But what about you? Are you, too, facing a handful of wildly disparate and half possible paths through life? Are you feeling really fucked up about how profoundly everything changed three years ago? Have you been getting your runs in? Have you been getting your run-ins in? Have you, too, been having stress and anxiety tummy aches most days lately? Have you also been watching a lot of videos showing the unique and varied mimicry of corvids?
When you need quickly to feel good, what's the first song you think to put on? Just now, when you put that song on, did it actually make you feel good?
Are you allowing yourself the deep indulgence of randomly calling a friend? That friend you called - did they pick up?
And by what metric are you measuring your worth? How do you know with repeatable results whether or not the person you are now is better or worse than the person you have been or will become? What is your control and what is your experiment? By what contraption or physical constant are you deriving your kilogram? What hypothesis are you testing and researching? What is it, precisely, to the fourth significant figure, that you are trying to prove? What universal phenomenon is described within your work? How tall do you stand? Upon which doorframe are you marking your height? Which other shorter ghosts have been documented there? What heavenly scale will your soul be weighed on? Is your heart heavier than a flower? Is your heart heavier than a bushel of grain? Is your heart heavier than the yoke of an ox?
Are you spending enough time being luxuriously bored? Are you letting your brain simmer? (there's enough in there already - let it crackle!)
If someone dared you to do something - anything - right this moment, would you have the stones to do it?
What word do you find yourself a little fixated on, saying out loud too often?
And by what star are you sailing? Are you sure what's north? By what map do you travel? Toward what unseen horizon are you pointing your prow? Are you tacking into the headlong weather, cutting an oscillator's triangle wave in the surf? Or are you stuck in the doldrums, flat against the deck and praying for breeze, futilely blowing your own body's wind into the deflated curve of your vessel's sails? Or are you tumbling in heavy seas, for all creation nothing but a splinter in the surf? Is your mast cracked? Is your hull watertight? What cargo do you carry? When the bells ring out will you curl up in the curve of your berth, hands raw and throbbing from the passing of miles of rope? Will you be cradled, held, rocked to sleep by the very monstrous hyperobject you dare to glide across? Where are you headed? When you get there, will you kiss the sand of your shore?
How high is your swag meter right now? Do you feel rich or poor in social cache?
Do you feel guided by any particular force, ethos, code, document, core belief, or mystical entity? If yes, what is your relationship to this guiding concept? Are there incantations, spells, prayers, songs of praise, etc. that can influence or change your relationship to the thing or being that guides you? Do you feel its presence in the room with you right now? If you feel no sense of guidance, does the lack of oversight ever terrify you, even a little bit?
Do you feel good? And did you take that last question to mean that I was asking about the quality of your feeling? Or did you take it to mean that I was asking about your own conception of your worth?
What are you nervous about today? What are you anxious about today? What are you wringing your hands over today? What are you hoping against hope for today? Has anyone emptied your crypto portfolio lately? Is your safe deposit box locked? What contingencies are you planning for? Are you armed? Are there caches of food and supplies well within reach? If the gold standard were to collapse tomorrow, which of your possessions would remain valuable? Would you, god forbid, be able to begin a new life on the run within an hour from now?
And what will your garden yield you after the crocuses have burst from the soil? What seeds have you planted, what bloomers and perennials have you brought in with bulbs? Who is popping up? Will you savor your time in kneepads and a giant hat, vibrating your tomatoes? Will you be nourished by the harvest? When I say nourished, do you take it to mean anything other than literally feeding yourself? Will your experience of life grow more delicious through your efforts? Are you neutralizing the pests of the field? Do you sense that you are in partnership with the fauna? Do you feel the wriggling of the invertebrates beneath the topsoil? Right plant right place, is this accurate?
What message are you delaying yourself from sending? What conversation are you avoiding having? Why are you afraid to value yourself the way you wish that others valued you? Do you think you're maybe kind of an asshole sometimes? Why are you not more readily able to advocate for what you need, want, and deserve? Are you narcissistic enough to really think that people actively don't like you? When it's probably more true that they hardly ever think about you?
Listen now - is there music playing in the space you occupy? If so, from where does the music originate? If not, what do you hear? If not, what do you wish you could hear?
Are you formulating a response?
Or are you letting the questions simmer?
Are you different now for having read the questions?
And what would you ask in return?