A little walk on the dark side

Dropping expectations from life, and self

I have been on quite the inner journey since mid-April. I deactivated both of my Instagram and my Facebook accounts. I announced to my readers here that I was quitting Substack. I slowed down and turned inward. I more or less “disappeared myself” from virtual existence. I traded online presence for intimacy with myself.

I let myself just be, and do nothing. I released the pressure valve of constantly having to show up, to say something, to do something useful. And wow. It was so freeing. Now that no one is expecting anything from me (including myself), what do I choose to do with myself?

As it turns out, I did a lot of nothing. I stopped presenting myself as someone who knows something about anything. I stopped trying to show up as someone who has figured something out. I allowed myself to fondle despair, to entertain dark thoughts, to basically give up on life for a while.

My body decided to take this opportunity to break down. I spent five days in bed with a low-grade fever, too exhausted to even shower, barely able to feed myself. I let my mind repeatedly loop on tracks like “What is the point? Life is full of suffering and then you die alone. I am tired of this shit. Humans have messed everything up and we’re doomed.”

Don’t worry, I am not here crying for help. But I have to confess, sometimes I do feel this deep existential exhaustion and loneliness and suffer from the pointlessness of it all. Don’t we all? If we were being honest I think we all feel this way sometimes.

I am back. For now. Maybe. But it feels different this time. I feel free from the weight of expectations here, mostly my own. I am not promising anything to you, or to myself… I don’t know how often I will publish, or what I will choose to write about. I just decided spontaneously to write today. And here it is. A bunch of words emergent from my mess of a mind — incomplete, incoherent perhaps, without much of a point to make.

If there is one idea that keeps rattling around in me lately, it is this:

Not knowing is the only absolute truth. All other lower-order truths are simply preferred perspectives — these so-called truths can all be labeled as delusions from some other point of view.

I want my writing here to feel less performative, less pressured, more organic. I am not here to sell anything anymore — not wisdom, not inspiration, not awakening. I am just here to express myself, simply because I need to do it for myself. I need to create for the sake of creating. I find myself caring less about who is listening or receiving what I put out.

That’s all for now.