2026-02-11
I have a backup of my blog and link log on GitHub now if that's relevant to anyone.
There's this constant fear of complacency. If I'm not seeking, finding faults in things, improving—I feel like I'm failing.
Or worse: I feel like I'm dying.
I remember taking an Uber to a job interview a few years ago. An older guy with long gray hair picked me up. He was driving a white minivan. I get in the car and while driving me to the interview, we chat about how much the Dallas–Fort Worth area has changed over the last few decades.
"Yeah, lots of construction everywhere," he says. "But that's the thing. If a city isn't growing, it's dying."
He said it so casually, but it was a profound observation I still think about regularly. At first, I interpreted it as some kind of subversive critique of capitalism. I thought it was a fair estimation of the "growth at all costs" ethos that's dominated this century. Many have made that critique before and have proposed solutions oriented around sustainability or even letting decline be accounted for. That sounds nice on paper, but the dichotomy of growth and decay goes beyond societal planning.
In human biology, the dichotomy presents itself as a matter of fact. When we age, there are the days we grow and the days we start to die. There's not really a period where you're just there. You're either growing or dying. Of course, we don't feel like we're dying as we age, especially not right when the process starts. I'm 28 years old, and over the last few years, I've come closer to accepting I'm no longer growing or developing.
I'm dying, albeit slowly.
I think that's where the fear of complacency comes from. It's my way of grappling with the inevitable decline that happens every single day. We all deal with it in different ways, but it's important to be honest about what it is. However, I don't want to use it as an excuse to give up. There's that fear of complacency again. I think, beyond complacency, there's a difficulty in accepting change as the only constant. Most days, I am stressed out by the constant dialogue in my head. Some don't have a dialogue, but there's constant chatter in my head that never stops, even for a second. I learned I could write here every day because of it. But now I know I have to do it; otherwise, the volume would get louder, and it would get so loud I'd have to act on it in harmful ways.
I don't want to come off like I have dangerous impulses. There's no animal inside to awaken, as it were. Throughout my life, I've had outlets outside of writing that have helped quell the voice in my head. I did creative projects as a kid: made brickfilms, learned magic tricks, built card houses, etc. Throughout my adolescent years, I played the saxophone in school. Practicing was one of my favorite pastimes, and I felt the same release from practicing as I do writing here today. In college, I was a bike messenger and became enamored with cycling.
In many ways, I feel less a fear of complacency, and more a sense of withdrawals when I'm not working on something that fascinates me. That growth-and-decay dichotomy also manifests itself in craft; you use it or you lose it, right? In that sense, I feel it's even more important to keep pursuing this project. I hit 100K views on this site today. I used to have barely 100 views a day, but now I easily average about 700–1,000 views a day. My site has found its way to active directories and has been mentioned by several other webmasters. I've also received lots of kind messages on my guestbook and through email from readers. I don't track metrics with my RSS feeds, but I'm confident that I have at least a small handful of consistent readers.
I've thanked y'all before, but I'm gonna do it again.
Thank you.
Be on the lookout for a new project coming up on this site. It's been stewing in my mind for a few weeks now, but I'm getting ready to pull it off, and when it happens, it's going to be awesome. And yes, you'll get another RSS feed of mine to follow. Isn't that exciting?
Stay loved, friends.
Bitcoin address: bc1qtgqvj6qjxnaxkns20x5rcwnxvv3jqzhduvvxfc