(abandoned substack draft)

It’s funny how the bog of life’s troubles can creep up on you. Even when you’ve done the reading and the reflection and you think you know what to expect. A day passes, then a week, and next thing you know you’re neck-deep in psychic muck, and it’s hard to breathe, hard to move, and the only way out is some kind of intervention. A part of me is ashamed to be here. A slightly more enlightened part of me knows that being ashamed about being stuck only prolongs the stuckness. And so I have to surrender to the reality of my situation, acknowledge that I need help, and let myself be helped. In this case, by myself! By a “higher consciousness” form of myself, it seems like. It’s so bizarre how that somehow works, but it seems to be working. Hey, I’m not going to question it, if the spirit is finally going to move me then who am I to argue?

As I sit here, in my home study, in front of my ridiculously overpowered Macbook and 3 external monitors, I find myself reminiscing on the writing I used to do when I was a kid. I used to write on my family’s home computer at 3am in the morning. When I was in school, I remember sometimes going to the library during recess time to use the computer… to post on forums and to update my blog. I remember buying a secondhand laptop from one of my friends for S$100, and going to Starbucks to write blogposts, where I would nerd out about the nature of complex systems, and cheerfully pontificate about things like “the problem of ignorance” and “how to hack the 7 deadly sins” and rant about local news and politics. I used to write blogposts in the office computer while I was in the military. I remember feeling pride at shipping those old blogposts, some of which I’ve archived, but many of which have been lost to time. I’ve written so much – over a million words easily – that it’s almost inconceivable to me. (And then I reflect with awe about the authors who’ve written even more. The New York Times pegs Isaac Asimov’s total published wordcount at 7.6 million — and the unpublished wordcount is surely at least double that!) I remember once sitting with my laptop and a notebook on a Saturday morning, crying to myself because I had

But here I am, sitting at my computer, looking at a hundred drafts and a thousand notes and wondering to myself, why am I so knotted? Why am I so stuck? What is it that I want to be writing? I’ve gotten so swept up in all my grand plans and schemes about what I should write, that I’ve lost touch with the heart. I remember giving myself advice from one of my alts: “The most important part of a book is its heart.” I todl myself that in May 2021, after I had spent more than a year agonizing over Introspect, and I would still continue to spend 9 more months agonizing further. When I shipped the book, with all its flaws and imperfections, a part of me felt like I was surrendering, giving up. And yeah, I know all the quotes about how “art is never finished, only abandoned”. I feel a sadness in that. I’m reminded of my mortality. There’s a whole essay I’ve been drafting around the idea of “artful incompleteness”, and I continue to stew on it because it doesn’t quite seem artful in its incompleteness.

I don’t know. I don’t want to bore readers. Most critically of all, I don’t wanna bore myself. But if I’m honest, I have to acknowledge that I have been tormenting myself with these directives, intellectually dismissing everything as boring before I can even give myself the time and space to really feel what I’m getting at.

The most important part of a piece of writing is its heart. Maybe not all authors would agree with that. Some might say, the most important thing is that you have a good idea, or a compelling thesis. The most important thing might be a sense of plot, a line of action running through the thing. Or that something you write is well-researched and supported with evidence. I can nod along to all of those things. But for me, if I’m honest with myself, the most important part of a piece of writing is its heart. And my writing has felt heartless as of late. I’ve written enough now that words can spill out of my fingers without my conscious intervention, like a musician improvising along familiar scales. But casual improvisation, while a pleasant way to pass the time, is not performance. And here I want to be careful to remind myself that passing the time pleasantly with one’s craft can be a critical part of continuing to love the work. If you’re not having fun, what’s the point?

/// (on creation myths, ethan hawke) like a lot of these things, i think it’s right there in plain sight and people will nod their heads when you point it out “oh yea of course” but few people typically really dig into it and FEEL the intensity within it- usually this happens after major heartbreak, failure, grief,

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