2025 08 18

I’m trapped in an airport for a little bit, so let’s just chuck some words out. I’m mostly just very tired, and I’m being constantly reminded why it’s so difficult to maintain mindfulness in daily life. At least in my daily life, one in which all of my habits are hilariously oriented around feeling good. I’m ready to get out onto the trail, since I have some vague hope that it’ll help me reset all of my dopamine receptors or something. I just sit around and watch videos (the same videos, repeatedly) on YouTube and then inevitably feel bad about not writing or not feeling fulfilled in life. It’s also one of the downsides of orienting my life around travel, which is that I tend to think of Big Things (like each trip, etc.) as the Real stuff and everything else as essentially interstitial frames in which I’m just killing time until the real stuff starts again. That is obviously wrong, but it’s probably natural given that I have incredibly little going on in those interstitial frames. I would love to have some big writing project or whatever, but that’s simply not what’s happening right now.

And the unfortunate reality is that that’s probably what’s true for the average person. How many of us are actually truly Online, are actually making something deeply beautiful of this life. I hope it’s a lot, but in some ways it’s almost impossible to tell. For some, a simple life may be one on autopilot, and for others they could be Mary Oliver or whatever. (Is that the real distinction — making stuff?)

Anyways, the stuff I wrote yesterday was the first fiction I’ve written for months, so I’m happy that something came out of it. Gotta keep that ball rolling.