Escaping the Sea of Tears (and Other Lessons in Making Stuff)

This morning is the kind I would bottle if I could. Before Sunrise playing softly in the background, a grocery delivery on its way, a stick of chamomile incense making my office space smell amazing. I’m in that gentle in-between state where the world hasn’t yet demanded anything of me. 

And I’ve been thinking about part of last night’s conversation with Seth, the kind that runs past dinner and into the hours after the sun goes down. The air cooling around us and filling with drizzle as we sit at our little bistro table, comparing notes on the internet, creativity, and why we’re still here doing this whole “posting things online” dance after all these years.

The short version?

We’re obviously both still doing it, but it’s different now. Very different.

Back in My LiveJournal Days...

When Seth and I first met (over 20 years ago now) we were both living in the wild frontier days of LiveJournal. Back then, blogging didn't have much to do with clout or follower counts yet. You posted because you wanted to make a connection with other people. You wrote something heartfelt, and maybe a stranger in another time zone commented back with something equally heartfelt. 

You built friendships on words alone.

Fast forward to now, and it’s like everyone’s been replaced by a marketing department in human form. So many people seem to be here purely to acquire – followers, customers, attention, anything that can be converted into currency. 

I actually can't believe I know other writers, bloggers, and creators who are “successful” in the modern sense, but have also openly (shamelessly!) admitted they don’t actually enjoy writing. That blows my mind every time. Imagine hating something as magical as personal writing from the heart can be, but still doing it daily because the machine demands it.

I already had a job I hated when I first got online and started writing. The last thing I needed was another one.

The Things I Believed Because Somebody Told Me To (and How I'm Unlearning Them on Purpose)

"You're lazy." "You're difficult." "You're just trying to cause trouble." 

If I had a nickel for every time some adult told me any of the above (or similar) when I was growing up, I could buy the fancy espresso maker of my dreams and still have enough left over for a year’s supply of beans. 

I heard it at ten when I preferred to stay inside reading or drawing instead of running around shrieking on the playground with other kids. I'd hear it again in my teens when I didn't want to spend my summers taking more classes instead of actually enjoying my vacation. 

And yes, I'd hear it some more (loudly) in my 20s and early 30s when I preferred freelancing or working on commission to the same shitty 9-to-5 hamster wheel everyone else seemed so excited about. 

Eventually, I stopped questioning the verdict. “Lazy” and "troublemaker" were simply stamped on my mental passport in permanent ink, and I carried those labels everywhere I went. For years... decades, in some cases. Then one day, I realized maybe it's not quite as simple as people want to make it. 

No, I'm not willing or able to pull double shifts at some thankless job I never wanted in the first place. But I can write like my life depends on it for 14 hours straight if I'm excited about a project I'm working on for a client or for myself. I finally got that maybe it was simply easier for other people to call me lazy than it was to understand that my motivation system runs on a different type of fuel.

That light-bulb moment sent me down a very worthwhile rabbit hole. And it made me wonder, what else do I still believe simply because someone, somewhere, told me to believe it? Spoiler: a lot. Chances are you're in a similar boat. See if any of the following sounds familiar.

Beliefs About Yourself

Growing up, I was consistently upset by things that didn't seem to bother other kids at all. Like, when characters were awful to each other in movies (or even cartoons), I couldn't handle it. If I found out someone I cared about said something bad about me behind my back, I couldn't handle that either, nor could I simply accept that they "didn't really mean it." (I mean pretty much everything I say about other people, behind their backs or otherwise.)

The Butterfly Is Watching: Dream Realities and Strange Watchers

Earlier, I was rewatching the wonderful Hugh Grant film Heretic while finishing up a client assignment. I found my imagination lingering on the moment Mr. Reed brings up Zhuangzi’s butterfly dream — the ancient Daoist anecdote where a man dreams he's a butterfly, only to wake and wonder if perhaps he’s actually a butterfly dreaming he's a man. 

It’s a simple story on the surface, but it echoes in a way that’s hard to shake. Especially at this point in my life.

As I sometimes do when watching movies, I also started messing around on Midjourney and quickly wound up with a series of surreal butterflies on my hands. 

One in particular stayed with me — dark, elegant wings speckled with pale bands, and at its center a single, all-seeing eye. Not painted or decorative but real, watching, and sentient. That eye made me feel like I wasn’t just looking at the butterfly. It was also looking back at me from God only knows where.

Zhuangzi’s dream isn’t about confusion 

It’s about reality as a question and a concept, not a conclusion. We tend to think of life in absolutes –– waking vs. sleeping, real vs. unreal, human vs. non-human. But what if those categories aren’t as fixed as they've always seemed? What if a dream isn’t the opposite of life, but simply another expression of it?

What if some part of us — the part that just might be ancient, instinctive, unblinking — is always dreaming?

The butterfly from my render feels reflective of that part of me. Not the transitory flicker of beauty most people associate with transformation, but something older. It's a witness, a seer. Maybe it's even one of the animal guides I've been thinking so much about lately.

Lately, I feel like I’m standing between two worlds

One of these worlds I'm all too familiar with. It's the one that asks for resumes, recommends routines, and demands hard proof of absolutely everything. It only asks me to show up — not to shine, not to share, not to become. But I have so much more to bring than just presence. 

I find that world disorienting and always have. 

Then there are the days I have time to write in a trance or contemplate the bigger mysteries of life. When I'm lucky, the right words come from somewhere that doesn’t feel like me –– the second world. 

Returning from that world feels like haunting my own house, drifting through rooms that no longer recognize me.

So when I see an image like this butterfly with its wings stretched wide while it watches from a place beyond time, it feels like a message. Or maybe just a reminder. Is some other version of me dreaming this life? And if so, why this life and this imagery? 

In spiritual work, there’s a concept called the “watcher self"

This is the version of you that observes your thoughts without attachment. Maybe that’s the butterfly. The one who flits from realm to realm, unbothered by binaries like truth or illusion, because it no longer believes in them. That butterfly knows both its wings belong to the same body.

Or maybe the butterfly is God. Or the soul. Or the quiet hum of consciousness itself, resting on a branch we can’t quite reach. Maybe the dream is just as important as the waking. Maybe they need each other because they only exist in contrast to one another. Maybe they are each other.

Maybe it doesn’t matter. 

* This freewriting exercise is part of this month's incarnation of the Feast of the Wandering Pen, a lunar deep dive into identity and self-expression in all their many forms.

Notes from the Wolf: A Survivor's Guide to Manipulators

They say a wolf in sheep’s clothing is someone dangerous pretending to be harmless. But here’s the truth you won’t hear in Sunday school or in any of the pop culture clichés littering the digital landscape these days. 

Some wolves wear sheep suits not to deceive, but to survive.

I’ve done it. (Maybe you have, too.) Not because I was a predator who was hiding bad intentions, but because I was surrounded by people who only tolerated softness, compliance, and silence. 

These were people who recoiled from the sharp glint of instinct. Those people didn’t want to love me as they should have. They wanted to train me, so maybe I'd be useful to them later.

So I learned to blend in, because that's what you do when you're still just a kid who's still wholly reliant on others for literally everything. But blending in never made me forget who I was. Here are a few things I learned during my anxiety-ridden formative years zipped inside the fleece.

1. Decent people don't associate healthy boundaries with cruelty

If you know someone who does this, you're likely already nodding along. They're the type who respond to even the most polite “no” like you just ran over their grandmother without even stopping to apologize. Then they cry, sulk, lash out, guilt-trip. That's emotional manipulation at its finest, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. 

People who pull this hot nonsense aren't doing it because they're truly hurt or confused. They’re carefully testing the waters to see just how much guilt it will take to get you to give them their way.

2. No amount of softness will change a narcissist

Narcissists respond to empathy the way sharks respond to blood in the water. They don't smell your kindness and see someone worth loving, admiring, or appreciating. They see a potential energy cache to be taken advantage of at will.

So they play the victim and plead for grace. Then they bite the very hand that offered it the second they think they can get away with it. I used to think I could "nice" my way to a better relationship with people like these and maybe teach them a better way to be.

Spoiler alert. They're simply not capable of it, but they'll happily take as much "nice" as you're willing to dish out before you finally see the light.