Turning the Dial
2025-12-13
I had another night of horrible sleep last night. This time around, I had several nightmares throughout the course of the night. Unfortunately, this is a rather common occurrence these days. Usually the nightmares consist of demonic monsters that try to frighten me as often as they can. When these nightmares happen, I usually don't fall back asleep for a few hours. Since most of my night was interrupted by nightmares, I decided to sleep in this morning. I didn't wake up until around 11 AM, but it's not like that makes much of a difference in my day anymore. I don't have obligations or responsibilities to jolt me out of bed nor anything to look forward to. So with that, I decided to sleep in. Why not?
I'm still sick. I've been hacking up a bunch of brown and disgusting phlegm for the past few days. Gross. I've also had an immensely sore throat and my voice has been completely gone for the last few days. It hurts to talk, so I've been taking a forced vow of silence, I guess. I don't have much I want to say anyway since my mood has been a bit down in the dumps as well. Thankfully I haven't felt as hopelessly depressed as I have in the past. Truth be told, it's been about three months since any significant episode has occurred, which is actually quite the blessing. This year has been a major effort in trying not to completely give up on life, so I think that I've been seeing some fruits from that pursuit, surprisingly enough.
I told myself that I wanted to have more IOKTIKN pieces written by the end of this year so that I could have a decent enough content bank to begin a more regular publishing schedule, but I've only finished one piece so far and am only halfway through my second one, so progress has been less than satisfactory, especially considering that I started this process months ago. I thought that I'd have a greater output by now, but most days I finish writing once I publish the day's Cogito entry despite the fact that I need to keep pushing towards other pieces.
I'm proud of the work that I've done here and it's been fruitful in its own ways. I think that it's a medium that's been glossed over and forgotten, so for me I feel as if I'm at the cusp of a renaissance with it, truly. More and more people are coming to self-hosted websites as a replacement for social media, so I think that within the next few years there will be a greater cultural presence with the medium that I'm writing in now. On that front, I think I got in at a good time, but it's still a matter of remaining consistent with my practice.
Despite this, however, there is still a greater level of productivity that I need to achieve if I want to have a sustained presence in this field. Daily shorter entries are a good rhythm in themselves, but I know that I have more to strive for. Whether it be longer form essays or short stories or even a novel, there's still broader horizons regarding my work. The biggest obstacle in these pursuits has been myself. I continually tell myself that this or that thing isn't worth writing about. It's not developed enough. It's unoriginal, bland, boring, unintelligible, whatever. All of these doubts that I bring upon myself only push myself further away from any kind of actualization at all. Of the few things I've published, only a few works within that group were ones that I considered worthy of my own personal canon. More than anything, though, the hardest thing about it all has been the tiresome work itself of writing.
Some days it comes so naturally and effortlessly, but there are many more that are a slog. The words feel like drivel and merely sputter out grossly and incoherently onto the page. It's disgusting. Still though, it's an important effort to push through those days because even within those, the dial still turns.
Only ever so slightly, though.