This is not a political post
I’m not afraid of the future, but that doesn’t stop me from worrying about it.
This was not the first post I imagined writing here, but in light of certain events that occurred last night, and how my brain is trying to comprehend what’s going on in the world and my own life, it is what it is. I need to start processing things a little better, and perhaps taking some time to write about it will help sort out things in my head. I apologize in advance for any meandering and ask for your understanding as I clear the cobwebs and try to return to being a creative human in a complicated world.
Sometime before the pandemic began, I realized my mom was slipping cognitively. It wasn’t pronounced, more like a generalized feeling. I figured it was just that she was getting older, and since she had been retired for over a decade, I imagined keeping track of the daily goings on of the world, current events, etc. was not high on her priority list. This was just the mental relaxation that I suspected arrived along the path toward year 80.
I’m not sure why she was never officially diagnosed with Lewy Body dementia, but as 2020 and 2021 went by, it became obvious that her body was failing from its impact. Looking back, all the signs were there starting a decade earlier. She told us she’d see children in her bedroom at night standing around her bed, and when she turned on the flashlight kept on her nightstand and urged them to go away, they would scatter.
One might ask why we weren’t more concerned when Mom mentioned this. My answer is that I grew up in the woods and mountains of New Hampshire, a mile from our nearest neighbor, and while witnessing strange things that couldn’t be explained wasn’t exactly a common experience, it happened often enough that my mom seeing ghosts was lightly dismissed as “just one of those things.”
For years now I’ve wanted to craft stories that center around the events and feelings that I experienced in those woods and tie them in with thoughts about growing older and connections with other people. To date, I still have not landed on the method by which to do so. I have started a couple of screenplays and have not finished them, even though I think about them almost every day. I have started two novels or short stories - I have no idea what they are, nor do I know how to finish them.
I write a fictional “diary” type podcast based on a post-apocalyptic game that has almost a million listens across all its episodes (which to me is pretty much incomprehensible), and for some reason, it has resonated with people in a way I never could have expected. Despite only releasing a couple of installments over the past few years, to this day I still receive the kindest, most wonderful emails from people letting me know how it affected them and that they wish I would keep going with it.
A woman who had cancer wrote to me that it was escapism for her during her infusions. I found out a couple of years ago that she died, and I still beat myself up that I couldn’t give a dying woman who wrote to me a little more relief by simply doing what I was supposed to be doing - continuing a writing project that connected with people.
We lost Mom two years ago, and this desire to get back to being a creative person has taken on more urgency since then and was accelerated even more by losing a dear college friend earlier this year.
I feel like time is moving so quickly - that we are in a timeline where people are rediscovering what connection means and many of us are having a hard time processing it all. It has been said by others smarter than I that we are all likely still dealing with unprocessed grief and trauma from a virus that ripped through the entire planet, struck fear in billions of people, killed millions, and continues to disrupt our personal and political lives to this day to some unknown extent.
There have been recent moments where I’ve been inspired to write again, either by things that happened in my life, or by recent things that I’ve watched. The issue is that the inspiration seems to be “sticking” me more because I can’t grasp how to get from the place I am to the place where I want to be. Watching and/or reading stories that inspire me sometimes leads me to think there’s no point in writing anymore because someone already made something so brilliant that I don’t have the consistency and will never have the attention span to be well-read enough to apply the level of context to my work that others do.
I realize that I’m stuck, and I’m not sure how to get unstuck.
Sometimes I feel like I don’t even know how to be a human anymore. Maybe I never did. Maybe that’s a separate issue. Sometimes I feel like I need to apologize to everyone who ever knew me that I likely know how I failed them and to let them know that I’m trying. But maybe that’s just being self-centered as well. I don’t know.
Maybe these are all things that everyone knows, and I’m spinning my thoughts on things that others have already figured out.
I'm not sure what's going to happen in 2024 and 2025. I just need to find a way to be OK with it and to move forward with my own goals of finding connection, inspiration, and motivation.
It often feels like I’m getting closer, but what’s so frustrating is that I can’t seem to bring it all together and put my creative goals into a plan of action. It’s like a dream where the more you try to pull at it directly, the more energy you give it to sneak away.
I don’t know if I should just keep writing, keep reading and watching, take a class, start something else, or what. My mind feels like soup. Everything above feels relational to me, but I’m just not sure *how* it all relates.
Which brings me to last night.
The initial version of this post had a whole commentary on the debate and I realized after posting that the post ended up being way too long. Also, others have covered the political ground better than I can. In any case, it’s not what I want to focus on here. Not at length anyway.
All I know is that my post-debate mental action was to throw my brain into “whatever will happen will happen” mode, and meditate on the notion that “the universe is unfolding toward our highest good.” I won’t second-guess it, I’ll just keep trying to stay positive and create the reality I’d like to see.
I'm not sure what's going to happen in 2024 and 2025. It’s going to be what it’s going to be, and there’s not really anything I can do about it. I just need to find a way to be OK with it and to move forward with my own goals of finding connection, inspiration, and motivation.
To that end, until the fallout from last night shakes out, I’m tuning out legacy media. I’ve long since removed myself from most social media, because it’s just more opportunity to waste time, and time is getting more and more precious to me the older I get. I do miss the community though, so maybe I can find more of that here.
I want to be writing more and worrying less.
I want this SubStack to be the place where I hopefully start to figure out, well, everything. Who am I, what am I doing, what do I want to do, how do I fit in - the questions I imagine we all have at some crossroads in our lives. Maybe it will help me meet folks who are experiencing the same types of things that I am.
So my immediate goal is to try to finish the hellish work project that's due next Tuesday, and then I'm headed up to New Hampshire for ten days. I'm going to try to get my head in order and sort out the things I can control vs. the things I can't, and focus on deciding what I want to do for the rest of my life and try to find the discipline I need to start working on that goal.
I want to be writing more and worrying less. I want my art, and my work to reach people on a deeper level and I want my personal relationships to be more meaningful, where people I love and respect feel seen and heard. I want to learn how to become a better writer, how to make sense of what's going on in the universe and my own life, and become part of an enthusiastic conversation with those I admire. I want to move forward.
I’m not sure exactly how to do that, or even how to get started, but I’m hoping maybe I’ll figure out some of it on vacation next week. Maybe just by writing this and finally posting it after trying to write it and edit it for the last six hours, I have already started.
thanks for writing this. it resonates with me on so many levels.