2025-04-21 Journal Entry

Hidy ho, journal-inos! I regret to inform you that I have lost my glasses, so I have to hunch over this screen like a little goblin with my face six inches away just to be able to read what I’m writing.

(An aside, but I recently rewatched the first Harry Potter movie for no real reason, and the portrayal of the goblins at the bank feels – at least in the Year of Our Lord 2025 – not very subtle. Short, squat guys with gignatic noses and claws, etc.)

Anyways, I need to move out of the house in a few days, and that’s really wearing on me. I was kinda looking forward to more time cozying up in a library with my books, and now I need to pack them all away again. I could always camp out somewhere with a great library (London, perhaps?), but I do still have my drive to do some more walking and writing. That would be a fun experiment.

I feel a bit bad that writing has been waylayed for a little while while I take care of the house. But morning pages will continue – I’ll admit that I’ve started to feel a bit discombobulated without them. Every day seems to sort of just drift past when I don’t sit down and get all of my thoughts out now. Partially it’s that light sense of accomplishment, of having done somethhing with my day by getting this little thing out. That old notion of making the first thing on your TO_DO list really easy (often something like MAKE A TO_DO LIST etc.) that you can then get the satisfaction of crossing off. And then as the reward for this little bout of writing, I’ll get some caffeine. That’s another thing I’m looking to wind down as time goes on, but for now I’ll just live with it. I would love to eventually be free of the need to get overly caffeinated every morning, and I think delaying that gratification as much as possible into later in the day will be a good start there. It doesn’t help that I have another half-dozen Celsiuses (Celsii?) in my fridge.

I realize that one of the big things I miss about traveling isn’t so much the travel itself, but that sense of hunger and drive. I miss that. There’s a few things to consider: the first is how best to harness that drive into something real, and the second is hwo to continue that drive without necessarily forcing myself to be on the road all the time. Maybe I really do want a little cabin in the woods where my own survival is a bit more difficult and tenuous. I don’t know how to make sense of all of this, if I’m quite honest with you. “All of this” meaning basically everything that goes on in the world. There’s this whole mythology of life that one really has to put aside at some point when they want to grow up. But then society is sort of oriented around you following along with that story – systems are in place, incentives are there, the road is well-paved and well-supported because it means always making sure that you have the means to buy and do whatever you want. And to be in touch with some other thing, with not acquiring one’s way to happiness, isn’t really talked about so much. How can we actually fundamentally shift our baseline in a way that makes life more meaningful? How can we not give in to the pressures of our peers and family to live a life that only I could live?

I don’t know. All good questions. I think my primary output of this is the idea that a society in which most peoples lives look the same is a failure. That represents a society that is staid, stagnant. We should be a society of explorers, both of the physical world and of the social world. What are new and interesting ways that we could relate to each other? Do we need such clearly defined relationships? Is there such a thing as the art of relating? I think there is, at least there could be if we learn how to learn how to relate, if you catch my drift. You are the stormwinds and I am the sea, and we are all the better for it together. What would that be like?