I sometimes get these weird breaks here on Hive where my posting habit spikes and I post numerous times per day and feel the words flowing through my fingers with very little thought. But there is always an opposite to that, a period in which not really anything happens and I do not really have anything to say at all. And the words feel as if they are stuck in structure, with little sense to be made from them, neither interesting nor worthy writing down into a post. It interests me when I get like this, particularly given Hive is a social network in which we all feel as if we have to post every single day or we somehow miss out. Perhaps, from a financial perspective, that is true. You miss out on the rewards in seven days, and there is neither free money for writing nor an account that grows in strength to produce more free money later on via the curation.
Sometimes, I get very much aware of this. I know that I might be struggling mentally and forcing myself to write something just to make a little extra money that day, and I know for a fact that I am definitely not alone in that regard. Sometimes, I find myself thinking days in advance and applying some schedule to what I will post or what I will do the next day, almost to encourage myself to do something so that I can eventually return to my desk and profit from it. Sometimes, I just do not care. Even now, I don't really know what I'll write about. I'm not quite forcing it, but I am curious as to what will come from writing under a state in which I do not feel the want nor need to do so.
I become aware of how we as a society live such rapid digital lives these days, how fast-paced data flows from our screens, through our eyes and deep into our complex minds. Where it is instantly processed and begs for something new to replace it. We do this on repeat, scroll after scroll, article after article, film after film, episode after episode, and minute over minute. It seems strange to think about how fast everything is these days, and how society amplifies the intensity of that rapid movement, encouraging it in some similar realm to that of a DMT trip, glancing over things that are not actually there, colours shifted from pixel to pixel. Pushed aside by the next headline to digest, the next event to feel outrage over.
These days I have pretty much just zoned out, pushed myself away from the things that do not matter, closing my eyes to the fast-paced streams of light fighting desperately to grasp my attention for even a moment. I have found myself more relaxed, more calm, and pursuing things I have wanted to for the longest time but forever struggling to the endless distractions that plague the attention span. That is to say that lately, I have been reading and drawing. Well, learning to draw. I have managed to learn so much in just such a short period of time, and my creative potential feels like it is reaching new highs, challenging my hands and my mind to discover and construct with pencil to paper. Studying the human body and finding out the many ways in which it is built, and how to draw that.
I never really was good at art as a child. I do not think I really had any desire or motivation to learn how to create drawings and paintings of any sort. I always had the mentality that there are just some things some of us cannot do, and for me, drawing was one of them. As an adult I have come to learn that it is pure bullshit. We are each capable of doing anything if we just put our heads down and try, put in the effort and practice until we reach some aspect of success, that 'eureka!' moment of accomplishment and the excitement of success no matter the size. I feel almost quite dumb for believing that I was not capable of pursuing certain things before, thinking of time wasted or where I would be now if I had discovered certain things much earlier.
Though, our minds are built this way. To believe that everything must be done right now, and it is neither wrong nor right depending on the situation. I feel excited at the future, knowing that one day I will have a stronger understanding of these things and will be capable of creating things I can barely imagine now. Thinking of how I am just doing this for myself with no interest in profiting from it, or doing it out of any nonsensical reasoning that places me in some strange state of mind in which I feel superior and above all else in this era where competition and success on a more corporate level takes reign over personal successes. It feels good to just do things for myself, and I can't say I really know the last time I felt that way. To just drop the world and find myself lost in something out of my own curiosity, void of the thoughts of how it may benefit me later.
I feel I typically have a rather nihilistic approach to life, but with the momentum of a yo-yo as the Earth's gravitiational pull rapidly moves it from one space to the next. In my case, nihilism with the realisation of optimism and knowing nothing matters so I may as well make the best of it; the opposite being typical nihilism in which I feel nothing matters so why even care and try? Fortunately, for the majority of my time I feel I am more in the opimistic area of nihilism. The realisation that nothing matters, and I should not care for the many areas of our complex lives that clearly hold no bearing in the grand scale of things. It is sometimes hard to care about all of this when you look up at the night sky and see a star that is 7.1 billion years of age. But sometimes knowing that something up in the night sky is 7.1 billion years of age makes you feel a little more at peace.
That star being victim to the cosmic warzone, battered by the many objects flying through the void. But it sits there, idle, not really caring. Just being.