chandra nicole.

1. It is here, in this villa, that I decide how life works for me once and for all. A definitive statement that will certainly cause me to cringe at a later date, but I really felt it. (I do cringe at a later date, if you were wondering – future me)
   
2. The totality of my time and attention since moving has been consumed by helping Kitty acclimate to her new environment and making this place baseline livable. Both required much more bandwidth than I could have anticipated. Kitty had only ever known one home; all eight years of her little cat life were lived at the hotel. She’s also really sensitive and wildly territorial, so it’s not surprising she was a bundle of anxiety and nerves for the first handful of days…but also curious. Trying to make sense of where she was, she’d express interest in exploring. Any slight sound or sudden movement sent her shimmying behind a bolster, where she’d stay for hours. Eventually, she sniffed every square inch of the villa and garden with me by her side, so obviously needed to move on to the neighbors’ yards and surrounding areas. This morning, upon waking, she headed straight out the front gate, and for the first time, I didn’t follow her.
   
3. As far as making this place liveable goes, let’s just say that although this joglo is abundant with beautiful Balinese design and surrounded by a vibrant garden overflowing with plants and flowers of too many varieties to count – it’s a bit rustic in a lot of ways and living in such close proximity to nature presents challenges one couldn’t anticipate unless you’d actually done it (which we hadn’t). I feel a little bit like Diane Lane’s character in Under the Tuscan Sun, when the shutters on her ramshackle villa are banging violently during a thunderstorm with rain pouring in, pigeons roosting in her bedroom, faucets working at random, tasked with making her new house a home.
   
4. A few specific smells and sounds are quintessentially Bali to me. Wafting incense, bonfires (of burning trash), temple chanting, and rake brooming. The latter I used to associate specifically with little old Asian ladies. Every morning like clockwork, they emerge onto the street, hunched over, flicking their inconveniently short bundles of coconut sticks that had been fashioned into brooms. Scrape, scrape, scraping on the pavement. I never really understood why all the raking (it seemed kind of obsessive to me)… until I moved into this villa. I now have a Plumeria tree that, all day, every day, sheds pieces of itself onto my yard. So much so that it’s a wonder it has any leaves or flowers left on its branches. Every morning, I collect the newly dropped flowers for a bowl that sits on my bathroom sink (they’re so fragrant), and as I’m contorted into a U-shape raking up plumeria leaves with my coconut broom, it’s clear that I’ve turned into an old Asian lady.
   
5. Chop wood, carry water. This seems to be the theme of my new era, and honestly, I’m here for it. There’s something ultra satisfying about projects that require the use of my body, and not just my mind. It’s quite a contrast going from living in a hotel where everything was taken care of to a home with 3000 square feet of villa and garden to tend to. I’m domestic goddessing my ass off and couldn’t be happier about it.

1. Temples in the distance engaged in what seems to be a chant battle. Lightning spider-veining across the dark indigo sky, illuminating what were moments ago ghosts of clouds. Thunder cracking, rumbling, and then tumbling through the tropical atmosphere. Kitty slinks under the bed. The storm looks to be passing us by. Gulps of warm oat milked coffee, sweetened with palm sugar; the first cup goes down quickly. A smattering of bird chirps announces the approaching dawn; roosters lend their assistance in notifying the neighborhood of a new day.
   
2. In Indonesia, the word Semimpi suggests something ‘like a dream’. This is the name of the hotel we’ve been living at since arriving in the fall of 2019. As the clock counts down our last moments in this place, I search for words to describe my experience here, but they’re elusive; floating at the edges of my consciousness, escaping my grasp à la Peter Pan’s shadow, indecipherable like a dream reflected upon at dawn.
   
3. M and I have moved into a two-bed, two-bath classic Balinese-style joglo with a lush tropical garden. Joglos are much different than anything you’d ever see in America, and are very interesting from an architectural standpoint. Designed to be efficient in the tropical climate, its woven bamboo roof is constructed into a point. This allows hot air to rise into the apex away from living areas, where it’s pushed out through the ventilation spaces built between the roof and walls, and through ornamental openings carved into the walls themselves. That said, it’s certainly hotter than the air-conditioned hotel rooms we came from. Cold showers and tiny clothes with good wicking are the order of the day. Whereas in most Western architecture, you’re ideally sealed off from the outdoors, here, in the joglo, one lives in the semi-open alongside nature. So far we’ve met the foot-long lizard that hangs out near our ceiling, a big toad from the garden that sometimes sleeps in our walk-in closet, a snail that lived its last moments on the backside of our bathroom door, a variety of insects (although not as many as you’d think) and, apparently, some bats who eat fruit in our upstairs foyer as we sleep. Mosquito coils are burnt around the clock because the barrier between the garden and our house is, basically, non-existent. Living here feels like glamping 24/7.

In 3rd grade, I lived on Englewood Drive, atop a hill that careened quite sharply downwards for many blocks.

At the very bottom of that hill was a gated walkway sandwiched between houses, leading to the playground of my elementary school. Children of the neighborhood funneled out of their respective side streets onto Englewood Drive every morning, where they converged into friend lumps and descended down the hill like schools of fish. One particularly wintery winter, the ice was so thick we slid all the way down the street to the catwalk, using the bottoms of our shoes as skates.

On the way home from school, I often walked an undetectable distance behind a popular boy named Chris Lawson. He lived a quarter way up the hill on a man-made lake, dotted with houses much larger than I’d ever lived in, filled with people who owned jet skis. My unrequited love for him occupied much real estate in a puffy diary, dotted with multi-colored hearts, that I wrote in every day.

There was a creek running into the lake, which flowed under the Englewood Street overpass, where I once stuck my umbrella in rushing rainwater and emerged with bloodied knees after being dragged along the cement by the force of the current.

Up the creek a little further, where the bed turned from cement to dirt, there was a park with an ancient weeping willow. In the summer, my best friend Tara and I would spend entire afternoons swinging from the branches in the shade of that tree. On one occasion, dismounting directly into the creek, where we quickly learned of the leeches that dwelled there. (I’d never run home faster)

Tara lived on my block, down the hill and around the corner. I could see her backyard from my backyard, and could get there by scaling a few fences.

Tara’s house was much more fun than mine, and so I spent most of my time there. She had a giant trampoline, bedroom walls lined with Guns N’ Roses posters, a closet with a secret doorway in the back, and a 16-year-old sister who I thought was so mature and cool. I didn’t have any older siblings, just two much younger brothers, and I’d never known a teenager before. She couldn’t have cared less about me, of course. But I couldn’t wait to grow up and drive a car like her.

It’s her sister and my little-girl notion of age I thought of this morning, as I woke up to a brand new October, in which I turn 47. I’m not far from the age my grandmother was when I was a third grader living on top of that hill. Through my little-girl eyes, she was a very old woman, and Tara’s sister was the ultimate goal.

When I look in the mirror, I see the years that have marched across my face, but I do not feel old. I feel like I know more than ever before, and somehow, also, less. Millions of dollars wouldn’t even begin to lure me back to the teenage years I once romanticized. I feel as if I’ve lived countless lives with identities in the multitudes. And yet, in many ways, I feel not much different than the little girl standing at the apex of Englewood Drive, setting her baby brother on a skateboard, preparing to push him face-first down the hill.

1. I’m carefully crafting a framework for my writing practice. Books upon books have been written, advising on the matter. But like any advice, if taken too seriously, it’s shame-inducing when one inevitably falls short. Which I always do. I prefer to view advice (of any kind) as a buffet of options, none mandatory, all open to sampling, tweaking, or rejecting at any time. The point is not to construct a rigid structure of writing rules, but to forge a system that works with my natural rhythms, quirks, and sensibilities. I want a flexible protocol that helps me commit to my art and maximize my efforts. Since I’ve used up my lifetime allotment of ‘working against myself’, there’s no other option. My first (and perhaps only?) “rule” is this self-prescribed meta advice, lest I fall into black-and-white thinking. My arch-nemesis. Killer of all that’s worth living for: curiosity, wonder, imagination, laughter, freedom, love.
   
2. I may as well be one of the old grandparents from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory right now; high-spirited and living in my bed. For the past few days, I’ve not seen much but the inside of my little room, from the vantage point of my memory foam pillow; M posted up beside me. Snuggling with kitty, napping, ordering in, giggling, watching the entire Harry Potter epic on repeat. Every evening, at vibe o’clock sharp, I light an incense and two candles. Then, down to the commons area I go to refill our water from big jugs covered in cozies that say things like ‘good people drink good water’, where I run into Bee stirring pots over the stove. She’s been living here with her husband, Ant, for as long as we have. Their familiar faces give this hotel a homey feeling; I’m not sure it would have otherwise. We chat about teeth, and visas, and what’s cookin’. Then, I lug my bag of full water bottles back through the courtyard, past the trellis overtaken with climbing vines and pink blossoms, up a flight of stairs, and down the hallway that glows with sunset, where my room can be found. I shut the door behind me and lay down with a satisfying ahhhhhh… “There’s nothing like climbing into bed after a long day of lying in bed.” M nods and murmurs in agreement. She felt that.
   
3. Ever since I learned that the existing water on Earth is the only water there will ever be, I look at the ocean differently. As I walk on the beach, I attempt the impossible task of wrapping my mind around the fact that the waves crashing on the shore are made of clouds that have fallen from the sky and run down the hills, collected, consumed, and returned to the land by humans and animals alike… for millennia. The earth, a gigantic, tiny terrarium floating in space. I then look at the sand giving way under my feet and wonder what it once was: rocks, mountains, caves, bones, or ocean floors? I try to imagine the unimaginable number of creatures whose feet wandered it before me. In my mind’s eye, civilizations and topographies rising and falling in time-lapse fashion around me as I move down the beach.
   
4. I wandered upon a baby sea turtle on the beach today as the sun rose into the sky. Motoring with all his might across the great expanse of sand before him, his flappy little swimming arms served the temporary purpose of delivering him to the sea. I was cheering him on with all the affection of a mother as her baby takes its wobbly first steps, when the slow rolling low tide swooped in and gently carried him towards the break, him aiding with a vigorous breaststroke. “Keep swimming, little guy! You can do it!” I yelled into the crashing waves, concerned he’d get tossed back to shore and have to start over again. Turns out the ocean was on his side today. I watched him dip easily below the break, then into the deep sea, where he swam away towards his tiny turtle destiny.
   
5. Recently sighted:
   1. A tsunami evacuation route notice featuring the man from the men’s bathroom sign, leaping in suspended animation towards a triangle hill, as he’s chased by a white block of wave.
   2. Fliers advertising tantric massages, taped to light poles. Too many to count.
   3. A cafe called ‘Juicy and Crispy’
   4. A tall tourist with the opposite of a resting bitch face
   5. Hotel Swastika
   6. A roadside construction worker wearing an unfolded cardboard box with a hole cut out the size of his head, resting atop the brim of his bucket hat.
   7. A large box in a Mexican restaurant with ‘NAPKIN DINNER’ printed on the side 😋 (containing dinner napkins?)
   8. A hot pink sign reading, “Hot sauce is just sexy ketchup,” which reminded me of something you’d find on a Taco Bell sauce packet. Man, I miss Taco Bell.
      
6. We tried a new cafe today, possessing the perfect blend of local and Bule. M was nibbling Nasi Goreng with her front teeth; I was inhaling a croissant stuffed with bacon, eggs, and hollandaise, when we agreed this fusion was our favorite: some creature comforts of America, married with the rich, rooted connectedness of Bali. Lean too west and things get blasé, but lean too east and you feel like a fish out of water at best, trespassing at worst.
   
7. A few days ago, we toured a villa that manages this fusion. A rare find. After brunch, we purchased a tape measure to take with us on our second, more thorough, viewing. Is this our new home?

1. My room is on the second floor of the hotel I’ve been living in for almost six years. I often get up in the middle of the night (it’s 3:30 a.m. right now) to sit on my balcony, drink coffee, think, and listen. Typical sounds one might hear from my perch at this time: water cascading over the edge of the poolside below, a symphony of frogs and crickets just beyond the thicket of banana trees across the road, on certain days of the month, ritual chanting rises from temples on the horizon, and on this special morning, two drunk guys, each playing reels at full volume, conversing over the discordant noise as it ricochets through the courtyard.
   
2. I’ve started attending a Pilates class on Mondays. It’s held in a studio with walls made entirely of glass. In keeping with the massiveness of my gym, there’s a mural-like image spanning the height and width of the studio, featuring the very large head of a stern-looking Wayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, along with the words “YES YOU CAN”, in blue and black. I’m fairly certain Mr. Rock is not sponsoring my gym, but his likeness has been painted with the kind of Mona Lisa eyes that are, somehow, continuously staring into your soul. No matter what reformer machine you happen to be on, or which pretzel pose you find yourself in, you cannot escape his gaze, which is clearly one of gym-bro judgement. This reminds me – I really need to start that gym I’ve been dreaming about, where the light is flattering, the colors are warm, the wall art features ladies of all sizes, and men are only allowed attendance when accompanied by a woman.
   
3. Tummy down on a yoga mat, my nose is six inches from a deep crack in the cement. At the same time, I’m gazing from a great height through the airplane window of my reading glasses, where the crack appears as a deep ravine running through unforgiving desert lands. Such bold adventurers, the troops of tiny ants, so often caravanning through, must be to traverse the great terrain of my bedroom floor.
   
4. I killed the highway of ants running in and out of my shower, with an Empire State Building-sized can of bug spray, while I was peeing.
   
   Sometimes I wonder if humans look like ants to Mother Nature.
   
5. I can’t stop saying “to be honest”. I guess it’s a new thing I’m trying out: honesty. Was I previously a liar?
   
6. While diving down ancestral rabbit holes with M, I learned of a little Russian village named Huck, which consisted mostly of German immigrants. Many of whom, at the turn of the twentieth century, traveled to the distant lands of the largely unsettled middle America and set up shop in an obscure little podunk town. My great-grandparents were among these twice-immigrant Germans, and apparently, this Germans-from-Russia-living-in-Lincoln-Nebraska community was (and is?) a whole thing. I spent 34 years there; how did I not know this? (Kind of ironic that I now live in Bali, where a large Russian community has been forming ever since the war with Ukraine began.)
   
   I also learned that my great x13 grandfather on my mother’s side was a Puritan from England who sailed on over to America around the time of the Mayflower, had a hand in founding a few colonial towns, fathered way too many children, and likely murdered a 15-year-old servant boy (not to mention, got away with it).
   
   Reading about this felt like being consumed by an enthralling novel that also happened to be my family history. I now have a new mission to do something sensational before my life ends, so that when my descendants are clicking through ancestry.com, they don’t see my name and skip right over it as I did with so many of my predecessors. But instead, jump up from their research, eyes wide with historical gossip, and exclaim to the closest human either something truly heinous or fantastically heroic about me.
   
7. There’s a lot of time to think when you’re sitting on the back of a scooter, being chauffeured between the coastline and the interior of Bali. There are frangipani flowers peppering the pavement to be turned into offerings later, deities carved in sandy stone, ornate temples made of black lava rock. Bustling villages bursting at the seams with heart and grit, edged with vast rice fields glowing green in the sunlight, morphing into hills, climbing and plunging, and hinting at jungle.
   
   I’d like to say I was thinking about all that, focused on where I was, during today’s drive. But I wasn’t. Mostly, I was thinking about where I’ve been and how I got here.
   
   More specifically, I was thinking about where my ancestors have been. The distant lands they hail from, and the incomprehensible number of seemingly random decisions, serendipitous moments, and strokes of luck that were necessary for me to be born in the middle of America. What immense challenges and hardships must have been overcome, with just the right combination of people surviving and reproducing, for me to even be alive and sitting on the back of this scooter in Bali.
   
8. It’s easy to entertain the delusion that I’m floating an island unto myself when I’m zoomed in, as I normally am, on my own life. It’s also quite hard to deny the interconnectedness of my existence when looking at the little bubbles representing my ancestors, expanding exponentially outward into a tree made of family.
   
9. Bali has held me during some of the most challenging years of my life. I love it. But I often feel like I don’t belong here. I’m not sure if it’s because I haven’t tried to belong, or if I haven’t tried because I don’t belong. To riddle that out, though, is an exercise in futility, because my daughter does belong in Bali and so does my cat. My two soul mates. More than I feel like I don’t belong here, I know that I belong with them. And so, here becomes where I belong by default. I wonder if that’s how my German ancestors felt when they migrated to Russia and then again to America? Like they didn’t necessarily belong where they were, but they did belong to the people they were there with.
   
10. One of the more annoying features of my German-ness is the whiskers that increasingly grow out of my face. I spend an inordinate amount of time feeling around for them with my fingertips and standing in front of my bathroom mirror wrestling them out with tweezers.
    
    I’m not the only one in my family to bear this curse. Aunt S used to come to my salon, where I would be quietly horrified as I smeared wax down her chin and neck, over her persistently wiry whiskers. I was in my mid-20s at the time and had sprouted a couple of baby chin hairs myself, but my situation was not as dire as hers, so it was easy to distance myself from the future that sat before me. I could never tend to my facial hair the way she does, though, as that would require letting my whiskers grow long enough for the wax to grab onto. No thank you.
    
    I wish I could be like the cute waitress at the beach warung, who shamelessly rocks a large mole with a lush forest of witchy black hairs sprouting forth from it. But, alas, I am not. I often think I’ll get my whiskers lasered off as soon as it makes financial sense to do so. But then, I wonder, what would I do with all my free time?
    
11. Twenty-four hours of dungeon-ing around, streaming non-stop Harry Potter, mashing potatoes and bananas into near-drinkable slop for M, who’s just had all four wisdom teeth removed. She said her tongue feels like it’s on backwards.

“Greatness isn’t handed to you!” she urged from the stage, as she addressed a room full of one thousand self-proclaimed future billionaires. I saw only a clip of her talk, but I assume, having once sat in similar rooms myself, she was imparting to these women that greatness must be taken or earned.

Okay fine. Let’s pretend this is true. What does “greatness” even mean in this context?

Is greatness having your own pedestal to stand on, and enough cash on hand to feed several small nations like her? Is it possessing a grandiose life purpose, accompanied by a mission to change the world? Is it flying on private jets, whilst wearing the latest high-end fashions? Is it having a million followers, nurturing the right contacts, climbing revered ladders, building a profitable business, writing a bestselling novel, making lucrative investments, donating money, or doing volunteer work at local charities?

How many accomplishments must a gal tick off her list before she can know for certain that her greatness has been secured?

Is there a finish line on a crowded street, with tape she soars through in slow motion, as onlookers uproariously applaud her superhuman feat? In her post-event interview, she’s asked, “What is it like to finally be great?” She replies earnestly with her hand on her heart, “It’s hard to put into words, Mabel… but I suppose you could say that as my foot crossed that finish line, I realized my life was finally worth living.”

This is indeed great for her, because whenever she’s feeling down and all meaning has been lost, the only thing she must do to soothe herself is gaze upon that glimmering trophy perched proudly on her mantle…

And be careful to never ever ask herself, “Who decided a woman dwelling in a towering box on the hill is greater than a woman who wanders the streets below?”

I spent this week observing and documenting random stuff… and I gotta say, it’s been a revelation.

After a decade spent immersed in New Age ideologies (and let’s face it – a lifetime spent in Western society), where I was taught that my thoughts, my identity, and my life were raw materials to be manipulated into the experience of my choosing, just allowing myself to witness what I’m seeing, thinking, and feeling without analyzing or altering is truly liberating.

Although I do believe in personal agency, am an advocate for the examined life, and am almost always engaged in some sort of personal development campaign… I also feel that the living of life can easily be lost in these endeavors.

Below you will find some of the random things I jotted down this week.

1. That’s the thing with a diary, though. In order to record your life, you sort of need to live it.”— David Sedaris
   What have I been doing with my life lately? Navel-gazing, it seems.
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2. After spending a significant amount of time recently reading the very human words of David Sedaris (uncomfortably honest, raw, funny, exceptional), it’s clear how truly terrible AI writing is (boring, basic, insufficient). I simply must delete every word generated by artificial intelligence from my website and life, and never use it again for that purpose. It’s a mystery as to why I ever thought it was a sufficient replacement for my own words. You know what else is boring? My navel.
   
3. I saw a Santa-shaped man in the steam room at the gym, standing in front of the steam pipe, spinning slowly like a rotisserie chicken.
   
4. We ordered American-style pancakes for breakfast, but I forgot what America tastes like. M tried to pay with her room key.
   
5. The banana tree leaves are shredded like confetti from previous monsoon seasons, and mimic the pattering sound of the incoming rain as they’re rustled by winds the storm will blow in on. Is rainy season here already?
   
6. Syntha (my cat) shadowed my every move all morning, until finally shimmying under the bed to hide. She’s afraid of thunder, and I am her protector.
   
7. Currently in a reading-everything-David-Sedaris-has-ever-written phase. Midway through a book of diary entries from his 20s. Why are the mundane events of someone else’s life so interesting? My eyes are opening to the many things I could write about that I previously thought to be unnoteworthy.
   
   In the book, David speaks of a woman who wrote a book of advice called ‘If You Want to Write’, where she mentions the importance of keeping a diary. It was valuable, she said, because after a while you’d stop being forced and pretentious and become honest and unafraid of your thoughts.
   
   I feel that.
   
   Really wish I’d recorded my experiences up until now. I’ve done so many interesting things that I largely don’t remember the finer details of. Instead, I just wrote walls of rambling words about how confused I was. Maybe that’s why I stayed confused for so long?
   
8. Bali flooded today. I saw floating cars and a tall ramshackle building crumbling into a raging river that, yesterday, was a street.
   
9. When M was a toddler, I weaned her from the binky by cutting the tips off each one. She was free to use them, but lost interest that very same day. Apparently, I snipped away the joy.
   
10. My relationship with social media is complicated. Sometimes I love it, and sometimes I loathe it. I once used it to build a life coaching business, traveling around the US and moving to Bali. But these days, I’ve no desire to create content for it like I used to.
    
    Sometimes it provides me with laughs, inspiration, and knowledge. It’s convenient for connecting. But it also consistently leaves me feeling ‘meh’ at best and inadequate at worst (always frizzled around the edges). Not to mention, its addictiveness is immediate. I find myself downloading and deleting Instagram daily.
    
    Today I tried a new trick (ironically, learned of on Instagram). I set my wallpaper to plain black and my phone filter to greyscale. The intention: leave my phone at full functionality, but remove the psychological rewards of using it. Who knew the picture of my cat, whom I’m obsessed with and see every time my phone is in my hand, makes me apt to come back for more?
    
    The verdict so far: a smartphone without color (especially social media) is dull, underwhelming, and, dare I say, depressing. I can do what I need to, but am way less interested in sticking around. The colors of my analog life are suddenly more vibrant.
    
    Did I just snip the tips off my binkies?
    
11. I’ve been mainlining sugar lately.
    
    A scoop and a half of palm sugar in each of my three cups of French press every morning, two cups of deeply honey’d chai tea in the afternoon, fudgey brownies from the health food store which I’m convinced don’t count due to them being gluten free and laced with protein powder – but still, I can’t stop eating them (Sometimes I buy two and consider it lunch)
    
    Tonight for dinner, I had a slice of my favorite, way-bigger-than-need-be, lemon meringue pie from a cafe called The Glasshouse, situated next door to my favorite hotel in Sanur.
    
    I always think I should give up sugar, but it’s one of the only vices I still have left (and who would I be without a vice?) I became a sugar girl when I stopped being a wine girl. Seems this is a common trait of the booze loving teetotaler.
    
    I once had a boyfriend who quit drinking after three DUIs. He bought Sour Patch Kids in bulk, and after riding the bus home from work, he’d fiendishly devour them while wearing sweatpants and hollering sports words at the TV.
    
    On my brother’s recent visit to Bali, we helped him procure ice cream three different times one day. He’s also alcohol free, and insisted throughout his stay that he was, in fact, “feeding his parasite”. Certain he’d acquired it from one of his many cats long ago, he seemed not only content with his intestinal house guest but considered it his duty as a good host to honor its every demand.
    
    I’d like to think that my consumption habits are not as severe as these other sugar lunatics. But isn’t that the logic every addict uses to justify their behavior?
    
    As I fork the last bits of lemony goodness into my pie hole, I resign myself to going on a sugar sabbatical. M reminds me that I say this at least once a month.
    
12. I’ve recently concluded that the thoughts running amok in my head, and the feelings that accompany them, are nothing to be taken all too seriously. Anything that shifts so quickly could not possibly be worth lending weight to, right? Seems an inadequate foundation for hitching an identity to. They seem to be more suited for entertainment purposes – a riveting show to watch when I’m bored and there’s nothing more interesting to look at.
    
13. My voice was lost for so long, but now I’m remembering how much I love to write. I’m enjoying getting lost in crafting sentences – I don’t even care that the ‘e’ on my keyboard has stopped working. The satisfaction I feel is overriding the annoyance of having to keep an ‘e’ loaded into my clipboard, and the awkwardness of using ‘command V’ each time an ‘e’ is required (which is a lot, by the way – why couldn’t the z have stopped working?)
    
    I’m reminded of the very first blog I had, before the notion of ‘making money online’ was even on my radar. Experimenting, writing, and sharing were pure, unadulterated joys which I’m now suddenly thrilled about reclaiming.

Part of what’s kept me in my hermit hole for so long is that my motivations have changed. I’m no longer moved as I once was, primarily by scarcity, urgency, approval, rebellion, or the idea of responsibility. My vices of men, attention, and alcohol are no longer relevant engines either.

My existential crisis left no stone unturned, and my motivations were not spared in this process. Along with my beliefs, values, sense of self, and orientation in the world, they, too, were rendered a smoldering pile of ash and rubble. My motivations now turned to smoke, and I couldn’t move. Hence, the extended hermit hole.

At times, over the years of attempted reconfiguration (I think mostly out of desperation to get on with my life), I’ve dabbled with old ways out of familiarity. But they don’t work. Not even a little. The farthest I can get with them is ideation, but move me, they do not.

I’m only now learning new, more aligned ways of operating. The first realization is that I’m not one of those people who can move themselves with sheer willpower. I guess I value ease too much. Either that or I’m just lazy.

I have to be moved by something deeply intrinsic and generative. I simply don’t give a shit about the surface things that once drove me (although there’s a certain part of my mind that would argue otherwise). I no longer find destruction/rebellion compelling beyond fleeting romanticized machinations, and logic only works to fabricate intricate, sensical-looking plots that I can never take action on.

The only thing that seems to currently work for me is wandering deep into the wilderness until I happen upon a stream that tickles a fancy deep within. Only then can I glide on into the cool waters and be carried along by the current of creation.

Writing is one of the babbling brooks I’ve recently stumbled upon.