I find myself sitting here, wishing to write a post but having nothing in particular to write about – so I suppose then that that becomes the post, right? But the real question is why do I want to say something without having anything specific to say, especially when most of the visits to this site are either from bots or by accident, despite me plugging away on here for over a decade now. And paying for it out of my own pocket.

Why?

Thoughts put down change how they exist in your head, and the medium changes them as well – I could write all of this in a journal (and often have) but instead I’m here. Perhaps because it has the possibility, no matter how remote, of connection, of reaching another human being. Or maybe because it, psychologically at least, feels permanent in a different way, even though you can’t touch it like paper.

Why do we try to communicate, to share our experiences? Often, more and more, perhaps especially due to social media, it is in order to brag, or to attempt to elicit pity. Is that why I’m here? Well, certainly I have nothing to brag about in this situation, but what about pity? Maybe there’s something to that.

I often felt unseen when I was growing up and being injured in some way would get me attention. And so I began to get injured more and more and have continued to ever since. When you are well and healthy people often ignore you, when you’re hurt they will often help. At least for a little bit, until they tire of you not getting better. But do I want your pity here? I don’t think so, pity for what?

I think it is fundamentally more basic – human connection, or at least the possibility of it. We in the West, specifically America, have been raised with the absurd notion of the rugged individual, a trope that I fully ate up, and it ended up causing me great damage. We all need people, more than we will ever know and certainly more than most of us will ever admit. In our ever increasingly interconnected world, there are very few things (any?) that we can even do without the direct or often indirect assistance of others. We are social creatures and need that connection in order to live any sort of decent human life. However, despite being more easily connected because of our technology, in many ways we are more disconnected, and more desperately in need of real connection, rather than surface likes. That is what I’ve always wanted with my writing, fiction or otherwise – I wish to connect, to meet other humans intellectually, with all of our shared struggles, and our intimate knowledge of our own inevitable decline and demise. What could possibly be more important in this world?