Published: September 15, 2025.
These are strange times for me. I have a tendency to exaggerate my situation and make things more dramatic, because it feels more proper and mysterious to say “I am embarking on a foreboding spiritual quest” than to say “I caught a cold recently and have been in a bad mood”.
So I want to say up front: I caught a cold recently and have been in a bad mood. During that time, I’ve been reflecting (dare I say “lamenting”) on some topics that have silently collected in my head like a dusty surface that you suddenly realize hasn’t been cleaned in months.
Enough preamble. I’m worried that it’s over for me; “It” being an ill-defined amalgamation of self-actualization, worldly success, and building of artistic skill.
While I’ve been sick I’ve been taking it easy and not pushing myself, which is very similar behavior to my previous lack of sculpting, writing and checking off of to-do’s, but with the added peace of mind of having an excuse for why I’m not doing any of that. Generally speaking, that struggle for motivation isn’t a new one; I’ve long since been aware of my talent in creating excuses.
The particular abyss I found (and to a lesser extent, find) myself staring into this time around, is the realization that maybe my barriers to fulfillment are NOT “all in my head”. I recognize that I currently live an extremely comfortable life, and its because of that comfort that I’m able to persue my goals. In the future, when I experience chronic pain, illness more serious than a small cold, etc., I feel that I’ll develop a physical need to “take things easy” and to mitigate that pain despite my intellectual need to create/wonder/find God/start a cult/etc. This is to say, I forsee a future existence for myself of imprisonment, where I’ve passed my physical and mental ability to enact my will, but possess will all the same. Explicitly, this is me experiencing a Doom Spiral about mortality and impermanence.
I now need to take a quick hiatus to mention Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. I’m not one to advocate for taking a single idea and using it as the sole lense to look at everything through, but I keep finding myself returning to the Hierarchy as a useful analogy. I worry that on my journey to the top of the pyramid, the needs at the bottom will grow and grow until the whole thing collapses, and I have the rest of my life to stare at the goal at the top and know it was once within my reach, but never again. This makes for an unfortunate present, where I feel both my shoulder-spirits screaming at me that I need to climb the pyramid faster, that time is running out, that the whole structure will collapse because I took wood shop instead of art in 7th grade.
…but this is all bullshit, right? Doom and Gloom aside, I’m pretty sure what I’m trying to say is that I’m so convinced the future brings decay and rot that I’ve allowed it to infect the present and to devour all hopes of a situation improving. I don’t think its realistic for me to harbor this great anxiety of turning into someone so exhausted from the workday that they abandon their aspirations, given how many people have accomplished great things when they were older than 24. I’ve even heard it rumored that some have lived a fuffilling existence beyond the venerable age of 30!
Conversely, what if every one of my anxieties is truthful? How many centuries has the majority of the populace said “life’s hard, but I’ll be dead soon”, then died? Of all those with the ambition to write “The Next Great American Novel” or the idea for the perfect videogame, how many followed through? When people feel that it’ll be like this forever, I’m inclined to agree. Forever, sure… but I might get to it tomorrow. If nothing distracts me, of course.
Ultimately, the question here is one of belief. Someone who believes in themselves has a better chance at the realization of their desires than the one who doesn’t, since the former at least tries. Wayne Gretzky. It makes for a nice slogan, but I feel that belief might require a vulnerability I’m not willing to have. Making peace with the current situation opens one up to a lot less pain than striving for more and falling back to earth. Maybe anyone can self-actualize in the same way anyone can play in the NBA.
No, I think my Out is Through, with an abandonment of any expectations of success. I continue to find solace in the absurd hero who works ever-upward despite the certainty of failure. Everything I’ve accomplished, be it artistic, academic or personal, has felt like a willful madness with no thought except the present, like extracting a parasite from the body. My current struggle is one of Thinking vs Doing, and rejecting the notion that a bit more thought will prepare me for action, when I know (and continue having to re-learn) that the best way to adjust to the water is to jump right in.
In the spirit of thinking about things less, I’m going to go with my first instinct in how to end this essay.