Writer's Diary

8/16/24

It feels good to be back in the city—and to have gotten out. I didn't realize how much mental junk I'd built up, how much I'd gotten trapped into certain thought patterns, and how much that was fundamentally affecting my sense of self… which became someone who couldn't leave, who couldn't stop working, couldn't stop checking emails, checking in, managing.

And when that happens, aside from feeling your own spiritual cartilage wear down, you lose the ability to trust that other people can fill in for you. You become a kind of solipsist who imagines that the world only exists because you exist—an idealist who thinks objects will disappear if you're not looking, that people and projects will disappear if you aren’t telling them where to go and how to be.

That's what staying in New York, or on the East Coast, for several years in a row will get you—a phobia about looking away and walking away, taking a vacation, releasing control.