I live in a world that often feels like it’s filled with shit. I’m talking foul-smelling, mountains of dung. Whether it’s the growing deluge of content with an greater chance of coming from AI-fabrication with every passing day, the weekly war-mongering troubles abroad in arbitrarily far-off places like Iran, Venezuela, and China, or the orange octopus sitting in the White House with its rancid tentacles in everything, there’s not a whole lot out there to be excited about.
But I can’t control world events, nor should I over-indulge in the endless news cycles that keeps us clicking and glued to our screens. Zoom that microscope in a bit, and things start to get more tangible at least. But even at this layer, it’s easy to get bogged down in the drudgery of day-to-day life. I get overwhelmed knowing that I spend a third of my hours working for someone else’s dream, a third sleeping, and a third doing some combination of personal errands, thinking about admin tasks, saving and investing money, making plans for events, trying to “prioritize my mental health,” and sitting on the toilet browsing reddit. Of course, there are some highlights in there, but I’d be surprised if more than 10% of my week, or ~17 hours, goes into my most enjoyable tasks.
Yet somehow, in spite of the macro shit and the micro shit and the everything in between, there is still a small collection of things that gets me excited. Things that get me up in the morning. Things that compel me to put in effort, not because someone expects me to or because I don’t have enough, but because they pull me inwards, like a moth to a flame.
This list isn’t very long, but it’s got some variety to it, including:
Running outside on trails
Backpacking and spending time in the mountains
Spending time with my partner and friends
Taking care of my family
Writing
DJing for my friends
Brainstorming random business ideas
There are a few themes in there, but for a long time, the only through-line I’ve found on these is “things I like to do” or “things that make me feel happy.” Don’t get me wrong — that is reason enough for the list. In fact, I hope that you can just easily compile a list of things that bring you joy in the same manner. But the answer of “I like these things” wasn’t satisfactory to me. Why do I like these things? What about them?
What I have come to realize is that, in a world so full of shit, I just want to feel inspired. I want to do things that inspire me. Whether I’m inspired to do a challenging, scary physical feat in the endless beauty of nature, or inspired to be a kinder, better person by the humans I am lucky enough to call my friends, or inspired to build something new and positive for the world, my soul just wants to feel like it’s working towards something greater than myself. Something grand and epic and on occasion, a little bit scary.
Now that is something worth waking up for.
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Disclaimer: No part of my personal essays are written using AI of any kind. Odds are that this idea came to me mid-shower, with a shout to Siri to “remind me about X”. I probably stayed up past my bedtime, rambling away at my keyboard in a state of semi-wakefulness. And there’s a good chance that you can find some grammatical errors in here. (Like in the previous sentence 🙂)