I’ve been having a hard time over nothing.

It feels like longing for Summer, while it’s Summer.

Unsettling.

Frustrating too.

Where to begin, or how to stop?

It’s like a deep incapability to let go, to be aware (and nothing else), to keep it simple, and to be with whatever is there.

Always too little too late.

About two weeks ago the amazing, raging inspiration I’d felt for months, the absolute miracle of exploration that kept me going on and on, flipped.

It turned into smoldering resentment.

Resentment, Frustration, Anger, Disappointment.

The four horsemen from hell.

And there were PLENTY of good reasons, so the case was really convincing.

Here’s what happened.

I started to think about leaving social media.

All of it.

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Medium.

The whole fucking machine that is fucking up our lives.

The endless dark hole that is never satisfied.

After years and years of making videos and music and sharing blogs and giving away all the helpful and insightful things I’ve learned, it felt like I’m left with almost nothing.

I’ve been hating everything about social media on a deep level.

The superficiality, the never-ending hunger of the algorithm, its endless hooks that catch our attention and never let go, the lack of depth, the staggering amount of content that numbs us out, and the utter blaséness of the consumer.

I’ve hated you, too.

Very much so.

It seemed so incredibly unbalanced and unfair, my years of sharing and giving and sharing and giving, and your endless taking and taking and taking.

All the people who only read my stuff or follow my course or suck up my videos, and sneak away again.

All the likes that seem so incredibly easy (click) and invaluable (a heart, who cares?).

I’m telling you not to insult you or to blame you or to be ungrateful or to make you feel uncomfortable, but because this was how it felt.

Walking around with the heavy sum of all those painful ideas.

This was what kept me away.

I simply didn’t want to write blogs or share anything coming from this poisonous state of mind.

And then I got Covid, which was actually pretty cool.

A perfect excuse to just be in bed, sleep, sweat, watch Netflix, and easily push away ideas about being useful and driven and visible and relevant.

For a little while, it was much easier not to do anything, not to strive for anything.

After a couple of days, the symptoms were gone again.

And the hard time over nothing picked up again.

It seems we have these cycles, all the time.

On a daily basis, on a weekly basis, and probably over longer periods of time too.

Physical cycles, emotional cycles, and spiritual cycles.

Up, down, uuuuuuuup, doooooooown.

Being high up there for a while, going straight to the top of wellbeing and happiness and clarity, appears to be followed by a bit of stagnation, a plateau, like falling through a trapdoor.

It’s hard to just be with that.

We can talk about surrender all we want, but the conditioning is strong, and for most of us there’s always a tendency to run away from pain and confusion and fear.

In the last couple of weeks, I haven’t been able to be on social media without feeling extremely judgmental and angry.

I’ve muted and blocked and deleted and snoozed my ass off, because I couldn’t care less about what anyone, ANYONE, has to say or offer.

Whatever.

I will not turn this into a spiritual lesson, though.

I will not tell you that sometimes you have to turn inwards, remove yourself from the world, and lick your wounds in silence.

I will also not tell you that Covid was a sign from the universe, a way to help me settle down when I refused to do so.

How the fuck would I know?

One of the things I seem to have lost in the months of deep change and profound insights is the idea that I’m able to understand and explain things, any things, or the urge to make them into romantic, hopeful notions or guidelines (the ones I know you really like).

To give stuff meaning.

I don’t.

I don’t understand life, at all.

I don’t know what it is, and I don’t know who I am.

Most of the time that’s not a problem at all, and most of the time it even feels really exciting and honorable to be engaged in this ongoing, spontaneous exploration, but sometimes it slaps me in the face with a fist the size of Brazil.

Part of being human, for most people, is being lost in that experience 100%, and not even knowing there’s infinitely more to explore and figure out.

There’s a lot of comfort in that tight experience.

Because once you embark (or: once life is embarking you) on the journey beyond the daily struggle of a person, you lose a lot of shit.

Shitty shit and dark shit and old shit and crippling shit, but also helpful shit, like ignorance and beliefs and the tendency to get lost in a one-sided story that you can start wearing like a comfortable coat, from Wim Hof breathing to being a radical minimalist vegan, from being a dog trainer to selling your soul to EMDR or NLP or ISIS or ENFJ.

This Summer most of my ideas about life (and me, for sure) were shattered, and there has been no replacement yet.

I guess that being part of that amazing adventure occupied me SO deeply and intensely, and that it inspired me so tremendously and endlessly, that there was no room for doubts or fear or any kind of mourning.

But there’s always the cycle.

The pain of apparent stagnation.

You win, you lose, you win again AND you lose once more, and then you realize (again) that there’s actually no game.

Being a human is confusing and complicated.

Losing that story comes with endless freedom and infinite new challenges.

Waking up is messy.

Just saying.

Just writing.

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(Photo by @rgaleriacom, for Unsplash)