2025-08-09 00:00 UTC
I've been feeling rather prolific this last week or so, but that's clearly due to the continued novelty of my new workflow. I had to switch from nano to micro today because I couldn't do proper text wrapping in nano, which is completely asinine to me. Nano would do soft-wrapping, but it would only do so by character and not by word. So when I would type in nano, I'd have to press enter every time I had to start a new line. That to me was just so stupid and I put up with it for a few days just because I still felt super cool putting my writing in the text editor. But now that I don't feel the novelty as much as I did a few days ago, I knew I needed to make the change. I also knew that configuring micro to my liking would take a little while, so that was something I wasn't looking forward to. I had to edit the configuration so that it would do the text wrapping by word, which I was grateful to see that I could do so. I also had to use a plugin for spell checking, but thankfully I already had aspell installed so that wasn't too big of an issue. But yeah, now I have micro configured in a way that's comfortable and I might add more plugins later based on new ideas or problems that I run into, but for now things feel fine.
I guess I also feel more prolific because of the "pain in the brain" I'm still dealing with, and writing is one of the only things that gives me any kind of true solace. I forget who said it, but some writer said that not writing and writing are both terrible states to be in and that the only good state to be in is having just written. To me, the writing itself is a good state to be in so I don't know what he was on about there, but the state of having just written is a very nice state to be in as well. So with that, I try my best to chase both states because for most of the day, I am completely void of any joy or comfort in my position. Going out sucks. Being inside all the time sucks too, but it's a devil I know so I'd rather deal with that than deal with the shitty world and the shitty people that are in it. I hate to be so cynical, but these days it's just been too difficult to find any silver lining in the world. I also know that there's definitely a good bit of confirmation bias involved in that judgment. If I'm being honest, the world is actually dull and boring. I think I was making it sound like the world is on fire on something, but that's not what I was going for. Where I am geographically, things are peaceful and that's a good thing. Unfortunately, the boredom surrounding that peace makes me go insane. That's true for a lot of other people as well, so that's why many people will make the conjecture that the world is getting worse. Unfortunately, that's just an illusion from the truth which is that things are actually going really well, but that lack of conflict drives a further existential fear—the fear that there is no purpose to any of this. See, in times of war and strife, it's very easy for people to define their purpose. But in times of peace, this is much harder. Because of this, the void becomes easier to see. This is why so many people in the Western world are so obsessed with things like optimization and self-help. We see the void, but deny our fear of it, so we decide to fill it with meaningless crap like "meditation" or "pickleball" or some other stupid fucking thing. Truthfully, it feels like every day is another trip on the hamster wheel.
For me, I know that I'll never truly be happy. Brain disease aside, there's always going to be a search for more. But here's the hard truth about happiness: it's only supposed to last a little while. For pretty much all of us, less than 1% of our lives will be spent in moments of happiness. We do everything we can to get there, but that's just how it works. Maybe that moment will come for me soon. I haven't felt it in a long time. It's been so long, in fact, that I don't remember it. I don't think I remember being actually truly happy. All I can think of are distractions, but nothing of the real thing. I think I'm beginning to doubt if it even exists. Hopefully one day I'll find it again. I just have to keep trying.