It's been a while since I allowed myself to just pour freely onto the page. I admit I've noticed myself getting rut-barrelled into the ground again—getting caught up in the formula of writing, standardized. The desire path becoming the only road taken. Has it been good? Maybe. But the sputtering is present and becoming louder. Oil leaking from the engine. It's the 20th day of August, and the 21st day I've written consecutively. I've always taken a day or two break each week for the past year, but I've been pushing myself to write each day of the month for Blaugust. Surprisingly, there have been a handful of good posts, in spite of the endless churning. But when I find myself falling asleep each night, there's a recurring nebulous thought. Rainbow-shaded, and just out of reach: What will I write about tomorrow? Each day, the pragmatic and practical becomes a deeper, darker chasm. I am somebody who attempts to take a broad, lengthwise view of things. The sight from the long horizon. And yet, here I am writing with velocity and frantic compulsion for months in the now. A steep voice in my mind reminds me how precious and violent life is. Fragile and finite and to not take any moment for granted. As though I can visualize the red, blinking numbers counting down how many seconds I have, pulsing above my head. As I wrote about a few days ago, I've found myself as the sole subject of a satire circlejerk blog and I ask, why me? Five posts, now. It turned out that the anonymous writer behind the blog is part of the omg.lol community, who was silently reading an IRC conversation I was having with others about the blog. It conjures the image of the shy wallflower at the dance. The deep thinker who doesn't dare speak out loud in front of everyone, but is more mindful about what's going on more than anyone else. Life blooms in ruminating darkness just as much as in warm sunshine. I've been in this position so, so many times throughout my life. I don't like taking up space, and I don't want to bother anybody by my mere existence, but my mind never turns off. Coincidentally, I had a hateful threat sent to me yesterday, and of course a mind like mine contemplated if it was the same person. After reviewing logs, it turned out to be unrelated. Clarification: I want to make it clear that my site has an anonymous guestbook that is completely independent and detached from omg.lol. I choose to interact with and make note of when I receive incendiary comments there and elsewhere. That's entirely my responsibility, as are its consequences. While I think it's weird that someone in the omg.lol community would make a satire site dedicated to me (another community member), I don't think it's harassment. It's just weird. People are allowed to be weird. Annoyance is the price we pay for community. None of my negative experiences have had anything to do with my connection to omg.lol. I didn't think I needed to spell that out, but clearly I need to. I've also been thinking about the epistolary and missives I've been exchanging with Unstory, the peasant anonymous blogger whose blog is being parodied by circlejerk in the first place. You sometimes encounter people on the Internet who have a compulsive pathology towards sockpuppeting—you will think you're in a group, but there's just a single individual spinning a dozen different plates. The singular is never sufficient; the emptiness is too vast. The thousand-mask catfish of dead Internet theory. And I thought for a moment—what if Unstory and Circlejerk.blog and the anonymous hate message were all the same person? But the truth is less interesting and dramatic: I get under many people's skin, not just one. I am abrasive, and often impossible. Anyways, I want to share some of what Unstory wrote to me: Carnival, war, greed, whatever. It does not matter. Those are just current visible "corpses". Mind behind it is the cause. Topic, person, label does not really matter. It's how mind works. "Here in Slovakia like half of the population were "communists" before 1989. Then they become democrats, like in 1939 they were national socialists. The same people. They were peasants, Slavic. They became Christians by force. They did not want anything from that. It just happened to them. "This is also the reason I did not write a word for almost two weeks. There is nothing I can add. Whatever topic I found that bothers my mind, I found it's the result of the same mind's pattern. Even already written articles are all practically about the same thing. "Recently I have pain in my back. Bending down is very hard, sitting is so so, even while standing there is a pain. My mind obviously use accumulated knowledge to telling me the story about it, explaining the thing. "But the reality is, body knows what's happening. And body is dealing already with it, no matter what I think about it. And it will fix it without consulting the mind. I will don't know what it was and why. I will end with just story about it. Like this one I am writing you right now. "Whatever words are out, on my website, your website, email, whatever. Those are just illusions ;/ Nobody can capture life with words. So your writing, my writing, Google's CEO writing, president's writing are the same hallucinations. And all have the same value, zero. "Funny, isn't it? Many write books, studies about it for centuries. Theories, ideologies, religions were created based on that. And not a once it captured the reality. Some who wrote about it were killed, jailed, exiled, some were promoted, rewarded. It mostly depended on the current narrative, how punish/reward system that time was setup." The IndieWeb carnival theme, hosted by Chris Shaw this month, is purpose. What is my purpose—and what is the purpose of this blog? I have a /why page and a /values page, both dedicated to answering the question. And of course I've written blog posts about why. I'm folding a thousand cranes, I'm sending a thousand messages in bottles to sea. I'm building sandcastles before the tide comes in. In reality, this is a lack of an answer. The truth is I don't really have any idea. I just keep moving forward. My fingers keep typing, each day. The truth is beyond my understanding. How strange it is to be anything at all. I've been finalizing my blog, in a way. My /death page has been updated. I did a full backup of over 400 pages on the Wayback Machine and Neocities. I've been accepted into Rogue Scholar, giving my articles on science a proper DOI. Surely, at some point, I will reduce the output, or maybe take a break, or maybe stop writing altogether. It is still impossible for me to fathom, but I can see the horizon of diminishing autumn returns. In the morning, at my desk beside my bed, I take my abalone shell and smudge sweetgrass and wild sage. I ask the medicine what my purpose is. Leaves and grass burn slowly from ember to ash. We are all fated to this. Ember to ash. Beautiful mulchy wormfood to nourish what grows slowly and does not take more than it needs. The opposite of purpose is not meaninglessness. It is accidental. I do not think I am doing any of this on purpose. I focused on writing over anything else because a middle school teacher complimented a poem I stole. I accidentally stumbled upon omg.lol which resulted in the blog existing at all. "And the most magical thing is. One day the body, organism will shut it down. No more thoughts, nothing that can observe, be aware of anything. No more stories or memory of the past stories. Again without consulting with the mind. Whole personality, identity, badges will be gone. While body will continue infinitely. Atoms will move, change and the universe will keep its balance. "It's unimaginable. All those stories. Real things survives, matter, atoms. Everything that was not real will be gone. And nobody will notice. Like you don't have an idea about some random human who lived 200 year ago. That random probably tried hard whole his life. Only what left of him are atoms from his body. Like we drink piss from some dinosaur." This too shall pass, and we all shall be healed in the life of the world to come. The world is a cruel place, and therefore I won't be. The world is a cruel place, but it's also very beautiful. The world is a cruel place, but it is also home. About Brennan Kenneth Brown Queer Métis writer, cultural critic, and web developer based in Mohkínstsis (Calgary), Treaty 7 territory. Author of nine books and counting, the founder of Fireweed Writing School and Berry House Studio, and of Write Club at Mount Royal University. His work has been cited in Le Monde and other publications. Enjoy this content? Support my work and help me create more: Patreon | Ko-fi | GitHub Sponsors