It’s been a while since I last posted here. I apologize. I’ve tried to write something for The Rattling Skeleton, but every time I’ve sat down, nothing of value has come out. It’s led me to wonder if I have what it takes—what it takes to write; what it takes to live. I don’t want to imply writing is an agonizing experience. It isn’t. When I’m in my groove, it’s pretty enjoyable. But I haven’t been in my groove for years. Now, when I write, it’s more of a struggle than it’s ever been before. I sit and stare at a blank page, and my mind goes blank. 

Overcoming this no longer helps, because now I find myself doubting there’s worth in anything my mind creates. I doubt myself. I assume everything I believe is wrong, every fact I know is a mistaken memory. And even when I can overcome this, I hear a voice in the back of my head that asks if what I have to write is worth the digital paper and ink. After all, who am I to act like an authority on anything? I am nobody. I have no significant distinctions; I am a thirty-something man who struggles to hold down a job and still lives with his mother. 

I’ve been trying to write for longer than I was writing. Every word, every story, comes out more hollow-sounding, more poorly written, than the last. My attempts to write horror have left me feeling like Garth Marenghi if somebody cursed him with self-awareness. Like him, I’ve been trying to write without ink in my stomach. I haven’t read enough books, watched enough movies, lived enough of a life. Like everyone else, I now spend my days interfacing with the world through computers and social media. The material world is now immaterial to me; the world is a scrolling feed, and all the people are posters. 

We were all slowly losing our minds to the internet. The process began with its introduction to the public in 1993, accelerated with the launch of Facebook in 2006, and then gained momentum with the onset of COVID-19 in 2020. We used to have to remind ourselves that “online isn’t real life.” But now it is. Now, our parasocial relationships are more meaningful than anything else. Fox News can destroy so many families because, for the average viewer, Trump and the anchors are more active members in their lives than their actual family is. QAnon exists because a large slice of MAGA loves Trump more than their children and worship him more than their God. 

However, the above example is only the most extreme case. Conservatism reached peak insanity faster than the rest of society because of its closed-off media ecosystem. But now we’re all crossing the event horizon that led to shit like January 6th, the breakdown of vaccinations, and a rise in family annihilations. The world is going insane; there’s no other way to put it. It’s going insane, and I am going insane along with it. 

Even if I could write, I’m not sure if I want to anymore. What use is writing in a dying, mad world? Kurt Vonnegut once compared the effect of all anti-Vietnam War art and literature to dropping a pie on the military industrial complex from atop a six-foot ladder. Anything I could write about the present moment – about the fascist takeover, ecological collapse, the death of everything we hold dear – would be like throwing a firecracker at the sun. That’s the best-case scenario, where The Rattling Skeleton has a lot of readers, but this isn’t the case. I reckon about 80% of my readers are just bots trawling the internet; the average post probably receives only a handful of readers, at most. 

I’m convinced I am too old to turn things around. I am chronically ill, in my thirties, and I live in a world that’s at most a decade from climate collapse. I can no longer make up for lost time, because all time is gone. All that remains is the running down of the world’s intangible machinery. I might still struggle, but it’ll be out of a mere obligation, a feeling that there’s nothing else to do. Well, in theory, I could kill myself, but I don’t think I will. This post is probably not a suicide note. But no promises. 

It’s not a suicide note, but not out of any conviction that life is worth living. At best, life seems to be a value-neutral proposition, but one that will always skew towards the negative in the long term. We are born in pain and we die in pain. Suffering is guaranteed; pleasure and joy are not. If I had a choice, I would’ve avoided the whole experience. Nor would I recommend living to anyone else. But I’m here, and I’m too much of a coward to endure the pain of death voluntarily. I’ve suffered from enough pain in my life already. 

Also, it’s best not to have people yelling at me. People tend to get mad at you when you try to kill yourself. So I guess I’m stuck here, with no reason to assume I’ll ever have a good or at least a bearable life, with no real outlet for self-expression, in a world that is going insane as it enters its death throes. I’m going to forget I wrote this and stare at a wall for the rest of the day. It’s the healthiest option for how to spend my afternoon. Maybe I’ll post again to this blog, perhaps I won’t. We’ll see.