Another Bad Dream
2025-11-22
I'm confronted with a direct reality: I don't have anything particular on my mind I want to write about. I've done what I can to cultivate habits and routines to get the spark of writing something every day, but even when I make all my stars align, there are days where there's nothing stewing in the noggin, nothing that feels like it has been charging up and ready to be spewed out onto this page. But for me, I've come to understand that there's a beauty in improvisation and not knowing what will come out when you just let go and bring out whatever wills itself through your fingers.
My prose feels like it's gotten a lot tighter over the last year or so. The command I possess over style feels much more in my control than it used to, but more than that I feel a greater generative power than I used to. This practice of writing what's directly on my mind and reducing the friction between my brain and my fingers has been immensely helpful. I can bring out a significant output of words much faster than most at this point, but I still struggle with applying this to more planned writings.
I've written a few pieces for IOKTIKN over the last few months, but have been saving them so that I have a content bank that gives me enough cushioning to implement a more consistent posting schedule. But for these pieces, I have a much more difficult time getting the words out in a way that satisfies me. I think this has to do with the fact that I always write outlines for these pieces. They're a bit longer than these entries and I want to have a solid and logical line of thought for them, but I also struggle with keeping to that outline.
With these entries, the whole point of them is that I don't know how they're going to start or end, so there's a much lower expectation of completeness I set for myself. As a result, I can just let them go wherever they wish and not consider any plans or previously established ideas. Sometimes when I write these entries, I feel a very tight and consistent arc, which gives me confidence in my instincts. Unfortunately though, maintaining this arc for anything longer than a thousand words is a much harder endeavor.
There's much less friction here because I've attuned myself to that. When I'm writing something longer, though, that friction is still stubbornly there. I'm writing a piece right now and I've been putting it off for almost two months at this point because I can't seem to get past that friction and I distract myself with other things so I don't have to think about working on it. Most days, I call it when my Cogito entry is finished. I wish I could keep working on other things, though. I want that endurance more than anything at this point.
Not only do I want that endurance mentally, but physically as well. I've been walking every day and feel a great need to keep pushing myself more and more. When I started, I had absolutely no base of fitness. I was jelly—spineless, easily broken. But over the last seven months, I have seen a significant level of progress despite a lack of weight loss. I'm hoping that with my new change in diet I can start seeing it come together even more.
There's a fear of effort, but also a resistance to patience. I want my work to pay off immediately, but I know that's not how it works. I have to put my nose to the grindstone every single day for there to be results over an extended period. I still doubt the efficacy of this work, though. I doubt whether or not it will mean anything at all, if I'm just stuck in my own head and unable to ever escape.
I'm trying to build something real here. I want to speak the truth, not be turned into a spectacle. I hope that I can show others the importance of slowing down and thinking through things. For me, there's a certain self-mythology that feels incomplete. I don't know if any of this will translate to anything. More than likely, my ideas and my writings aren't as good as I think they are. More than likely, I won't be seen at all.
Maybe it'll turn into what it was always supposed to be.
The end of a bad dream.