_Intro:

Head's spinning so a quick entry before bed. I got in touch with some people I haven't spoken to in a while, familiar voices and the like bringing me back to more...idealistic times? Yeah, back when the world was less convoluted and I didn't have to think as much. But judging the timeline between then and now gives me an opportunity to reflect on personal changes. Sometimes we have to remind ourselves of how we made our decisions in the first place and when you look at it, every little thing brought you to this point. As I like to tell myself, every bad idea was once good and knowing which is the other lies in experience.

_On old ideals:

If old ideals were that viable then personal change wouldn't have been necessary, right? I like to think so at least. There's still a little bit of that optimism, that desire to feel like a part of something. I remember what it was like, those years in the late 2010s, everything seemed possible back then. The days before insecurity, anxiety. Life made sense.

Vague platitudes, I know. And those few phrases mean many different things to many different people but we all must feel that way in some form or another. But what are the old ideals? I guess it's more of a sentiment really. We outgrow some things if they no longer serve us or we either adapt them. I just found the word-nostalgia, pure and simple. I think I've said it before but growing up means being more aware for better or worse. You look at things more analytically and less fantastically-at least in my case that's true.

The world right now feels like a spiritual dead end and in the same way you have to be more independent as an adult, the same is true of less material things like your spirituality. You don't have to buy a bunch of crystals and read into astrology just to be aware of your own spiritual state. That night with my girlfriend, eating cheeseburgers and listening to Van Halen over my truck's stereo-that did more for my soul than any amount of time I had spent in a church.

_On the spirit:

There is an immaterial way in which we have to sustain ourselves. Most people don't know how and so they follow trends like the ikea nesting instinct. The worst examples glue themselves to streaming services, relentlessly watching the news like their homegrown version of the two minutes hate. That's the type of spirit that becomes submissive to the potency of the reptile brain, politicians are masterful at orchestrating the baser instincts of voters. I know this because it's happened to me.

I can't define it with specific words and it would be futile to try. Everyone's different in whatever old ideals they lament losing whether it's a dream they had or some perception of the world that felt more hospitable. But there's ways of returning to that headspace, some ritual or another. Everyday I go to a coffee shop, sit with my laptop and make progress on a goal. That's what I've been doing to help myself.

But what I've come to learn is that you have to let go of that sense of control. Adulthood means being more in control of your own survival then we try to control the circumstances that fulfill us spiritually but that's a paradox. For hundreds, maybe even a thousand years, humans have known that the path to enlightenment starts with letting go and I see this as equally true when you admit that you are not your ego, just an observer of it. Simple, right?

_Where to go from here:

The feeling, the optimism, it was never lost. We just forget. That'll be something to meditate on, our original headspace that pushed us to make the decisions we did, follow these goals but now with more experience. I don't know if this is gonna reach anyone. Better to treat this as some kind of online diary, I'm tired anyway.

Tomorrow, I'm going to the MVD, getting an oil change, and seeing what kind of meal I can cook all the way out in the desert. Getting in touch with old friends brought me back to the headspace the modern world tried to purge, I can't even put it into words. But you know what it means for you, whatever gives you hope, inspiration, a bunch of pinterest words. Misery doesn't have to be the default.

-Errant out