, you and I and the world in which we inhabit are constantly transforming anew. Resistance is futile. Thus, we embrace change. Personally, I love change. I love big change, and I love it incrementally too. Whether it's discovering an entirely new country, writing a piece of music, choosing an unexplored route on a daily commute, or, yes, even the few gray hairs that have appeared on my head this year. It is in our nature, but due to a variety of obstacles and circumstances, some will always opt for or falter to a reality closer to a reenactment of The Sims, continuously walking into walls. It is also in our nature to build bridges we'll later bomb, create moral and aesthetic standards we'll never exemplify, and partake in all manner of acts of self-sabotage. This could lead one to move cautiously through the world or worse, adopt a nihilistic posture towards it. The only greater tragedy than a person beaming with potential but paralyzed by fear is one motivated by cynicism.
Feb 22, 2024
Rec
đź«‚This might not make the most sense but if I don’t write it I know I’ll be angry with myself.Â
As someone who has always naturally been drawn to archives and journals and stories- I’ve found that I’ve been trapping myself in the narrative. The idea that life is a singular, vertical narrative, that pain is not simply pain but part of some bigger cycle of distribution and retribution. That pain is naturally repaid with love or safety or comfort. This narrative keeps me coddled in myself, it keeps me safe from having to face the fact that tomorrow might not be easier than today. That this year might not feel much better than last year. That as some things go on, they don’t always get lighter. They don’t alchemize from emotionally pain into material pleasure.Â
The hero’s journey tells us that the narrative follows simple steps. We are called- your alarm, a Britney Spears song, plays in the morning. Your car breaks down in an unfamiliar part of the city. There’s a death in the family. Whatever it is, the call is something that moves us from familiarity to the unknown. It pulls the hero into the journey. We will then face the unknown and hopefully overcome it. But what about the calls that we don’t answer? Or when we get stuck in the unknown? What about when we are braver than brave and we still cannot overcome everything? I’ve learned that sometimes our pain doesn’t come with atonement. Sometimes there is no return.Â
Life doesn’t fit into the narrative. The alarm in itself is a narrative, you set it the night before, or maybe you set it three years ago and you’ve been waking up to the same song every single day. The car is a narrative, the unfamiliar side of the city is a narrative. Why haven’t you been there? The death is a narrative explored and experienced by every person in your family, every friend of the dead, every coworker who called the morning after to see why they didn’t show up when their alarm went off that day. Everything is a million narratives coinciding and to trap ourselves into one, to tell ourselves only one story, is blinding us to the intricate nature of life. We cannot exist in only one dimension, and to choose to exist in various different- sometimes beautiful and sometimes horrible- narratives at once is to choose to stop coddling oneself, to stop following your pain like it always has something to give you.Â
Sometimes it doesn’t. Maybe that’s fine.Â
Mar 11, 2024
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