I need to write something. I’m not sure what it is yet, but I have a general feeling of unease and sadness related to my inability (mixed with my unwillingness) to create anything. This has gone on far too long. I’m largely blaming four main reasons for my recent indolence: the internet, responsibilities (the house/work), a lack of practice and a overall lack of confidence/conviction.

This is therefore about to be largely unstructured, poorly constructed inelegant ramble about why I fail to write, or do anything that could be considered creatively worthwhile, at the moment. And I kind of want it to be that way.

One of my problems is that I have ideas. Most of them are rubbish. Some of them are quite good (or could be quite good with a little commitment to their realisation) and the vast majority do not come to fruition (as least by my hand…) This means I have been predisposed to starting projects (or at least thinking them through) without really getting anywhere with them. This website is a good example.

I wanted XIST to be a hub of information about things I consider interesting or important. A little focus for any excess creativity I might have knocking about, where I can deposit things that I’ve made. The problem I have is I almost immediately didn’t have the time (or inclination) to keep it particularly up-to-date. I wanted it to be fairly consistent in terms of theme, or (at the very least) not be so confusing so as to be off-putting for people who might find it. Then I inevitably begin to put the idea of XIST (or at least other people’s potential perception of it) in the way of things I may want to create. To bastardise a phrase, the “perfect” gets in the way of the “good” and I simply stop making things, because they might end up being off-brand. I understand that this is borderline insane, but it is a definite tendency of mine.

The crazy thing is, that I don’t strictly write things (or edit videos/podcasts) for other people. Certainly, the idea of an audience is important, but (despite previous pipe-dreams) creating random stuff is never going to be the way I “make a living.” You just have to be on Facebook or Instagram or TikTok or Youtube for a couple of minutes to realise that the vast, VAST majority of created media has little value to mankind. Between AI, the addictive nature of social media, the way “content” is “monetized,” echo-chamber and gradually intensifying and radicalising analytics and the endless desire for humankind (who can be, BTW, really stupid and/or awful), there’s just a lot of things to see and effectively compete against for attention. I imagine that individuals’ attention spans have gone down, whilst the availability of distractions has gone up. This means that cat videos proliferate and it is far too easy to waste precious time scrolling utter bullshit in the vain hope that something slightly interesting might arise.

Don’t get me wrong. There are still good things being created and some of these things are on the internet. This is actually a different side to the problem… Not only do I not want to be another disembodied ghost making low-quality “content” that has less objective value than things generated by our de facto new AI overlords, but the fact that everything has been said before (and better than I could say it) is SO OBVIOUS just fills me with ennui.

Shortly after Uni, when social media was slightly less intrusive (due to smart phones not really being a thing), we used to manage the MySpace (welcome to nostalgia) and Facebook accounts of Billy Bear; a large knitted bear from my childhood who came to live in our house. In his profile “he” called “himself” a “genius art bear.” And that was enough for him to exist. I probably wanted to have that job but, in retrospect, failed at being in any way “genius,” lacked any “art” skills and was definitely not a “bear” (in any way, shape or form). But Billy Bear had confidence and ignorance and those things are definitely helpful when it comes to life.

Another reason I ostensibly write/create for myself, rather than others, is because I’m pretty convinced I don’t actually have anything particularly interesting to say. Even if it was (by some happy fortune) interesting, then someone else would be saying it better, in a better format, or more consistently. Much to my chagrin, the demographic I fit into is really boring and, historically, has controlled various narratives since the Greeks compounded patra and arkhe. Also, I find much of life quite trivial, so am not driven to focussing on any particular subjects (whatever their size).

So, whatever this is, I’m probably writing it for various reasons: to get some practice on writing in general, to break XIST away from whatever thematic prison I’ve mentally created for it and to put my acceptance of my many, many creative flaws into “solid” form. I accept that I cannot write like I used to (and even then I likely had more confidence than talent), that most of what I feel like saying is rather banal and that, despite spending so many years being educated, I have forgotten huge swathes of information, down to some pretty basic stuff.

Perhaps this is giving up.

But in a good way.

I don’t think I can completely give up making stuff, although the time restraints (and, moreover the mental capacity drain) of building a house whilst keeping a job are evidently restricting my commitment to it. I do wish I could just make stuff and it be fun and (as a side-effect) people would like it, but I guess that’s actually not that important.

Back to the XIST idea, I thought I could tie together general knowledge I have about my local area (linked to “community” -type things that go on), with information about environmentalism (because I’m not convinced too many people are really being very effective when it comes to reducing the cause of global warming) and articles/media from activities I generally enjoy. The problem is, for misguided-reasons, I have made it look like a “serious” website where information might be regularly updated, or reliable. But I’m never going to be consistent with my input, or try to find sponsor, or make money out of it… that’s just not something I’d enjoy doing. So it’s got to a point, where it just feels like another thing I’ve not finished or worked hard enough on. Which was never the point. I find the actions of the creator very frustrating in this case.

Anywho… I’ve run out of steam on this. I’ve been trying to get AI to create a picture for this post, but it really doesn’t do what I want it to. Here’s another way online media has moved on, meaning I have to decide whether to learn enough to get it to work passably, only to use said skills intermittently before ultimately losing them further down the line…. I’ve become bored of it and am just posting the last attempt. It’s not a monkey in the middle of an otherwise empty brutalist hangar smashing a typewriter with a mallet but, then again, what is?