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Habits seem to crowd our personality; automation displaces soul. Often, I’m afraid that I’ll lose the ability to forcefully communicate — that I’ll be reduced to a patois of Twitter jargon. The pointless misery of the last year only heightens the sense that the inward is withering and wingless. The snapshots I take of my own mind in operation reveal structural decay — a growing inner discord. How do we confront the terrible immanence of days that are all the same? of people that are increasingly the same — lumped themselves together in giant bands of digital affiliation? It is tempting to answer: through becoming a repetition ourselves (a repetition of ourselves) — through mirroring within the boringness of culture without. But I don’t want to give in, not exactly; I want to hack through the tangles of self back to the wellspring — back to the heart. Sometimes I do little mental drills to keep spiritually awake like astronaut in zero gravity who has to keep their muscles from atrophying. I try not to be too sincere with people who talk just like the Internet — instinctively shielding myself with irony. I feel the terrible responsibility of self-creation.
