- Writing - vignettes
- Previous - 01. To be a boomer
- Fri 2025-08-23
I think I have a pretty good idea of how you’ll be feeling right about now. Your brain is probably abuzz with things to write about - there’ll be the new mental move, a fun new bit of phenomenology - “maybe this could be something I write about!” - that keeps pinging in an excitingly newly spotlit part of your brain, a feeling of energy and focus and purpose, etc. Possibility and novelty, promise.
And then, within probably I’d say 12 hours or less (I see it happen all the time, countless times with countless people, it’d be funny to witness if it weren’t so maddening), how the very excitement and feeling of meaning darkens, how quickly the abundance turns to a kind of proto-creative algal bloom, how quickly the feeling of inexhaustible avenues of self-expression starts to block out the light, turns to a subtle choking despair, “there’s too much, there’s too much”.
And not only is there too much, but it’s all banal, amateur, been said a million times. And how can you take what feels so true and urgent and render it in words, and who is it for anyway, and who will possibly care? And will you ever be excellent at anything, known for anything, as isn’t that the point of all this, to discover that one thing that you were made to do, and do it better than it has been done before? And what if that thing never comes, what if you miss it, what if you’re missing it right now by spreading yourself too thin, or being too cautious, too afraid to live deeply?
And what are you even trying to do? You don’t know, do you? What if your whole worldview is wrong, a lie, downstream of myths that you would not endorse, fundamentally off, somehow. How do you know? Does anyone know?
You’ll be thinking, a pained smile on your face, a smile that doesn’t reach your eyes, how the fact that your second writeup went existential this quickly does not seem to bode well. Here we go, another abortive project, the only difference being that the hopelessness arrives faster and faster with each new cycle, the naiveté long gone, you’ve burned yourself too many times. (And yet part of you still rages against the boomers who have given up trying, have occupied their well-worn paths for decades.)
But anyway, all that to say - welcome to the rodeo. The only trick is to keep riding, and try to open your eyes occasionally. Who would want a bump-less ride? Where’s the fun in that?
Next - 03. To be a tpot zoomer