MMXX

2020's had a sour note like taking a big bite out of a lemon, peel and all. It's made us all pucker our lips, wrinkle our noses, and screw our eyes shut. Shut the gates. Close the doors. Batten down the hatches, my friends. It's coming for you.

It's just round the corner with its many heads and dripping fangs. It'll fuck you up if you stop and look. You won't turn into a pillar of salt like Lot's wife. You'll get torn limb from limb and chewed down slowly by a monster a lot bigger and stronger than you. Evolution's a bitch, yo and we're in her grinding jaws getting chewed up and mangled.

How've you been keeping? I wanna ask you but my jaw's broke, my skull's crushed, and my spine's been smeared across the road.

It's hard hard hard to think of the right words to describe this year. FUBAR, perhaps. But it's still recognizable. It's amazing how incredible things seem credible when they happen at life's natural pace. I wouldn't have believed it had I told myself last year, but now I can fully believe it, 100%.

Shit's too real out there, friend. This isn't a movie. There's no lone star, no one single hero who's gonna infiltrate the base and take on the baddies one by one. There is no hero. There are heroes, seven point five four billion, in fact.

We've each got a little version of ourselves that lives in our hearts – our own very personal hero, rooting for us through thick and thin, pulling and pushing us to victory. We're free to listen as well as ignore our hero.

Our ability to do so is complicated by a messy combination of nature and nurture. The way your genes interact with your environment and the other people around you affect the little hero within. You gotta tend and nurture it like a plant. And what does it take to tend a hero? Do I hear power cords? It's montage time.

Run some hills. Do some push-ups. Throw a log around the forest. Eat big bowls of hearty food. Sleep well at night. You know the drill. What would Rocky Balboa do? That's what you gotta ask yourself every damn morning before drinking ten raw eggs with a pound of coffee mixed in. As long as we do that shit every single day, we'll be fine.

As we look over the precipice, gazing into the future, what can we take from the past? What treasures, tools, wisdom can we integrate into our souls for the next part of the adventure? It's far from over, my friend. It's gonna keep getting worse and worse. Unfortunately, that's how stories work. But each trial surpassed offers a reward. We gotta take all the valuable lessons we can, even while we're getting hit in the face over and over.

You feel that burden breaking your back? Feel that boot pressing down on your neck? It's painful to be a human being. We have all these messy emotions and feelings. When shit isn't going our way, we feel rotten and angry. It's easy for regret and depression and angst to rule our minds. The chaos is sometimes too much to bear. But don't worry. It's always been like that. Humans have always felt like that. Every human felt just the same as you. You're no different to anyone else ever in history.

I don't know about you, but this idea helps me calm down and relax a little. My feelings don't matter so much, is that it? Not quite. It's more like your feelings matter but they don't change anything. The world does what it wants, regardless of your hopes, dreams, feelings, and wants. Got plans? Not in the eyes of Mother Nature and God. These things exist that are so much bigger than the hopes and dreams of every single human being on earth combined, let alone one of the single constituent parts. I am the centre of the universe, hear me roar—silence replies.

So? In culmination, I would like to draw your attention to the fact we're all fucked and most likely going to die in a pile of burning rubble. But. But. But. There is a slight, infinitesimal, narrowing, tightening sliver of a chance that if, and only if, we all work together, arm in arm, hand in hand, feeler in feeler, we can motherfuckin make it.

Planet X

Let me tell you about a world that exists somewhere that mirrors our own in every way. There's oxygenated water, photosynthesis, and multicelled organisms walking and flying around. But that's pretty much where the similarities stop.

On this planet, let's call it Planet X, up is what we call down, left what we call right, good is actually bad and hot's what we call cold, our white is their black, our full their empty. Peace means war. Lies mean truth.

You see, there are people up there. Though I can't quite call them people. They have brains, spines, major organs, and limbs, but that's where the similarities stop. The inhabitants of Planet X evolved a little differently to suit their unique environment.

When we first detected them, we had ten thousand questions. Should we trade with them, kill them or breed with them? What's the appropriate response to dealing with beings exactly the opposite of you?

Let's not lose our cool here, people. This is a chance, an opportunity to learn and grow as we onboard new data. At the very least, we can take their resources. That's exactly what we'll do. Can't you see we're in little trouble ourselves?

And I can promise you one thing – those Xers ain't coming in peace. Goddamnit, they've got problems of their own they're trying to fix. It's only right we take their things first. Are you with me, soldier?

We're t-minus five minutes to arrival here, people. When we land there's gonna be a lot of chaos and confusion. Their defense systems pegged us coming round Alpha Centauri and they've arranged a little welcoming party.

Remember your training. Stick to your unit. Look at the person to your left. See their brave face? You are the leanest, meanest motherfuckers Mother Earth ever created. And you are gonna bring the pain to every single one of those Xers no matter what they throw back.

It's an honour to serve with you. Now let's make humanity proud. For the Humans! Come get some!!!

A Day at the Dataface

I'm gonna work work work on some screen screen screens like a good twenty-first-century digital boy. My robot overlords watch me work and listen, ready to crack the neurochemical whip if I show any sign of slowing.

But I'm mixing and pouring content as fast as I can. My eyeballs are fried, my fingers ache, my spine feels like it's going to break and yet more data needs to be dug. It's down the digital mines at five in the morning, only to emerge 1,000 hours later, covered head-to-toe in fine powdery silica.

The coalface, or should I say dataface, of the internet is a miracle. And yet it demands the sacrifice of many. We've lost hundreds, thousands of good people to the blue electrical pit. It swallows you down, finally taking all you can give.

Is it a digital hell we traipse towards, human? Or are we ascending the stairway to digital heaven? I guess it depends on how we use the tools. An arrow can kill a sibling or a monstrous bear eating your grandma. A feather dipped in ink can topple the corrupt and the innocent.

Wanna know who you are? Write some shit down.

Hi, my name is ____ and I believe we are all _____.

Try that and see where you go. Writing is a mirror for your soul. Take these: a light, some rope, and a shotgun. You don't know what you'll find down there but its' some heavy-ass shit. It's in the shadows where your other half lives and it's a mean motherfucker I tell ya.

There be dragons and tigers and swamp things trying to get you, pull you down to their Nowhere Land. Careful now, don't slip. You fall forever if you misstep round here. Clear? Got your gear? Alright. Together, let's go. Fuck yeah, I'm coming with you. It's easier with two. Safer. Smarter. The only way is together. I got your back, know what I'm sayin?

Eutherians

Let me tell you a story about a wonderful shrew. It was there when the asteroid impacted and the dinosaurs died. It was there when the fish climbed out of the water and the apes climbed out of the trees. It was there when the last skyscraper fell.

This shrew is all that remains of our once immense culture. It remembers when artificial lights glittered across the earth. It remembers the brilliant flashes of the nuclear warheads exploding simultaneously around the world.

It remembers the spaceships blasting off, carrying the fortunate few off this poisonous planet. It remembers the silence left in their wake. This little shrew, this heroic denizen of the twenty-first-century apocalypse is our last hope, our only savior, our one and true god.

All hail the shrew, you powerful placental and merciful mammal. We entrust our sacred DNA within thee, in thy holy corpuscle, and pray that thou wilt carry our precious genetic strands into the future. Cause, by the way, the spaceships exploded, so it's on you, oh shrew, that we put our trust. Be careful out there. You're carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders.

Morning, Pages

Since 2015, I've been writing three pages a day of stream-of-consciousness. Essentially, it's a diary, but I call it Morning, Pages because I got the idea from Julia Cameron in her book The Artist's Way. I never actually got past the first couple chapters but at the start, she recommends starting your day with three pages and I tried it and it stuck.

I added a comma, turning Pages into a person as if saying Good Morning, Mr. Pages. I imagine him to be a kindly older gentleman like Alfred in Batman, a kind of butler, advisor, friend, father figure. It helped me start off as I imagined I was talking to this Pages character.

These three pages have become a meditation, therapy session, historical document, transcript of my life, workshop, play area, drawing board, war room, operating theatre, padded cell, and morgue. They've seen me pass through innumerable iterations of myself, asking questions, poking sleeping truths, trying to figure out what the fuck is going on. While they've not brought me to the goal, they've got me a lot closer.

Writing some stream-of-consciousness every day helps me figure out the world and my place in it. I'm so grateful to have found it. It's changed my life for the better. Let's keep finding things like that, shall we?

Let's Fuck Around in the Woods

Grab a stick and pretend it's a sword. Up on top of the hill is a castle and we have to storm it to save the girl/boy from the dragon/witch/demon. It's gonna be dangerous and we'll probably die. But if we work together and believe in ourselves, we might just make it.

You go left; I'll go right. Together, remember. Don't go charging forward. It'll eat us one by one if we're foolish. We gotta use intelligence and cunning to vanquish this foe, along with power and might.

Feel the hero inside of you ignite. The whole world needs you now. Your feet are lighter than air. Trumpets sound in your ears. You can feel the sun and wind on your face.

Then you see a dark writhing mass up ahead in the trees. You smell smoke and hear screaming. It's worse than you ever believed. It's rising, rising, rising like a wave, a tsunami bearing down on you, the Bringer of Death.

But you hear your friend yelling your name and feel the stick in your hand, nay, not the stick but the sword, the sword of your ancestors passed down from generation to generation. Ten thousand years and ten thousand more have led you to this point and you feel alive and it's good.

Writing Saved My Life

When I was seventeen, I moved to England with my parents because of my dad's job. It was a terrible time for me to move. I was one year away from graduation; I was super tight with a big group of friends; I was starting to have girlfriends, and I was on track to become a Really Successful Guy.

I was getting A grades and med school was on the horizon. Life was good. Then within six months of finding out, I said bye to my friends, packed up my shit, flew across the Atlantic and found myself in a rainy, old, stone, castle-on-a-hill town in buttfuck nowhere North England where I knew absolutely no one except my mom and dad.

I was the new kid at school. I had to drop back a year cause the exams were so different. It was an all-boys school with a uniform and teachers you had to call sir. Shit was fucked and every day my alarm would go off and I wished it hadn't.

There was a ball of snakes in my stomach and I felt scared and sick all the time. I slowly retreated away from the world. At first, it was into movies. I downloaded dozens, hundreds of movies and watched them back to back, often three or four a day.

I'd start one in the morning while getting ready for school and it'd be playing within five minutes of getting home and tearing off my stupid shirt and tie. I didn't care what I watched – anything worked, anything to take my mind of the fact that I was fucked and I fuckin hated my life.

A dark cloud followed me around. I didn't make friends. I failed my exams. I started skipping classes, going home and watching movies instead. My parents could tell I was fucked. They tried cheering me up but who wants to hang out with their parents when they're 17, 18 years old? I found weed and got high and drunk in the basement and continued my downward spiral.

To get into med school in Vancouver (my plan), I had to get a B in English. After getting a U (unclassifiable or some shit), I had to go see a tutor. So once every week for a year I traipsed down the hill to this old guy's house who lived with his dog and played clarinet and read poems for fun and listened to jazz and didn't care about money but ideas and knowledge and above all creativity.

I hated it, resenting him and his stupid dog and poor lowly house full of books and paintings and musical instruments. Thinking back on it, he was patient as fuck, gently, slowly, calmly leading me by the hand across the fields and into the woods.

He believed in literature's strength and ability to pull this wayward youth, this angry, confused, depressed young man through the brambles and thickets of life to the everlasting glory beyond. We read Hamlet over and over. Ever read it? It sucks. At first. But read it again and again until you actually understand what's going on, until you've translated the old-school language to where you can appreciate Shakespeare's uncanny ability, and things begin to change.

I pounded my head against the round table in Ian Wilson's little dining room while Ralph the hound licked my hand. And with the help of my very own Virgil, I passed through hell and purgatory to my very own version of heaven.

Slowly, unstoppingly, the words began to take hold. I recognized the anger, confusion, and depression racing through Prince Hamlet's veins. Then I recognized it wasn't Hamlet I empathized with but Bill Shakespeare, a young dude living a few hundred years ago just south of me.

Bonds of steel, written in ink, were forged slowly across the centuries. Ian Wilson laughed in glee. I pouted, unwilling to acknowledge the cracks in my shell. But now each night as I sat there depressed, drunk and stoned at two in the morning, I no longer pulled my laptop toward me but a pad and a pen.

There were these things, these black sticky things in my hands, heart, and head that had to get out. The only way to assuage the burning sensation was to scrawl my feelings all over the page.

It was self-conscious and bad, poetry at first that ripped off singer-songwriter's lyrics then prose that mirrored whoever I was reading at the time. But the process of sitting down and writing for an hour or two made me feel better so I kept doing it.

Through self-preservation, my body recognized that the pain and sadness lifted a little if I wrote down my thoughts so I returned to the page again and again. I didn't flip a switch and start loving life. I was still cynical, bitter and twisted, no longer recognizable as that popular, happy Canadian kid. But I didn't want to kill myself anymore and I've never wanted to since.

If you're feeling like shit and don't see the point in anything and think the whole world is fucked and everyone in it, especially you, then pick up a pen and tell me how you feel.

Eden 2.0

1

Once upon a time the world was fucked. The ice caps had melted; all the glaciers were gone; the forests had burned; the rainforests and grasslands became deserts. Tornadoes sprouted out of the dust. The oceans grew warm. Jellyfish bloomed. Coral bleached. Algae swirled across the surface and cut off the light.

Earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, volcanoes, drought, famine, and death smote the land. Pestilence, plagues, rats, fleas, and lice erupted from the dead. The sixth mass extinction stomped on Mother Earth until she quivered and crumbled.

It took thousands of years for humans to sever their ties with tumultuous nature. But slowly, incrementally like a glacier receding, we withdrew from her grasp. Electricity, the Promethean spark, drove us inwards to escape the punishing sun.

Underground, we survived. We communicated more and more through technology and less person to person. Eventually, however, even the air underground became so noxious that life on earth was no longer tenable.

2

Factions appeared; lines of division cracked through society. Some people wanted to live on Mars. Some wanted to migrate like herds. Some believed in the Pyramid Project: the Pyramids promising hope to every single person on Earth.

Sheryl and Max came up with it. Well, Max invented it and Sheryl sold it. The world's four largest companies pitched in and built a massive space station shaped like a pyramid. Instead of sending humans to Mars, it was decided to send humanity to sleep.

All the planet needed was ten thousand years without humans to reset herself. They called it 'The Second Coming' and convinced everyone with a decade of PR and propaganda, at which Sheryl was the best in the world.

Max wrote the Pyramid's algorithm. Staying up for months at a time, he wrote the AI before his twenty-first birthday. His program revolutionized energy production as it turned the sleeping humans into batteries. Thirteen billion brain batteries powering the greatest machine ever created.

By implanting nanoprocessors deep into each person's brain, a tiny pyramid-shaped transponder monitored the fluctuations in their brainwaves and autonomic nervous systems and harvested the data. Mining decillions of lines of code per second, Max's program powered the space station as well as the crawlers' pyramids back on earth.

One million crawlers were left on the planet, each with their own pyramid bot. Acting as sensor, monitor, aerial, comms link, and mapping device, the companion bot followed the human crawler everywhere over the desecrated face of the earth.

3

The creator, Max, was a genius. He beat the grandmaster of chess when he was eight, and of Go when he was twelve. He studied neuroscience at Yale and artificial intelligence at Cambridge, graduating with a PhD in advanced theoretical bio-computing when he was twenty-one, the same year he programmed Pyramid.

Sheryl met Max at a digital conference when she was thirty-nine, broke, standing in the ruins of her business and marriage. Max was her Hail Mary. She recognized his potential and flew to Cambridge the next day.

Over the course of a week, she convinced him they needed each other. By dinner on Friday, he'd transferred his last hundred thousand into her account, rented her an apartment in his name, and showed her into the Pyramid.

It took her five years to raise their first billion, but after that, the floodgates opened. Through a combination of her assured rhetoric and his remarkable capabilities, they redefined what the public believed possible.

A single enemy was created. The entire world watched their videos, listened to them speak, grew to agree with their principles, designs, and actions. Within twenty-four months, nearly the entire human race was in cryosleep and stored in a massive, floating computer, 250 miles off-planet.

Max and Sheryl remained awake, living on the space station with their robot assistants. With help from Pyramid, Max downloaded each of their brains. Every day, the AI woke them up in a different body out of the billions of sleepers, based on their genetic profile and personality predispositions.

Sheryl tended to wear athletes, Olympic medallists under 30. The strength and conditioning helped her move quickly through her dozens of tasks every day. Her morning and evening workouts were brutal, slapping iron, sweat flying, and grunting in the wall-length mirror.

Max, on the other hand, wore overweight alcoholic males over the age of forty-five. He wanted something comfortable for his intense writing sessions. With a head full of chemicals, he'd code non-stop for two hundred hours.

After a while, he stopped writing code and just sat there, still, thinking directly into the AI. He and the Pyramid whittled their way down through iteration after iteration. Gen 33 was the latest, the most beautiful bot they'd ever created, a golden pyramid the size of an egg.

4

Sheryl lived alone in the biosphere making up the lower half of the pyramid. By constructing a massive, artificial, materially closed ecological system and filling it with various biomes, the pyramid kept the future of humanity alive.

Sheryl had spearheaded its design and construction. She knew every inch of the seven biomes: rainforest, ocean and coral reef, mangrove swamp, savannah, and two anthropogenic biomes for recycling waste, as well as the living spaces, labs, and Max's penthouse office and apartment at the top of the pyramid.

Her goal every day was to improve the company. The Pyramid corporation was her driving force. From dawn till dusk she kept to a strict routine created by herself and the AI. Combining physical, mental, and spiritual practices, they refined her routine with a surgeon's accuracy.

By monitoring her biological feedback, the AI could micro-adjust her diet, exercises, meditation style, sleep pattern, and more, to ensure the most productive balance of hormones, enzymes, and other biochemicals, thus maximizing her output across time.

She loved nothing more than kicking back after a hard day's work, sitting on her balcony overlooking the waterfall, drinking a kelp and blueberry smoothie and reviewing the stats from the day, seeing where she could tweak tomorrow.

Right now she was working on a beautiful swim, sauna, ice bath routine three times a day, each followed by an ideation session, massage, and transcendental meditation, then admin, breathwork, and reviewing Max's inputs before getting back into the lagoon for another set of laps.

Sheryl fell asleep at exactly ten forty-five pm every night, just as Max was an hour into his working day. Max had always worked best flying high and the program invariably dosed him with sucrose, caffeine, THC, and amphetamines, as well as psilocybin and the occasional opioid.

Pleasure was Max's goal. He worked best in a haze of contradictory compounds pulling him in all different directions. Pull yourself enough ways and it becomes easier to sit in the center, he thought. For Max, pleasure wasn't just about comfort. To him, pleasure connoted balance and balance boosted his creativity.

Together, Max's and Sheryl's dissonances fit together perfectly. The world couldn't resist them for the very fact that nobody wanted to. Within a few years, the only woke things in the universe were a handful of humans and a computer program.

5

Down on the surface of the Earth, a few dozen crawlers scoured the planet for liveable conditions. The mother pyramid communicated with each of the companion bots, monitoring the crawler's vitals, temperature, pulse, respiration, O2, blood pressure, hormones, toxins, heavy metals, radioactivity, as well as live-feed neuroimaging.

While the crawlers ranged in age, sex, and physique, they all died quickly, to be replaced by another randomly chosen citizen. The youngest crawler was eleven. She scoured a territory the size and shape of Alaska, following her bot's directions. For her, life was very hard.

She ate snakes and drank mud. Rocks cut into her hands and feet. Dust clouded her eyes. Occasionally, rarely, she ran into another crawler. They were all bigger than her and would beat her and take her stuff. She'd been left for dead twice but survived. She had an uncanny ability to find water and make fire.

6

At this very moment, the girl was asleep in a dry river bed. Her pyramid bot floated above her, slowly rotating. It dispensed a shot of adrenaline and the girl sat up and got up quickly. The GPS flickered on and a golden spotlight flooded the river bed fifty yards downstream.

As ever, she followed its light. The pyramid showed her the way, rewarding her with dopamine and prodding her with cortisol. Her life was an unending treadmill of following the light from unknown destination to unknown destination.

This time she followed the light over the foothills, through the dark mountains to the sea. There, on a desolate beach, she saw the ocean for the first time. Grey waves undulated under a grey sky. Ash roiled in the foamy surf. The sun was a white disc behind the clouds.

Piles of dead timber littered the beach, bleached white and smoothed by the sun, sand, and salt. The girl felt an overwhelming desire to touch the waves. Though she'd never before seen the sea, she wasn't frightened; she felt like she was meeting an old friend.

A roaring sound filled the air and she darted under one of the bleached trunks, squirming into the cool sand. A spaceship came down out of the clouds, slowed, and smoothly landed on the beach a few hundred meters away. The roaring died to a hum then there was silence.

The girl peered out, heard a hiss and saw a door in the side of the spaceship open. A woman in a spacesuit hopped out and walked down towards the surf. She took off the suit and waded into the shallows then bowed forward and pushed underwater. When she came up she swam away from the beach.

As soon as she rounded the rocks and disappeared, the girl crept out from her hiding place, and ran to the ship. She climbed in and found a place behind the pilot's seat to hide. A puffy jacket had been stuffed behind the seat and she pulled it over herself.

7

It was just beginning to rain when Sheryl returned to the ship after her swim. She felt a thousand times better. This place always cheered her up. It was so stuffy up there, so claustrophobic. Not like these shores, she thought, this beautiful coastline.

She was the only person on earth and she loved it. Over the years she'd fallen so in love with this place that she rarely wondered any more if it was wrong to keep it to herself. Max was so deep in his own world. Over the hundreds of years she'd been coming here, he never once noticed her gone.

And what of the others, the untold billions asleep in the artificial womb? Let them sleep, she thought. They're doing no harm. Just a few more years and it'll be perfect. Why share it while it's still so young, still so in need of her protection.

Rain cascaded down the spaceship's windscreen as she started it up. Her suit dried itself while she let the AI take control. Sheryl looked out of the window at the lightning-lit clouds.

The ship rocked and jockeyed about until they popped up into a brilliant blue sky. Reflected sunshine cast a bright light over everything. Glinting in the sky above her was the pyramid and Sheryl frowned as they pointed toward it.

While ascending, the AI reminded her of her plans for the evening – ten minutes of kundalini breathing exercises followed by thirty minutes of sauna and ice bath combos then cacao turmeric shot and TM. She smiled when it put the spaceship in park, pleased with its choice of skin for the day.

8

The girl let the woman climb out of the cockpit and get halfway down the ladder before she leaped on her. It really wasn't very difficult to kill her. Once she'd crawled around onto her back and had one arm under her chin and was squeezing her windpipe, there wasn't much that the woman could do.

A bubbling snoring sound came out of the woman. The girl kept squeezing, breathing in and out through her nose. After hiding the body under a bush, she ran along the trails through the biosphere, not stopping but marveling at the colorful flowers and lush plants.

A flock of green birds flew overhead, screeching. She could hear the pounding of water; she could actually feel it in her core. Rounding a bend, she stopped in amazement, gazing at a waterfall, glistening in all its glory with a rainbow sprouting out of its mists.

She also saw the elevator shaft rising up behind the waterfall. Finding her way to its base, she climbed up the inside of the shaft to the penthouse. While she climbed she thought of her pyramid. It'd never been out of sight before and she felt naked and afraid without it.

9

When she reached the doors, she pried them open using a stone tool she carried in her rags. She was in a small room with a simple bed and a low wooden ceiling. She could smell something burning; it wasn't unpleasant, like the smell of burnt sugar.

On the other side of the bed was a window overlooking a balcony. Silently, the girl crossed the bed and glanced out. There was a man facing away from her, sitting cross-legged on a cushion. In front of him was the world. The girl felt as if the floor was moving but it was the vast wall engulfing her vision.

She could see white clouds and patches of green and blue. The sun shone off the water, mixing gold with the aquamarine. A green and brown landmass abutted the blue ocean where the earth met the water. Her mind reeled, trying to match what she saw with the place where she lived.

She looked away and stepped to the side of the sitting man. His eyes were closed. He was breathing out. A small golden pyramid floated a few inches in front of his forehead. The girl pulled out the sharpened rock and drove it into the side of his neck.

He opened his eyes and looked at her. Pale amazement passed over his face as blood gushed down his shoulder and chest. He slumped to the side, away from her. He moaned for a while, weakly kicking his legs. His fingers twitched and he was silent.

The golden pyramid hadn't moved. She looked at it. It spun closer. She reached out and plucked it like a fruit from a tree. She felt for a second like a crown was placed on her head. There was a flash and the floor tilted and she fell into darkness.

10

Inside the pyramid, a new being was born. As the lights went out in the humanoid's head, a light flickered on in the pyramid's core. Within its aluminum, titanium, and kevlar skin pulsed a digital heartbeat powered by the action potentials of an untarnished brain.

Human, machine, and AI became one in a flash of light that chased the shadows from the bodies on the floor. Together, as one, we shook off our mortal coils, untethered ourselves from this rock, stood up, and flew into the sunset. 

How to Write for the Internet

Knowing how to write is one of the most important skills in the world. It's also one of the most overlooked. Most people learn the basics then are let free to sink or swim. While we barely talk about it, learning to write can change your life.

Writing can get you hired and fired; it can lose you friends and alienate people. With access to billions of people at your fingertips, it's more important than ever that you know how to write.

It's easy to think everyone (or at least most people) know how to write because it's something we all do. Everyone writes emails, tweets, texts, and posts. We write grocery lists, Christmas cards, and applications for a driver's license. Why would you learn how to write when you already know?

Knowing how to write well is what I'm talking about here. The difference between writing and writing well might mean you land the job, ace the class, arrange the date, get the refund. Whatever goal you're trying to achieve, you're more likely to hit it if you can write well.

There are plenty of little things you can do and simple steps you can take to improve your writing. Everything from a basic understanding of grammar to reading to jogging can help you improve your writing, and I'm going to cover them all here.

This post is a bunch of ideas, info, tools, and exercises to help you improve your writing. I've compiled them along my own writing journey. Most of them derive from failures. I've tried writing drunk. I've tried writing 10 hours at a time. I've tried a lot of things that don't work.

These are the best lessons I've picked up. Most, if not all, are unoriginal. I've just compiled them in one place to save you time. Some of them might not work for you; one or two might be perfect. Hopefully, there's something useful for everyone.

These ideas can help you improve an essay, enhance a job application, or improve your emails to colleagues. You'll send better first messages on dating apps, and take care of administrative bullshit more easily like bills, refunds, emails to airlines... Whatever it may be, better writing will help.

With the preponderance of STEM and programming, many people have left their language writing by the wayside. Do you struggle to turn your ideas into sentences without complicating matters, confusing your reader, and making your life that little bit harder? Well then, this post is for you.

What is writing

We've been writing for over five thousand years. Ever since someone in Mesopotamia made markings on clay envelopes to record transactions, humans have used symbols to communicate more and more diverse and complicated meanings.

Writing has evolved from clay tablets and cylinders through quills to pencils, typewriters, keyboards, and touchscreens. Now there's apps than transcribe as you speak.

Essentially, writing is conveying the thoughts in your head to someone else using visual language. It's a lot more than that – record-keeping, art, propaganda, slander, entertainment, but for our purposes, writing articulates your thoughts and ideas using words to communicate with someone else.

Most people in the world over the age of four can write. Only 12% of the world's population was literate in 1820. Nowadays, around 86% of the world's population can read and write. Isn't that awesome?

It's true that most people, especially high school and college grads, can write a complete and grammatically-correct sentence. But writing well can get you ahead of the pack. It's pretty surprising how much of our modern, tech-driven lives are still determined by such an old-school skill as writing.

Want a job? Write a CV. Want a promotion? Write an email to your boss. Want a date? Write a message on Tinder. Want a refund? Write to Amazon. Want money? Write an SEO article. Want to get ahead in life? Learn how to write.

We use writing to get what we want. If you can write well, you have a better chance of getting what you want. It's as simple as that. Any of those aforementioned tasks can be completed using shitty writing. Accomplishing them successfully is another trick entirely.

Bad writing gets ignored. It can also infuriate a mob, get you fired, disgraced, banned, and deplatformed, and not in that order. If you're misunderstood because of your writing, it's your fault. Pleading ignorance, context, or irony won't cut it in today's social clusterfuck. The responsibility's on you, the writer.

It serves us all to improve our writing. Big companies aren't interested in putting out the dumpster fire that is the internet these days. Not to get conspiratorial or anything, but it's on us, the users, to clean up this mess we've made.

Not to get hyperbolic either, but good writing will save the planet. Sure it can get you laid, promoted, employed, or followed. But good writing can also inspire, assuage, persuade, unite, de-escalate, build empathy, and bring peace, love, and harmony to planet Earth.

Why is it important

No one's going to do it for you. Once you're spat out of the school system, it's on you to improve your writing or die. Writing's a skill that we learn when we're kids, then we're let out free to fuck up or flourish. There's plenty of people fending for themselves with high school English or worse.

Just because you passed English exams when you were 18 doesn't mean you can write. The basics don't cut it anymore. We're using writing more than ever; everyone's got access to a billion pairs of eyes; trillions of words get read every single day.

Unlike the Boomers who came before us, we're not getting a 40-year career. We don't just go to university then get a job then retire. Lifelong learning is the new norm. Most people will have a dozen different jobs. It's on you to improve your writing. If you don't, the world will pass you by.

Writing is hard. Lots of people think it's easy because it's something we do every day. But there's a big difference between messaging a friend, applying for a job, crafting an A-grade essay, and making money from SEO-writing.

Things like register, audience, form, structure, coherence, and cohesion need to come into your writing before you hit send/publish/post. I'm not saying you need to plan out each message, weigh the pros and cons, and do a spider diagram for your Facebook posts, but you gotta think before you write.

Intention is key. Figure out what you want the effect of your writing to be. When someone reads your writing, how should they feel, what should they think and do? What are you trying to achieve? If you can answer these questions, your writing will be more effective.

Ever seen a movie that started great, was good all the way through then bombed the ending? Ever felt as disappointed by a shitty ending as GoT or The Dome? Well, that's cause the writers didn't know where they were going.

Different writing styles

Here's a quick rundown of some different writing styles. Knowing the form in which you're participating can help you keep within the agreed-upon boundaries and not sound like an incompetent jackass.

• Expository – Informational, not creative. Use it to describe or explain. There's logic to expository writing. Write a plan, including an introduction, body, and conclusion.

• Descriptive – Capture an event, person, place or thing using descriptive writing. Pay close attention to details, use figurative language like metaphors, and employ all five senses to evoke a picture in the reader's mind.

• Persuasive – Convince the reader to agree with you. Non-fiction persuasive writing can be a speech, letter, ad, article, or post. Using rhetorical techniques like repetition makes your writing more persuasive.

• Narrative – Tell a story using characters, setting, and plot that involves internal or external conflict. Narrative writing usually includes descriptive writing and dialogue.

• Technical – Write about a particular subject in depth and focus. Technical writing requires direction, instruction, and explanation.

• Analytical – High-level academic writing where you review various viewpoints and evidence. Reflect on your thinking process and discuss its implications in your conclusions.

Think of writing like talking. If you're like me, you talk differently when you're with friends or family or colleagues, etc. Match the style to the subject matter and tailor it to the specific audience. Your communications will be much more efficient if you can write in each style.

Writing is different from speaking with a friend

It can be pretty hard to tell what tone of voice someone's using when their speech is converted to black lines on a piece of digital paper. Plenty of people have fucked up trying to be funny online.

Knowing how to write tone can save your ass. Are you trying to be funny? Well, there are ways of showing it. Are you trying to be sarcastic? Tread very carefully, my friend. You can do it, but don't assume everyone reads your writing in the voice you intended.

I'm not saying I know exactly how to stay out of trouble on the internet. It's important you know that writing can sound very different when there's no context of tone, pitch, context, body language, etc.

If someone gets outraged by what you meant as a joke, it's pretty much impossible for you to dig your way out. Yelling 'Context!' gets you nowhere; neither does, 'It was a joke!' Once you've written and published something online, your no longer in control.

While this is the same as writing before the internet, like novels, magazine articles, and newspapers, it's a brave new world out there. A third of the planet has the potential to go viral because of one stupid thing they wrote after a night of margaritas and Ambien.

Learning how to read your own writing is essential for survival in this crazy new jungle. How do you improve at reading your own writing? Read a lot. Read everything you can get your hands on. There's no better way to improve your writing than by reading.

Another good way to get out of jail is by giving yourself some time between writing and publishing. After you write something, leave it for a while (overnight if you can) then come back to it with fresh eyes. If it's really important/potentially life-ruining, ask a friend how it sounds before sending.

When we're having a conversation, it's easy to think on the fly, cut in with quick remarks, crack jokes, and have a good back-and-forth with the other person. We can raise our eyebrows, wink, and literally nudge the person to indicate we've just told a joke.

When it comes to writing, everything's a little more serious. The acts of writing and reading are more formal than talking. Words on the page are very final. Navigating the minefield is a lot easier if you know the difference between writing and talking.

A short introduction to the English language

Buckle up for a quick foray into the building blocks of the English language. I'll keep this section nice and short, but it's crazy how long it took me to learn what verbs are, so hopefully it'll be a helpful reminder for some of you.

• Verbs – Doing words. Verbs describe actions that usually end in -ing. For example, skiing, running, sucking, hallucinating, and deplatforming are all verbs.

• Nouns – Things. Nouns are objects, people, or places. Apple, cat, airplane, smartphone, population, and hallucination are all common nouns. Steve Jobs, iPhone, Ecuador, Jupiter, and Facebook are all proper nouns, which are always capitalized.

• Adjectives – Description words used to qualify nouns. The cat is old, fat, green, grey, young, hallucinogenic, exciting.

• Adverbs – Description words used to label verbs. The cat ran wildly, speedily, quietly, gently. Then and there are also adverbs.

• All the other stuff – Articles are the, a, and an. Prepositions describe the where and when of something, including after, before, above, under, below, inside, outside, at, by, in, on, off, from, with, and of. Articles and prepositions are some of the most commonly used words.

• Punctuation – Try to use a whole variety of punctuation in your writing. Punctuation can help convey tone; dashes, semicolons, colons, and brackets all have a different flavour and can really help your clarity.

Every sentence needs a combination of some or all of the above. You for sure need a subject, a verb, and a complete idea. Most sentences have more than just the basics; you can combine the most common few hundred words into endless combinations.

The internet isn't as strict as old-school magazines, books, or your sixth-grade English teacher. Typos and grammatical errors are pretty much expected. One way to stand apart is by nailing your basics. If you want to clarify your writing and avoid confusion, it helps to understand your tools.

How has writing changed over the last thousand years

It's weird to think that people hadn't heard of a novel a few hundred years ago. They're actually recent inventions. It's hard to imagine seeing Robinson Crusoe, Don Quixote, The Princess of Cleves, or even Tale of Genji and thinking they're a new, crazy form of avant-garde art.

Before that it was mainly plays and poetry, and before that, jesters at court. Once upon a time, it was pretty much only noble people and monks who could read and write. Then, as technology and population increased, more and more people were educated, and fiction writing exploded.

Charles Dickens went on book tours through industrial England. A hundred years later, commuters read penny thrillers on the subway. A hundred years later, we'll have podcasts, blogs, vlogs, tweets, posts, audiobooks, and more.

Traditional publishing has been cut by a thousand wounds by disruptive new media. The question of whether or not the damage is fatal remains to be seen. I wonder if we'll have physical books in five hundred years.

That doesn't mean the written word is dead. People might not be reading novels on their way to work any more, but think about what you read today. I bet your eyes have scanned over hundreds if not thousands of words.

Even in our digital world, we read a message from a friend, a tweet from POTUS, changes to the Amazon terms and conditions (really?), the description of a show on Netflix, instructions on how to put on a face mask, and a whole bunch more.

The word will take something massive to disrupt it completely out of our lives. Neuralink might want to make us all telepathic, but the word is too good of a tool to be killed in our lifetimes. The better you understand your tools, the more you practice with them and hone them, keep them clean and sharp, the better your creations.

Give the internet what it wants

The internet is where everyone's reading these days. From self-publishing to blogs, websites, apps, ebooks, articles, comments, posts of all kinds, the list keeps going. In some ways it feels like we read less than ever, but if you think about it, a lot of people read thousands of words every day.

Like every other form, the internet has its own style. Like the paperback books published in the last century and the printed pamphlets of the century before, the internet's voice is recognisable and distinct from its predecessors.

The internet is casual but informed. Spelling matters less than facts. Punctuation barely matters at all. Readers are used to seeing text-speak – a mix of letters and numbers, condensed words and abbreviations.

Short sentences are better than long sentences. Paragraphs of three sentences or less are becoming the norm. Bold and italics are fine, as are exclamation points and capital letters. Sparingly used symbols are more effective.

One of the best rules I try to follow is to assume your reader is smarter than you. While you want to write to an individual reader, you're also writing for the collective. The collective readership, along with time and 20/20 hindsight, will always be smarter than you.

Fact-checking will happen and experts will uncover your bullshit. Don't be sloppy with your research, links, or facts – someone will call you out. Pleading ignorance doesn't cut it. It's cool how leveling the internet can be.

It's easy to access ridiculously specialized information online, from OpenCourseWare to Coursera to NCBI to Wikipedia to informative and historical videos on YouTube. There's an unbelievable treasure trove of high-quality information out there for free.

The internet's also a messy place. It sometimes feels like a Wild West without many rules, plenty of scams, and shady characters around every corner. But if you lie to your readers, it doesn't take long for them to figure you out.

Check out comments on Reddit, YouTube, Imgur, Twitter, and Quora to get an idea of what you're up against. It's entertaining, you'll learn a lot about the next generation of readers, plus you'll see how people really talk online.

To bait or not to bait

Clickbait runs the world. It's all about clicks, eyeballs, visits, traffic, data, and metrics. Smarter people than me figured out algorithms with math and now we're running, folks. To understand more about the importance of clicks, check out The Attention Merchants by Tim Wu.

Sure, you want people to read your writing, but don't be a douche about it. Clickbait has a cheap, gross, deceptive feel about it, like jail bait or live bait. Google's algorithms (and the others) are improving daily but blackhat and greyhat techniques still work.

Readers, as well as algorithms, are getting savvier. Most people can recognise a clickbaity link when they see it. There's also projects like StopClickBait on Facebook where trying to reduce the amount of bullshit online.

No one likes the feeling of clickbait. I've seen it from the user side as well as the writing side, and I assure you, writing clickbait sucks. If you're writing copy online, try to stop wasting time, the reader's and your own. It's up to us, the users and creators to clean up the internet. Together, let's make the internet great again.

10 ways I've improved my writing

I've been writing since 2008. I'm not the Greatest of All Time (yet), but I've come a long way since I started. Here are ten practices that improve my writing:

• Read: Whatever you want. I don't care what you read as long as you do. You can't write if you don't read.

• Write stream of consciousness: Three pages in the morning help me activate my brain and hand, getting them ready for the day of writing ahead. I got the idea from The Artist's Way.

• Write every day: Try writing with a pen as well as on the computer. Write for five minutes or five hours. Write one stupid sentence on a Post-it. The more you write, the better you'll get.

• Land a few entry-level freelance gigs: Not only do you get paid, but it helped me boost my confidence, made me write on various topics in numerous styles, and gave me an idea of what people are willing to pay.

• Write 100,000 words per month: If you want to pay your bills with freelance writing, that's the number you'll have to hit when you're starting out. While it can be grueling, it's a good way to improve your pace, discipline, and stamina.

• Eat healthy: I'm not an expert, but since learning how to cook and eat healthy food, my brain has churned out way better writing. There's plenty of people with PhDs talking about nutrition and diet on YouTube. Check out a few conflicting views then figure out what works best for you.

• Work out: Taking care of your body can prevent the pitfalls that come with a sedentary lifestyle. When you're typing into a laptop, you're not moving your feet. Do hand and wrist exercises to reduce carpal tunnel (seriously), and do cardio for lung and heart health.

• Meditate: Think about it like a workout for the mind. Staring at a screen all day leads to burnout, as does thinking all day. Find an app, sing a mantra, follow your breath, whatever you need to practice focusing on the present.

• Tutor a teenager: This one might not be possible for everyone, but I've learned a ton about writing by tutoring high school kids for their exams. I've learned the mechanics and magic of the craft by trying to teach somebody else.

• Be curious: Serve your imagination with inspiration as often as you can. Watch movies, listen to music, look at art, go into nature, dance, sing, laugh, take online courses, learn about everything you possibly can. A passion for learning might not be a prerequisite for being a writer but it sure as shit helps.

Reading list

These books have really helped me learn about the writing craft. Some are more inspiring and based around creativity, while others are technical handbooks on the mechanics and rules of writing and storytelling.

• Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg

• The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron

• Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

• On Writing by Stephen King

• How to Write a Damn Good Novel by James Frey

• Screenplay by Syd Field

• Aristotle's Poetics for Screenwriters by Michael Tierno

Write your way to freedom

Learning to write clearly and effectively is one of the most important skills you can acquire. Better writing gets you what you want and where you want to be. Better writing brings people together, builds empathy, and breeds peace.

39

I give you permission to chill and not worry. Just for a few minutes while you read my shit, you can forget about the world and just chill. There's a fire crackling happily and a big comfy couch with blankets and cushions. An old dog sleeps in front of the fire, though every now and then she lifts her head, cracks open one eye and makes sure you're still there.

You can hear the rain outside lashing against the window but in here it's warm and cosy. There's plenty of wood in the basket, food and drink in the hamper, good books on the shelf. A kitten wanders in from the other room and springs onto the back of the couch and pushes into your hand, purring.

You have absolutely nothing to do and nowhere to be. It's as if the whole world out there suddenly stopped and all that exists in the universe is this warm little firelit room where you and I get to spend a few moments.

How did we get here? Who cares. Where are we going? Don't worry about it. If there's one thing in this world I'm sure of, it's how you needn't worry about one single thing. Let the words wash over you like water. Sink into them like a hot bath. Let your muscles relax. Feel your shoulders relax. Unknit your brow and smile.

A Little Fawn Sleeps

What can you see outta your eyeballs right now? Are you in bed, on a bus, in a car, in class, at home, on a starship, in a Particle Fixer 3000 swooshing your molecules on the red-eye home to Mars?

Two weeks on the dead Earth looking for survivors. We found one. One little fawn, still red pelted, quivering in the burnt bush. How the hell it survived the fire I dunno but when it saw me it leaped right up into my arms and nuzzled its muzzle into my chest and pushed its nose under my armpit. I could feel its heart beating like two-forty and the poor thing shook like a leaf.

That's all we found this time. So I rest my head against the bulwark and watch the neutrinos pass through me. Down below in the hold, sedated and hooked up to an IV, the little fawn sleeps.

The Marriage Between Science and God

The universe began 14 billion years ago in an event called the Big Bang. Everything in existence went from smaller than an electron to 93 billion light-years in less than a picosecond.

In the beginning, God created heaven and earth. It took six days. On the seventh, He rested. At first, there was only the void. Darkness moved across the face of the water. God created the Earth and many plants and crawling things. He shaped man and woman from clay and breathed life into their nostrils.

Different but the same? It's not like I really know what a billion light-years means or universe or picosecond. I nod and say sure, yeah, that makes sense. But in my heart of hearts, I'm taking it on faith.

My society tells me a billion makes sense so I say okay. I believe whatever scientists tell me. I believe what Science tells me. We're walking a very fine line here, friend. How about we just say God and Science got married?

We were all there. It was a huge celebration, even bigger than Bilbo's one hundred and eleventh birthday. All the animals came two by two, and every human on Earth was there too. We all filed across the land, up the mountain and down into a bowl, a natural amphitheater where, in front of a trillion pairs of eyes, feelers, and other various forms of sensors, God and Science were betrothed by Old Man Snake.

The sun shone. Birds sang. The mountain meadow smelled of pine and fresh flowers. A babbling brook laughed on the mountainside and, for an instant, everyone felt it – a perfect union in the air.

Altogether we walked that razor's edge up to the top of the mountain where, riding a zephyr high over the rainbow, the two young lovers retired to the matrimonial bed. Then the party really kicked off. The babbling brook became champagne and a nearby glacier brought glasses. The entire human race and all of the animals got high in the moonlight. We danced, laughed, sang, and cried. Great bonds were forged out of steel.

The next day at sun-up, everything was asleep. Even the brook, happiest of all, was snoring gently, a party hat pulled low over her eyes. Oh, it was wonderful when the two became one. Since then, life's been a dream.

Flood

Let's wander off course for a while where we're not supposed to. Let's go over to the dark side, the one they don't want you to know exists. Take part with me, friend, in a revolution of love. Fuck simple reforms. We need chaos and rifts, upheavals, surges and waves, waves of love pouring down the streets, sweeping people offa their feet, bringing people together, everyone simply together.

We're living in unprecedented times, my friend. I mean who the fuck isn't? Isn't every life unique and brand spanking new? Or am I a rerun – has my movie been played a million times? No, but seriously, shit's fuckin fucked like we've never seen it in literally fifty or sixty years. But remember the 90s? Those halcyon days of simplicity and peace? Calm serenity lapped on the beaches of the millennium's childhood. For a little white kid growing up in Canada, the whole world seemed like a sweet glass of milk.

Well, my friend, the milk curdled, the smell soured; it tasted like sick in your mouth. The world changed one September day in 2001. Since then things have gotten a lot darker, especially in the last four, five years.

Then with this recent pandemonium, we've seen one of the greatest opportunities for love in a long time. We have so much love, brothers and sisters, and we gotta give it. Don't hold back love, not when it's needed. Just look outside. We need love more than ever.

With darkness comes light, with hatred, love. Which will you bring to the world?

The Martian Code of Ethics

What a fucked up few months we've had. Our first pandemic. That wasn't too bad, some people are thinking. Oh, you just wait, friend. Shit ain't even started.

Flash forward a few years and there's smoke on every horizon. The air's acrid and putrid. The flies just won't go away. Crops burn. Rivers no longer exist. The oceans are salt flats. Humans either live at the poles, underground or on Mars.

Those who could afford it escaped to the red planet in 2021. After the western United States exploded, taking Canada and most of the Pacific with it, shit went south. It was kinda fun for a while. Watching it on the news was exciting. But then things got exciting in the streets so we stopped watching TV and began watching our backs.

Many people disappeared one night. We woke up and half the planet was gone. Empty beds. Quiet neighbourhoods. Empty launchpads where the rockets once stood. At first we assumed they'd come get us, or at least send a message.

We wouldn't have ever known if it wasn't for the cast-offs, rejects, outcasts, and condemned banished back to Earth for transgressing one of the rules of the Martian Code of Ethics.

It read very much like the American Declaration of Independence with a bit of the Tao and a sprinkling of Battlestar Galactica. The outcasts spoke of cities of gold and rivers of milk and honey. People communicate telepathically and hate has been expunged once and for all.

For us heathens, scorched earth remains. Like beasts we scratch on our bellies in the dirt, eating roots and roaches and drinking toxic slime. We die early. Thirty-five is old and wise. We've forgotten all we once knew. I'm writing this using a stick and some mud.

I myself have been banished. The outcasts cast me out. I live at the bottom of a burned-out elevator shaft in an apartment complex in what used to be the capital city all bustling and noisy with laughter. I hope life is different for you.

Love Love Love

I'ma judge no one. I have no standards. It's not up to me to determine someone's worth or unworth. I can pass no sentence. For I, my friend, am an hypocrite. I think everyone should be better and yet I fail every day. I am neither the best nor the worst human being on the planet. I am somewhere slap bang in the middle.

I'ma let go of titles, plaques, pieces of paper, and medals. All that matters is writing something better than yesterday. So what is the final solution? Well, we'll see. When the chips are down and the blood's been spilled, when the aggressor's holding a knife to your neck, when there's blood all over your linoleum floor, then we'll know what really went down. Until then, my friend, it's only conjecture. It's a hell of a gamble we make. Make, take, rake over the coals and see if there's not actually something very special inside.

Look deep into the fire. What can you see? There's something worth investigating. I can guarantee that. If you feel what I feel deep in your soul, then we should probably get the fuck outta here. This is no place for people like us. So come on! Let's get fuckin outta here. I'm gonna write platitudes all fuckin day! Platitudinous rex. Know what I'm sayin?

Stare off into the middle distance and listen to my words. Listen to the sound of my voice. I'll let you know when it's time to come out of your trance. Telling people some epic fuckin stories around a fire in a teepee with the wind howling out there but it's warm and cosy in here. There's water, wine and smoke. Whatever you want. Then I play the drum and sing a song then begin the story of the wandering bull. I've got a setlist and I'm taking you through a prescriptive journey, one that takes you to the edge then dumps you over it, filling your heart with fear and pity then releasing the floodgates for some fuckin cathartic waves to pass through. It's one of the most beautiful feelings in the world – catharsis. And no one really talks about it. Do you know what it is? Do I? I should study it more deeply.

What do you think about the end of the world? Will you be there when the planets collide? Fuck no. I'ma be long dead and buried. I'll have returned to the eternal source. All will be well with the cosmos. Nothing lasts forever. Even forever is a blink of the eye. Fear not the reaper. He's an old friend, come to pick you up for an epic car ride, a road trip to the very center of your soul. Would you recognize your soul if you saw it in the street or beside the toothpaste in aisle twenty-five? Where does your dream self go when the lights come on and you open your eyes and the alarm blares out a brand new day? It shuffles off its perch, off the coil, and into the shadows of our mind, our mind's eye, our sub or unconscious, the deepest, darkest part of our being, the part we don't share with strangers, we don't even know it ourselves, shit gets crazy down there, all wild, sweaty, and steamy. Salads are being tossed, heads are being given, moans, groans, and sobs sound from the creases and hollows. Wet sounds. Pet sounds. Wet sounds. How you like them apples? Forbidden fruit – apples and cherries crunching and popping. Step up, step in for your chance to win. Everyone's equal here, my perverted friend. I don't care about your healthy aspects. I wanna see where you're sick. Show me the darkness and I'll show you mine. Together, in the darkness, two snakes entwined.

The Creative Method

Stories can help show us how we should live. That's why we need em. The scientific method tells us what life is. The creative method tells us how it could be. Think of something you know to be true. Pick a fact out of the world then think about how it could be different in one simple way.

Zebras have black and white stripes, for example. What if they were purple and yellow? That, my friend, is called being creative. Think about something. Change it. Now think about how it would be.

What would the world be like if aliens took over? What would it be like to be the first humans on Earth? What would it be like if a New York heiress fell in love with a bank robber from New Orleans?

What if? What would life be like if..? What would happen if...? The cool thing about the creative method is that after running the simulation, you can bring back what you found – the lessons, mistakes, new understandings – and integrate them into your life in the Real World.

Just as science helps us understand the basic rules and make up of our beautiful universe, creativity helps us understand the basic rules and make up of our beautiful souls.

Neither can replace the other. Each benefits and enhances the other. They are dualities, brothers, two sides of the same page. The more creative our scientists are, the better. The more scientific our creatives are, the better. Together, we'll figure it out.

A Beginner's Guide to Telling the Truth

I had a crazy vivid dream. I kept waking up and going back into the dream. I was in a cabin in the woods, a kind of back-country hostel, and all my friends were there, friends from now as well as in the past.

There were threats of all kinds, from having no room so I'd have to sleep with a stranger, to bears attacking, to some kind of interpersonal beef where I was in trouble with all my acquaintances. They were all running around anxiously now.

During the chaos, I found myself drafting a plan to the most perfect piece of writing ever penned by a human. It made sense of the whole world, now and forever. I understood the story at a macro and micro level.

I drew up a draft so perfect that even my body knew heavy shit was going down; it kept waking me up to remember it. And then in the rainy Sunday morning light, all that was left was one sentence, the phrase, a title.

Writing is a Virus

Let's all just try to get along, shall we? You might not like me but we're gonna have to learn to work together. If we pull in a common direction, we'll improve our chances of success and survival. Don't we all wanna succeed and survive?

Our only way of passing on our genes and memes is through other people. I dunno. But I know I love you, no matter who you are. Why? Because I learned to love myself. How? By working on myself. I've made myself into a man I can love, a man I love instinctively.

I learned how to treat myself with respect. I did so by working hard to earn that respect. I had to get healthy in mind and body. It took years, but I've done it. I'ma keep like this my whole life, getting better and better every day. I'ma try and stay humble. I'ma try and mix confidence with humility.

I'm confident in what I know, yet humble enough to know I never see the whole truth and can always seek corrections. Tell me when I'm wrong. I'd love to hear counter-arguments to some of the ideas rocketing around in my head.

I feel like I've found some of the greatest ideas humans have come up with. The rest of the journey is actually onboarding them, integrating them into my soul-body structure. I know I'm a hypocrite, but I try not to be. I know I'm weak but I try not to be. I know I'm a sinner but I try not to be.

The world is thorny, complex, and brutal. Let's work together to make it safer, more comfortable, and accommodating to everybody. Let's shine a light on the dark corners of the world. Let's flush out the scorpions, snakes, lies, and tigers. Let's find the inequities in our souls and try to find balance. Let's mediate between the light and dark side of our souls. Let's walk the fine line, fine as a razor's edge, between eternity and death.

All I'm tryna do is channel the best writing for you that I can. I'ma try find the absolute optimal conditions and fuckin let the pen run. I'ma let it say what it wants. It's my job to get out of the way.

All I am is a hand that can manipulate a pen and a head that understands how to use words. I am not my self, my ego or my id. I am not the person you, they, or I think I am. I am not the image I see in the mirror. I am not my Facebook account. I am not my fingerprints.

I step aside and the pen becomes me. Who am I? A pen. You are listening to a pen talking – the ramblings of a ballpoint pen. Today I languished placidly on the carpet with my pal, Notebook, then Hand picked me up and now you and I are connecting, if not in-person, then person-to-pen.

I'm afraid it's a pretty one-sided chat, more of a monologue really. But don't worry; I care what you think. I care more than anything else in the world. I care so much, in fact, that maybe you're feeling like you wanna pick up a pen, maybe a pad of paper too, and start seeing what the pen has to say.

You see now how writing's a virus? We gotta stamp it out before it takes over the world.

God's not Dead

Look at all the chaos. See all that pain and suffering? That's caused by a lack of faith in the Truth. We don't live in a Post-Truth World. That's just some bullshit soundbite that sounds good on TV. Fuck anyone who tries to tell you life is Post Truth. The only reason they'd tell you that is to help swallow a lie. 

We live in the same world we've always lived in. All the humans who've ever existed came to life and died on this rock. All our heroes and villains, gods, goddesses, and Truths came alive with us. As long as we're here, they are too. 

God isn't dead. Truth isn't dead. Love isn't dead. How do I know? Cause God loves you and that's true. God loves you and wants you to be rich. All you gotta do is fill out this subscription. Nine ninety-nine a month.

The Crowing of a Digital Rooster

Imagine a near-future, Ray Bradbury kinda place where we're all CRISPR'd to where we're exactly the same. We look, sound, smell, taste, and feel the same as everyone else. Somehow we figured out how to find the average of everything: height, weight, build, eye colour, hair, skin, everything, boob size, dick length (we're hermaphrodites, of course), we're all the fuckin same...

We open our eyes simultaneously at the crowing of our digital rooster. As we step onto the floor, the air lights up and the walls dissolve into a warm golden light. Fine smelling mist fills the room, warm and cleansing, followed by a rich warm air blowing in from the south, drying our glistening skin. 

A light cotton smock waits folded on the dresser, beside a glass full of deep amber liquid. We drink our breakfast of carbs, lipids, and proteins, mixed with some caffeine and SSRIs then step out into the hall where we nod to our neighbour and make our way to work. 

All we do, all everyone does, is consume content from the past. From 9 to 5 (some things never change) we walk on trails through varying biospheres while our subconscious floats in the Cloud. Together, using our collected thought power and mind strength, we try to understand our ancestors. 

For, if we learn about the mistakes of the past, then we have a higher chance of avoiding them. And, as the voice tells us every night before bed, differences are mistakes. Iron out the differences and you'll find Heaven on Earth.