Nonprofit Entity
2026-07-05
Something I realized from the donation I received yesterday: it's a weekly donation of $1.15, which covers nearly all of my site's yearly operational costs. (Update: I'm stupid, and it's not every week, sorry.) There's a sense of joy in that, but also a deep sense of fear in passing through this milestone. "What now?" I ask myself as I continue down this self-imposed, lonely path. I found freedom in keeping my integrity as a writer—no platforms vying for profit, no impending desire for monetary growth or increased recognition. It's an entirely self-sustaining engine now, but sustaining what, exactly? In my mind, I find myself more married to the pursuit of truth, not truth itself. The best things are perpetual works in progress, but to what end? I know enough to understand that any satisfactory resolution is as tangible as smoke; it's fluid, conforms to whatever box it finds itself in, and disappears into nothingness the larger that box gets. In a sense, I'm afraid of that box getting bigger, of breaking the containment my small flame is nested in. Will it die out if exposed to the elements? I can't say for sure, and that uncertainty is what keeps me up at night.
I've sacrificed so much to find and cultivate this small garden I've been tending, and I think I now see that while it's helped me sustain myself, I've come to a stark and horrifying question: am I a farmer, or am I a pastoralist? Historically, I think I've found myself as the latter; when listening to my impulses alone, I've ended up in several different positions of employment, and at the end of all those stints, I decided to drop everything and run away. I'd tell myself every time, "There's something bigger than this I can't quite see yet," and run in an aimless direction in a meager attempt to find it. That's how I came back to Christ and found myself as a catechumen in my parish. I skipped Divine Liturgy this morning, by the way. More than anything, I can't put my ego next to my God and occupy the same space with Him. I can't resolve the trappings of this world, and while I am faithful in the pursuit of the next, I am still temporally bound to this moment—and the next few that will hopefully come after it.
It makes me wonder how I'll push through to the next day. There's nothing I really have to wait on, and the idea of pursuing anything beyond these simple, static webpages daunts me. How will I know for sure that I won't lose myself in something else? How long do I have to keep running? I look at the greats of before, and wonder how my path will carve itself in their stead. There are parts of them I aspire to be, but more parts I fear will swallow me whole. I don't want to be so prideful as to say I'm even remotely as talented as they were, but less than talented, I am patient. There's no telling where each day goes as it's happening, and all of these confounding factors outside of my control lead me further into this desire to isolate so that I don't forget what I'm really here trying to do. If I let those demons come for me, I'm afraid they'll swallow me whole.
To be a bit less vague and poetic, I'm concerned about receiving any more money for my work. I'd like to say that the last few years in pursuit of writing have been an effort in getting paid to do it, but along the way, I found a deep and profound obligation to only ever tell the truth. What I've learned is that people don't like the truth, whether it's in the form of being called out, skirting around the issue, or whatever—there's a great sense of danger in shouting it outside of a loud and bustling room. I can bemoan rigged systems or even experiment with ways around them, but it doesn't change the fact that we're still always going to be in that fish bowl, swimming inside of it day after day, year after year. Truthfully, I know that I write just to get through the day. Even beyond these personal confessions, I have a separate personal diary named Cogito Privatus. On certain occasions, I have to write long diatribes in it just so I can grasp for literally anything to keep me from drowning. I have certain boundaries in this work, but in there, I can let the demons really show their fangs.
The "Tortured Hypergraph" schtick is tiring, I'm sure. Beyond that, I think it's important to reiterate that I have no desire for a community of any kind surrounding my work. I'm honest enough with myself and with (You) to know that the best place for (You) to be is on the other side of the screen, forever a voyeur, and nothing more. Otherwise, true change won't actually happen; there's online engagement, but the best engagement happens when we're alone with our thoughts, and I hope my prose is enticing enough for you to reflect on what exactly it is both of us are doing here. Maybe in me you can see some kind of cautionary tale, or some kind of portal into a life that shows just how empty your computer actually is. Maybe it'll inspire you to change your ways and take those risks that no one else can take for you.
Better than money would be your prayers, whatever that looks like for you.
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