Letter to a friend

"Phineas,

Thanks again for everything you wrote.

How cool to know you’ve been writing something too. Hopefully you’ll let me read it when it’s finished. And it makes me happy to hear about your fascination with 1877 and life in general. Does the writing project contribute to that sense of aliveness in any way? I’m asking this because two other friends have recently surprised me by telling me about their writing projects – suddenly people in my life are writing, and it’s interesting how it seems to change something about a person’s way of being in the world. There’s just something about writing that brings a sense of meaning and agency… Even juiciness and wonder.

Of course, one can also kill oneself by writing too much. In the past week and a half, I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting on the place of writing in my life. It really woke me up when I realized that the New Book was turning into a life-eating monster just like the book I already abandoned. Spending all day and all night either writing it or thinking about it was starting to feel like being eaten by something all the time. I don’t like the joyless, lifeless, reclusive skeleton I was turning into, again.

The fact is: the book I’m trying to write is impossible. It’s so challenging in so many different ways that there’s just no way I’m going to succeed.

And yet, weirdly, I may be able to pull it off. What it really depends on is whether or not I’m HAVING FUN writing it. This may sound oversimplifying – but it’s not. It really is this simple. With joy, things are easy; without joy, they’re difficult. I don’t know if this applies to all things in life (probably not), but at least in creative work, the power of joy is almost supernatural in the sense that it seems to magically solve every problem, or make problems disappear. I’ve been a writer for more than a decade now, and I’ve experienced it countless times: when there’s joy, all things just sort of take care of themselves. Actually, whether or not you “succeed” at whatever it was you intended to do almost becomes irrelevant, because what you’re creating is going to be alive and real anyway, even if it’s something totally different from what you had in mind.

From now on, I’m going to prioritize creating an environment where joy can thrive. That almost sounds silly, and yet it’s so radically important that I feel like I’ve cracked some code or escaped some prison, fooled the world and figured out what life is about. I don’t even regret not realizing this earlier – I’m just glad I realized it now. What’s particularly great is that I think I already know how joy is kept alive and cultivated.

About three years ago (or something), I became really diligent about writing, I started working really hard on it every single day, very seriously and conscientiously, even when I didn’t feel like it, and the result was that I’ve gotten to experience stress and exhaustion to an extent I never knew before. In my case, maximizing the time and effort spent on writing really, really doesn’t help writing. Interestingly, the healthiest, most alive and creative periods of my life in the past years have been the spring of 2020 and the spring of this year, because during those periods I allowed myself to take a break from writing and do whatever the hell I wanted. Take a long walk when I felt like taking a long walk. Take an unreasonably long bath, just hang out with the Canis lupus, ride public transportation to random places. In the end, I didn’t even stop writing during those periods – I just wrote less, and I wrote well. Feeling like I didn’t have to get things done helped me get things done.

I saw a psychiatrist 10 days ago and he prescribed some drugs that are supposed to help me sleep and feel better (apparently without harmful side effects). After that, I actually have been feeling better, but I think that the real reason is simply that I’ve allowed myself to relax again. This time, I’m going to try to make this the default state. It’ll probably take some practicing, but that’s fine. From now on, I’m going to allow myself to stay away from the computer whenever I feel like doing something else. I’ll only write when I feel a certain excitement – which is quite often, because without a sense of hurry and pressure, joy just seems to appear naturally. From now on, taking a day off is my first medicine whenever I get stuck in some way.

What you wrote about human nature is very true, and wise. I agree. At the end of the day, there is no default. There’s just complexity. And I think that really often this stuff comes down to interpretation.

Still, thinking about human nature is certainly not a waste of time. I think that it’s really important to find a balance between 1) acknowledging the bad and 2) believing in the good. There’s no denying there are terrible and hurtful things going on in this world, and turning away from them would be irresponsible and wrong, not to mention brainless. The truth is that our species is capable of greater idiocy and darkness and violence than any other species that has ever existed. AND YET we’re also capable of greater wisdom, and more radical compassion and altruism, than any other species in the history of this planet. One just needs to believe that that side of us will win in the end – and keep acting according to that possibility, serve and advance that side of the world in every way that’s possible.

If one reacts to the darkness of the world by turning that light off, darkness has won.

Even on a more personal level, I guess the only road to love and connection is to just take a risk and believe in the good, even while acknowledging that things may go wrong. This is actually a complex topic for me, too, because the fact is that I still haven’t learned to live as a person among other people. I have a lot more clarity and insight when it comes to saving the world than when it comes to spending time with other people and sharing myself with them. I think that in terms of friendship and intimacy, I’ve actually fucked up in a big way. In mean, I actually really like my friends, and spend a lot of time thinking about the people I know, and yet I think I’ve repeatedly made people feel insecure and confused, caused them to wonder whether I give a shit about them or not. You know, I often hide, especially in the presence of other people. Obviously, this is not the whole truth – I’ve also been a great friend in many respects, but I know that I’ve fucked up in terms of taking the risk and really letting people into my life. And it’s just difficult and scary to fix something like that. And yet, it’s something I’m going to have to do sooner or later... There are matters of life and death, but there are also matters of “life or half a life”, and I think that this is one of those. "