THE DIGITAL VOID

( not fingers )

( though fingers are involved )

One of those places where the days fold back into themselves, looping time for months. You've ceased landing anywhere alien with your mind. Swallowed over and over by the emptiness of too many things; the flood of stimulus until there is little left of you. The least possibility of you. The things you could do dying as seeds in the bed of your mind. Your body meets nothing new. If you wanted anything new, you repeat until you forget.

I watched it again. I watched it again. I spent 6 hours playing games. I can go days without seeing anyone and live, somehow.

Need something to focus on, at least. Something that isn't whiling away. Something that takes something real from me, leaves something real. Something to make me feel real and connected. Something to transform my mind back into a garden rather than a wasteland, a sludge.

It feels that all I can write about is isolation. Coldness; snow; ice; and loneliness. Not because there lacks a spark in my heart but because it feels there is social death. Here we are. The season doesn't matter; the climate doesn't change. Connections killed. I was not prepped for this. Who is? I don't seem to be the only one who feels lost. Still, it is hard not to feel paralyzed. It's hard to just do something. Do anything. Spend months in a rut instead. I was not prepped for this. Where was I supposed to be taught of living? Instead, this slow sinking. Discovering that even a will to live is not always enough. The heart watching the surface tension break, options recede slowly. And then you remember again there is only one question.

How to live?

Something not often helped by thinking. At some point you must do. A path to walk again and again, for the first time every time.

Maybe it's ADHD, maybe it's something else, but the doing can be incredibly hard. And then it's just the feeling of circling the drain. It can be so hard to build new interests when at your fingertips you have everything you need to forget your existential dread, your loneliness, your ailment; your existence. I have not figured this out, yet.

But maybe the fear is the key aspect. The fear to mean something. The fear to make use of this time. The fear of never finding connection I haven't begun to look for; I haven't begun to look because I fear. And there are so many other people, so many more talented, more smarter, more accomplished people. But what we are really doing here, if we're honest? In a way, it is all rather meaningless. All the ideas of worth are artificial. At the end of the day we are clumps of cells and energy. Foam on the ocean. Waves rolling. How much does it really matter? Except for; The happiness. The joy. The grief that comes from losing something that mattered. The ways we tried to make each other's lives better. The love. The loss. Generative things.

What does the rest of it matter? I'm not taking anyone's opinion of me to the grave. Whether they decided to make their own life more miserable by adhereing to these mental complexes is their problem. What, though, do I have, besides whether I made someone's life better or worse? and whether I truly enjoyed my life? Whether I was in touch with it. In love with the way the light fell. In love with the sadness I felt. Loving it enough to let it go. The sadness meant something. The joy meant something. The difference meant something. The judgment did not. The petty cruelty did not. The expectations we held in our mind, the standards we held ourselves to without ever feeling it changed us to make us feel small.

I think this page, this website in general, is just a constant struggle to avoid this pit, this numbed space. To create is a human drive, but why this? It's private in a way, and public in a different way. It requires very little of me, while allowing me to reach out to myself. I think I'd be lying to say I made this for anyone else. I don't expect anyone to see this. In truth, it is something I wish I did more with, was more creative with, but this moment I'm in is more about creative survival than creative thriving. And I'm sure that's what it looks like. For no other reason than the struggle to build something up. I let it collapse for reasons I don't understand yet. I probably just need to try less. Empty my head and do something. Emptier heads prevail. Is the head only there to help purify and console the heart? so that it may do what it knows to do? the ancient wisdom.

And maybe I'm a liar to say I do this only for myself. Why else do we write, or make any art, if not to reach out to the world in some way or another. Even if it isn't directly to the other people. We reach out to each other, we reach out to the world. Thje more we distract ourselves, the more disconnected we become. The more we reach out, the more we connect. Have I been afraid to reach out? Connect with other people? Have I been afraid to connect with myself?