What to write when you don’t feel like writing

Alternate title: What to read/say/wear/eat etc. when you don’t feel like any of the things that seem to require so much when everything feels so wrong

Is this post too on the nose? How does one advocate for “just doing the darn thing especially when you don’t feel like it” when one cannot even muster the strength of will to string a few (too many and too frilly) words together? It has been often stated that most everything has probably already been said, and re-said, stolen and rephrased, and pushed through A.I to rewrite and make obsolete the need for error, practice or failure. After all the digi-verse (meta-realm?) is a breathing, living, giantess of an orb of ever increasing power, brilliance and efficiency. It is not too much of a stretch to say that she, the ‘Entity’, or Chat GPT, or knowledge herself the goddess Athena in a theophany, may indeed render us-fallible little creatures of comfort that we are-obsolete. Considering how oversaturated the world is with content, opinions, recommendations and ‘a day in the life of’ videos, it feels laughable to continue plugging and chugging away at a little passion project such as this or whatever it may when likely someone somewhere is already doing or saying the same thing as you but better~it says a lot about my ego that I continue to believe that one day this writing will speak to the ‘depths' of my character when I am no longer a walking being but one of air and stars *SNORTS IN DERISION

The world has become deafening in it’s striving for global connectivity, access and above all else visibility. The noise never stops, the politics are unceasing. Contradictory stories, beliefs and values pushed in front of our eyes, into our ears, choking us as it stuffs our mouths with what to say and what not to say and who to let in to our lives and who to keep out. It is an exhausting onslaught of guilt, shame, suffering, bragging, commodifying, commercializing, crying out of “SEE ME SEE ME KNOW ME LOVE ME” and frankly just not enough peace. In fact we are more connected than we have ever been and more disconnected from each other, from ourselves and we have little trust for either.

Discord and doubt is sewn with every deliberate telling and retelling of the big bad wolf from one perspective or another. We can’t be counted on to actually know anything anymore but we certainly know how to delegate our thinking to brains other than ours for our decision making and creating. All this is leading to a stage where we are making critical thinking a thing of the past and elevating those with most efficient handle on shortcuts to positions of great authority. What does the word authority even mean any more? We cannot even agree on the basic tenets of how to move in shared public spaces in a way that does not seek to dominate/take ownership of but stewards in a respectful welcoming and inherently valuing environment for all. It is frightening thing to think that the birth of innovative technology could spell the death of the creative, indomitable spirt of humanity.

There is a global sense of ennui abounding, it’s subtle and partially evaded through virtual living but it is inevitably leading us down a path of unease with each other and a deep hopelessness and/or powerlessness when facing the hard things in life. Humanity is witness to the world’s suffering and failure on a near constant basis yet, we are losing the tools necessary to manage and move through our personal lives with that pain in hand. Navigating social grief is not something that can be theoretically learned from reading someone’s quick bulletpoint list while they post their ‘authentic, aesthetic’ videos of their morning routine and we just consume every iota of their experience thinking how can I be/live/look/think like them. It comes from being fully awake to the conversation within our selves, with our own mind and thoughts and sense of existence and response to what is happening. How do we talk to ourselves when we feel overcome with a sadness of someone else experiencing a pain we fear? Do we just lay down and let it all happen while silently allowing external powers (who want nothing more than to control and define us) tell us how to live? Instead of silence some people cry out “Everything is crap, everything is a dumpster fire, the world is full of hate and harm. I’m going to consume but never move, listen to the authority of others but never take responsibility for myself, weep but never climb unsteady out of the pit to place one foot in front of the other and walk towards daybreak”

I am not here to tell you what to do in the face of great sorrow or how to place your anger and direct it towards advocating for change, whether that’s on a large scale or in your own circle. That’s what the very thing that is eating us alive and separating us from who we really are is doing. After all people on either side of a war believe they are following the greater good, so who is ‘right’ and who is ‘wrong’? Perhaps there are no sides per se, only human reckoning with a human condition for wanting to live in a way that when you get to the end of it all you can say “I tried, I pushed, I fought and I made it good”. These soul eaters are the systems of power that want to take our own power and render us less then. Giving up on the thing that brings meaning to your life, whether is is productive, internally nourishing, comforting or physically challenging is never the answer. It just affirms the beast and keeps us in a state of passivity or distracted with fighting our brothers and sisters. We may be small in the face of an ocean but we can build ourselves a boat, ask others to join us and set a course to stay afloat. Choosing to do so, to refocus on what makes you you and honour others doing that also is just one small thing to do in living well in spite of it all.

Consider it all to be the point-the aching and the numbness, the longing and the fullness, the beautiful and the mundane, the power and the weakness. See it, the loss and the finding, to be something that tells us that we are truly, feelingly, fully alive. Maybe the secret to a meaningful life is a life where it all can run through us like a river in, around, shaping, exiting and slumbering. That is till we wind our way back to the beginning and end and see the grander scheme, we are a drop in the ocean but my did we form some land along the way.

Joel Edgerton in Train Dreams (2025)