I've fucked up.
I mean, we're all fucked up really, aren't we?
Let me explain.
*and yes, I am going to treat this post like it's 2001 and this is my personal Tumblr page, because why not?*
I have a well-paying career doing what I love: Get everyone writing.
But it has ruined me.
Because I'm not writing for myself anymore. I'm writing for the chronically online. The bees scrolling through their phones every second of the day to see what is happening in every person's life other than their own.
*and of course, I recognize the irony of writing this, on the internet, for people to scroll online and see. But what am I meant to do? Carrier pigeon? Snail mail? I have considered it....*
The devastating heart of the problem is that the language I love reading and writing has been pulverised by the hydraulic press of modern media. It has to be SHORT. It has to be SNAPPY.
DO NOT LET ATTENTION GET AWAY.
Reject Sylvia's 195-word exploration of the the suffocating reality of being a woman through the analogy of a fig tree. No-one has time for that. Don't say that when drinking my morning coffee, the sweetness of that first sip reminds me of all the sweetness in the universe, that for me it is a reminder not only to be grateful to be alive and well another day to go through the often mundane routine of wake up, coffee, work - but also that as the cold flows down through my body it creates a warmth in my heart that I have made it, here, from 50c instant bitter coffee in a cold and suffocating estate, to $11 sweet soy on the other side of the world while the sun warms my face.
Instead say: "cold foam, hallelujah"
Because that's what people want. So that's what I have become.
It's time to find myself again.