2025-09-05
So things have been coming back up the back half of this week. I feel fortunate that I have more energy and don't have the same cloud as usual looming over me. An interesting thing happened yesterday: I was at a Starbucks when I saw a homeless man come in. I didn't pay him much mind at the time. Based on how he looked, he kept himself together pretty well, but his main tell for being homeless was that he had a backpack stuffed with belongings and a blanket clipped on the outside of it. But anyway, I was walking out of the store when he decided to approach me and ask me for some money. I typically always give homeless people money or if I'm outside of a store (like a convenience store) I will offer to buy them food, drink, cigarettes, or other items they might need. They're always genuinely quite thankful when I do this for them, and this homeless guy at the Starbucks decided that to pay me back, he'd turn me on to some cool bands I hadn't heard of. One of them was called "Death in June" and I still need to check it out. He also told me to look up the S&M Metallica concert because apparently it's super iconic. I haven't done it yet, but I will soon. He also called me the "eye of the storm", which I took as a nice compliment. I can also understand the metaphor of his life being chaotic and unstable, so his interaction with me signaled a moment of calm for him. I felt like it was important for me to listen to him as he discussed cool things he'd seen (he was into Alistair Crowley and that kind of Gnostic stuff) and stories from his life and his collections of records and musician memorabilia. I felt fortunate to be able to do something nice for someone and I hope to get more opportunities in the future.
I also received an email from a really nice reader (shout out h0p3) who inspired me to get behind the personal wiki concept. I know that apps like Notion or Obsidian really popularized this kind of concept through the lens of productivity and optimization (a 'get a second brain' marketing ploy) and for a while I thought the idea of a personal wiki was stupid. But now that I've seen the true power of a really good personal wiki, I feel empowered to start one. It's a good thing for me because I already have a somewhat modular structure to this blog, but having it be a sort of wiki-blog sounds really cool and interesting. It seems like it would be a good way to wrap it all together. I need to figure out the proper tooling to pull it off because I want to keep Zola in it, but still have the power of the wiki structure. The idea of having someone get lost in a deep dive of writing sounds extremely awesome and I think that it's such a novel and interesting concept. I would love to look at the wiki-blog down the line and see how much progress there is and know that it could be explored for a long time. I'd like to maybe revolve around some kind of theme or story so that it gives the project more shape, but I can't think of any good ones right now. I'm sure it'll come to me sooner rather than later.
I still struggle with the performative aspect of writing in here, but I also understand that I want my writing to connect with people, so performance is a crucial element to that. There's a lot of predicaments behind industrialization as a movement, but I think that it's still important to acknowledge the positive impacts of it. I hope that we can find a way to achieve a post-scarcity society someday soon. I understand that I am a privileged person, but I also understand that trouble comes for us all. I can't do everything to help those less fortunate than me because I have my own troubles too—everyone does. I also realize that the great institutions of the world can't play fair because it's too much for even them to control. So all of the unfairness and injustice that I see in the world is something that can't be stopped immediately or easily, and for that I have to try and figure out how to make sense of it the best way I can. I know I can't help everyone. Truthfully, I can only really help just a few people. If God wants to bless me with an opportunity to help a lot of people, I'll do my best to pursue it but as things stand right now with my condition, temperament, and knowledge, there's only a small amount I can do relative to what's been done by other individuals.
I know that there's a lot more life left for me to live. God's going to take His time.