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.