When you’re connected, you pause. You listen, and ask better questions. You observe your own patterns, and stop attacking or blaming others for theirs.
When you’re connected, you become a space of calm in a world of storms rather than another disruptive, destructive wave in a sea of chaos.
When you forget how to listen inward, when you stop grounding in self-awareness, you lose your anchor.
Check yourself before you wreck yourself. It’s not about being perfect. It’s about being aware.
Pause, and come back to yourself.
Reconnect, and become the clarity you’ve been searching for.
Remain connected, and become the clarity that helps to guide others home.
It’s the end of the world as we know it…and I do not, in fact, feel fine.
I just heard that song on the radio. It inspired introspection, which is more than I can say for most current popular radio. Bill, Peter, Michael and Mike may have felt fine when the world ended in 1987—but 2025’s version? It’s a different beast entirely.
I’m not disassociating to the beat of their catchy chorus. No chorus, really…
No matter what music I play, what books I lose myself in, or how many hours I spend painting, collaging, shooting and processing images, praying, meditating, or absorbing art—I can’t not pay attention.
It’s like God has made it impossible for me to look away.
No matter how many creative rabbit holes I disappear into, my soul keeps returning to the same painful truth: I still see the world clearly. And I still care.
I’ve already finished 31 books this year. Some I began a year ago and it’s taken that long to finish them, but still. I’ve read a lot this year (speaking of which, what are you reading? Here’s my list, if you’d like some suggestions…).
I’ve listen to over 200 albums, all told (2.717 tracks, according to LastFM).
Watched 50+ documentaries—science, history, mythology, medicine, art, folklore, theology, religion, all sorts (according to my watch history on Amazon and YouTube).
But no matter what I consume or create throughout these days and nights spent in the studio or my own den or bedroom, my heart always circles back to the chaos we’re living in.
The blame shifting. The addiction and obsession and lack of self-control. The emotional manipulation—by the media, by governments, by people you thought you could trust.
The hatred. The division. The apathy.
Even the weather feels weaponized now—whether by nature or man, we may never know. And most days? It feels like we’re collapsing. Not just politically or economically—but spiritually.
When children’s deaths are celebrated, when cruelty trends, when people are told, “it’s OK to mask your real pain by pretending to be someone you’re really not,” and/or real pain is ignored in favor of performance and profit…how do you call that anything but collapse?
And still…I feel their pain, too.
The ones lashing out. The ones clinging to false power. Even the ones I disagree with or who’ve attacked me—and the ones in real life who wish I would “just die”—I can feel the torment beneath their rage. Because it takes serious misdirected conditioning and trauma to become someone who cheers for suffering.
I know what it is. I know myself and so many others have been purposely called to employ it. “Charged” with it, if you will. But I also understand now that that number is mighty small.
It’s empathy.
It’s spiritual discernment.
It’s energy.
And it’s real. That’s the loudest truth in me. I preach it, in comments and voiceovers and prose, and I practice it through my actions. I continue to do this, even if it makes me seem “crazy” to a world that calls numbness normal (and to some, that makes me a “glutton for punishment”).
I cry with strangers on the internet more than I ever admit. Sometimes when I log on just to post art or check an email, I’m immediately met with headlines about another shooting, another suicide, another senseless death. And still, I pray. Because Spirit won’t let me stop seeing—and won’t let me stop loving, either.
Prayer isn’t useless. Many feel that it is, and I understand why. But they’re wrong. Prayer isn’t useless—especially not when more than one person is praying.
It creates ripples. It fuels the art, the writing, the stillness, the hope. It’s a frequency of resistance that can’t be monetized or hijacked.
And maybe, as the world is in an overwhelming energy of doubt, fear, and anger, that’s the most powerful rebellion of all right now: to stay in the vibration of love, even when everything begs you to sink into rage or despair.
So if you’re not feeling fine either—but you’re still holding on to your humanity, still radiating clarity, still praying or creating or showing up gently?
You’re not alone.
There’s sacred clarity in this discomfort. Keep not-feeling-fine. It means you’re still awake. And just in case nobody’s said it today:
I love you. I’d like to bring goodness into your world. I’m sending it out to you whether you like it, or me, or not. I hope you’ll receive it.
A random, inexplicable flux. That insatiable need to create. Some unseen force guiding me to conjure, to express, to birth something.
It happened again last night, but in the same instant that I felt the proverbial tap on my shoulder, a heaviness threatened to settle there. Born and bred creatives know this experience, all the way into their bones.
It comes with a dread, and creates a dangerous, self-sabotaging pre-regret. It manifests from a complete lack of vision:
No concept. No plan. No brilliant idea waiting to be realized. Certainly, no idea where to begin.
Lost but not lacking awareness, and determined to win over the weight of what really boils down to fear of failure, I asked, “what do we want? What is the spark?”
As expected, the silence answered with more of the same cryptic transmission: “Just ‘do.’ Ripples turn into waves.”
So, I rummaged.
I plundered through the old tools and the old toys. You know the ones—the “Ghosts of Projects Past,” our artistic Scrooge’s worst nightmares. The ones tucked away in dusty, overflowing “Likely Garbage” photography folders and long forgotten apps.
The ancient, the analog, the abandoned fragments of another era.
I pulled out the remnants of what once inspired me, not because I knew what I was doing, but because whatever had stirred was creating a riot within me.
These moments are never a question of choice, so I just…explored. Guessed. Played. Flowed.
s e n t i n e lg r i e f
Sometimes, perhaps most often, that is the best option. Even if the outcome feels unfamiliar or strange, or doesn’t resemble the “usual” desired outcome. Even if the result is wildly imperfect or impossible to explain…
It is in this uncertain, instinctual process that magic lives and breathes. This is where it sizzles and crackles and arcs, like a furious current from Tesla’s coil—except in this case we don’t need Faraday’s cage.
Creatives—artists, writers, dreamers, philosophers—need the opposite. We need this chaotic energy to touch, and to consume, us. It is the rejection, the not allowing it to, that kills us…and that is always a slow, excruciating death, from the inside out.
In art and creativity, exciting results are not found in safety. They’re not found in perfection. Organic process is not found in planning. Everything in and about the Creative archetype is found in the act of simply showing up.
Creative inspiration doesn’t ask for permission. It asks for presence. It asks that you show up and let it burn through you. The only wrong move is not moving at all.
📷 Lumix GX7 + Panasonic Leica DG Macro-Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 ASPH Mega OIS ⚒️ Fragment + Mextures + Lightroom
entry ten — scattered light, fractured grace: a quiet archive of light, loss, and what remains.
Black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta), a fading ember of late summer—graceful even in decay, still holding the shape of sunlight after the bloom has passed. Lumix GX7 + Panasonic Leica DG Macro-Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 ASPH. MEGA O.I.S., VSCO (A10PRO), Mextures (personalized texture formula: MEZPZZC), Lightroom Mobile (watermark only).
My mother always told me, in every possible circumstance a child might ever need encouragement, “Do your best, and leave the rest. It’ll all come right some day or night.”
It was a line from “Black Beauty, by Anna Sewell.”
She was a third grade teacher, a grammar Nazi, and a mother trying her damndest to connect with me and, well, do her best.
And, as ornery and difficult a young person as I could often be, she never knew that I believed her…
…even when I forgot I did.
Black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta), a fading ember of late summer—graceful even in decay, still holding the shape of sunlight after the bloom has passed. Lumix GX7 + Panasonic Leica DG Macro-Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 ASPH. MEGA O.I.S., VSCO (A10PRO), Mextures (personalized texture formula: MEZPZZC), Lightroom Mobile (watermark only).
There was so much distance between us as I struggled through high school with her overbearing “sin obsessed” guidance, and she struggled to save my soul.
Even when the days were so long, when they bled into each other, and when the nights felt like punishments I hadn’t earned, as her brain and body were swallowed by Alzheimer’s.
Even when the thread broke, or maybe I cut it, when she died…I honored and nursed a clean, holy wound in the shape of freedom for both of us, from past grievances, from debts yet unpaid, from fear, from tension, from aching hearts and confused minds and the evils of that horrific disease.
Still, that line stayed, like a soft breath. Like a healing balm. Like the part of her that couldn’t leave, because it lived in me.
Black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta), a fading ember of late summer—graceful even in decay, still holding the shape of sunlight after the bloom has passed. Lumix GX7 + Panasonic Leica DG Macro-Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 ASPH. MEGA O.I.S., VSCO (A10PRO), Mextures (personalized texture formula: MEZPZZC), Lightroom Mobile (watermark only).
Do your best. Not more than that. Not perfection. Just presence. I tried, truly.
Leave the rest… The story. The tragedy. The one who couldn’t stay.
entry nine — scattered light, fractured grace: a quiet archive of light, loss, and what remains.
Weevil (Meibomeus musculus), a quiet laborer of the forest and the fields…carrying the weight of being, petal by petal. Vision: Lumix GX7 + Panasonic Leica DG Macro-Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 ASPH. MEGA O.I.S. Tools: VSCO (KP3), Mextures (personalized texture formula: QBHASZK), Lightroom Mobile (watermark only).
There is a kind of presence that doesn’t announce itself.
No sound. No shimmer. No need to be noticed. Just a body doing what it does.
Clinging to a petal, breathing the moment, belonging to the quiet. Sometimes, that is the work.
Not saving, not proving. Just being.
And somehow…it shifts the entire forest, the entire field.
For some souls, there is a burden in being seen —not the fear of visibility, but the ache of being misread when presence itself was the offering.
entry eight — scattered light, fractured grace: a quiet archive of light, loss, and what remains.
Bicolor Bush Clover (Lespedeza bicolor), a humble member of the wild clover family. Lumix GX7 + Panasonic Leica DG Macro-Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 ASPH. MEGA O.I.S., VSCO (HB3 PRO), Lightroom Mobile (watermark only).
Zooming in, pulling back, reframing… …it’s the practice of shifting perspectives. Cropping is discernment.
It’s important in photography, and in life.
Focusing closely. Examining the details. Leaning into the moment. Studying the layers. Trying different angles— then pulling back to take in the whole.
I do this with my art, my edits, my healing… …and my priorities.
Bicolor Bush Clover (Lespedeza bicolor), a humble member of the wild clover family. Lumix GX7 + Panasonic Leica DG Macro-Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 ASPH. MEGA O.I.S., VSCO (HB3 PRO), Lightroom Mobile (watermark only).
Cropping, and discernment. Both are framing what matters— letting the noise blur into the background.
It’s not just a gift, not just a tool. It’s a process.
With practice, it teaches clarity through choice. Over time, it becomes discernment embodied.
Cropping alters perspective. It is learning to see again…
…as many times as it takes to actualize the vision.
There’s a quiet kind of healing that happens when no one is watching. It doesn’t perform. It doesn’t announce itself. It doesn’t need a platform. That is where I was when I was away—not just from social media, but from this space and this blog.
A young woman named Jillian, in a YouTube video I stumbled across recently, captured this so simply and so beautifully: what life looks and feels like when you’ve stepped away from social media—and stayed away long enough to actually notice the difference. What struck me most, though, was hearing her perspective as someone going through this process for the first time.
It’s lived in my thoughts and I’ve contemplated this post ever since. It was so interesting to me because I’ve taken breaks from the internet many times over the past two decades, always for the same reasons—and always with this same depth of understanding about the psychology of it, and why those breaks were necessary.
This most recent (and longest) season of removal hit different. After the last caregiving stretch, after Roshi Ralph’s death, after the silence that came when others (who had no real understanding of the compound caregiving and loss I’d just lived through—and in many cases, never will) rushed in with attacks and projections and judgments, as if my grief was theirs to dissect—I pulled all the way back. And I’ve stayed back.
I’ve stayed away from social media not because I needed a break, but because I reached the point where it just doesn’t matter to me. The truth is, it never really did. The performance of it all—the curated personas, the noise, the performative alliances, the hollow outrage, the likes-as-validation—means less than nothing. I never played the game anyway, and when I tried to be real, I was punished for it—called out for oversharing instead of respected for being honest. So now, I simply choose not to engage.
That’s the decision, and it’s permanent. I stick to my own space—my blog(s)—now. I share some of my creative work on YouTube and Instagram, but I don’t engage socially. The work is there for anyone who wishes to enjoy it, just like my writing: simply because I’ve made it—and it feels like a waste to let it collect digital dust on my hard drive or memory cards. That’s it.
And what I’ve learned—what I’ve earned—is this:
Own your own thoughts. Own your own opinions. Stop looking to the crowd to inform you of what you feel, believe, or need. If you want to share your truth, explore your voice, or process your experience—do it in your own space. Even if that space is digital.
Quiet is not the same as silent. Solitude is not absence. Privacy is not erasure. And just because the crowd isn’t clapping doesn’t mean the work isn’t working—or that it’s not sacred, necessary, and deeply alive.
A hike on Flagg Mountain.Flagg Mountain is part of Weogufka State Forest.My favorite place in these woods……is where you’ll find my favorite tree (a post all about her is coming soon).A few photos from where I’ve been this past year, instead of online…
Mirrors, Screens, and Silent Knowing: Personal Reflections after Watching Jillian’s Journey
Part One: The Slowness That Saves You
Jillian talked about how, in the silence of that first year offline, she realized she wasn’t who she thought she was. That her sense of self had been filtered through algorithms and aesthetics for so long that she didn’t know what parts were her and what parts were just performance.
She said she didn’t want to be a cottagecore girl, or a vanilla-beach-aesthetic girl, or even a tomato queen—she just wanted to be Jillian. And that’s what life offline gave her space to rediscover: the Jillian aesthetic. Not a genre. Not a trend. A person.
That kind of reclamation doesn’t happen in front of a ring light. It happens when you’re still. When the feedback loop breaks. When your body and soul finally stop bracing for the next notification, the next birthday story repost, the next dopamine drip that doesn’t land right.
She didn’t pretend her life suddenly looked different. In fact, she said:
“Does my life look any different from this… to this? No. But how I live is what’s different.”
That line stuck with me because it’s the same thing I’ve experienced. The world outside didn’t change. The people didn’t change. The pain didn’t vanish. But something in me stopped handing over power to what others might think—or worse, what they might not think if I didn’t stay visible.
Part Two: The Real Cynicism Is a Smile That Lies
There was a comment I wrote recently in response to someone who was tired—tired of being called negative for telling the truth. Tired of being cast as cynical for not dressing pain up as purpose. I told them this:
“People will call the truth pessimism and negativity because they’ve either never seen true rock bottom—or they’ve never experienced it (yet).”
Because the people who have known real loss, real chaos, real collapse?
We don’t need false light. We need real clarity.
That’s why toxic positivity is so insidious—it masquerades as hope, but it’s really just fear dressed in bright colors. It says: Don’t go there. Don’t feel that. Don’t name it. But the truth? The truth sits with the mess. The truth makes a chair for the grief and the rage and the complexity and says: stay as long as you need.
“It’s madness to try to be sane in this crazed world… You can just quietly speak your truth.”
That’s it right there. That’s why I’m not interested in “engaging” anymore, and why I’ve stopped posting where people feel entitled to misunderstand. This world has enough noise. Enough image management. Enough hollow back-patting in the name of “support.”
Part Three: Stillness Is Not Stagnation
Jillian said she thought she was going to return to social media after a year. She even looked forward to it. She imagined her big return, her “look how I’ve changed” content. But then the new year rolled around… and she didn’t want to go back. Because the more she paid attention to her real life—the one where she wasn’t performing for anyone—the less she needed to curate it.
That’s a shift I understand at a soul level.
Sometimes we don’t need reinvention. We need to not be witnessed for a while, so we can see ourselves clearly again.
And no, it doesn’t mean becoming some pure, evolved aesthetic monk who never has insecure days. Jillian was honest about that too—she still compares timelines, still feels the pressure. But she said something I think most people miss:
“I still have those moments. But I’m learning. And that’s enough. I’m having a great time.”
A great time—not because everything is perfect, but because she’s present. Because she’s not outsourcing her attention, affection, or identity anymore. And because she gave herself the gift of being nobody for a while, so she could become somebody real again.
Closing Thoughts: Your Life, Your Lens
So no—this isn’t a how-to guide. This isn’t a five-step digital detox plan. This is just a reflection on what it means to live inward in a world obsessed with being outward.
It’s a reminder that your worth isn’t measured in visibility. That your healing doesn’t have to be documented to be real. That privacy isn’t a lack of connection—it’s a form of spiritual hygiene.
Social media isn’t evil. But it’s not sacred, either. Use it if it serves your soul. Leave it if it steals your peace. And if you ever wonder whether your absence would be noticed, ask this instead:
“Would I still feel whole if no one saw me for a while?”
If the answer is no, then maybe it’s time to come home to yourself—quietly and on purpose.
catacosmosis 