Existential

We all know how it feels to be existential.

We all know how it feels to be existential. It arrives in the body as a gnawing feeling. Something is being constructed. Or maybe something is being torn down. Perhaps there is dread. Perhaps what lives beneath that dread is unacknowledged desire.

A desire that is met by a wall, a thirty foot drop, a gap between where you are and where you want to be. And that gap, with its undefined edges and its dark, unseeable slope, is existential. There is death living down there, even if the only foreseeable death is your sense of security. To be existential is to see all the risks and not quite know how to overcome those risks.

How then do we build bridges?

Today I learned that I got laid off. And I guess I didn’t have enough time to build a bridge. But in these past two years, I’ve learned that it is really really hard to forsake a sense of security. It’s a privilege to claim such a state. And perhaps I was conflating my reluctant gratefulness with the fear that it would all go away someday. Perhaps I am only here because I didn’t expect to be here.

At the turn of the new year, I spent some time reflecting on the disillusionment that characterized my 2022. It was there in my day to day, and it was there in my writing. There were so many things I wanted to do. But every time I thought about breaching the boundary between imagination and reality, I became consumed with the question of capability. And I know too well of the way the body constricts when the mind thinks about lack.

I was under the impression that the cure for disillusionment is naivete. To be a little more ignorant of the ways you can dilute yourself of meaning. Maybe that works, but to me, it feels like returning to an innocence that no longer exists. When the fire is out, there is a boundary that must be crossed. To be existential is to be at the edge of something else.

Bridges are not graceful structures. They are often unwieldy and creaky and haphazard. And so are we. We do ourselves no services by standing in place or resisting a push when we need one. And all you need then is to keep your momentum.

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If you’ve also been affected by the insanity of tech layoffs, let’s talk! Let’s be friends. Here are some things I’m thinking of making if you want to collab:
- a magazine of sorts to commune informal but poignant thoughts on music and musicians without regards to timeliness
- some sort of zine on existentialism beyond the individual experience
- a podcast that’s really just conversations i guess
Here are some things I’m taking time to learn about. Please reach out or comment if you have resources or experience to share!
- fiction writing and how to write long form without an outline
- the entertainment industry and primarily how one would even enter a writer’s room
- publications and what it’s like being an editor
- tech nonprofits and whether they’re better or worse than traditional nonprofits

If you prefer the quiet of the internet, take a look at this little website I made, the first in a long while, with all sorts of fun layoff related resources and commiseration. You may also consider subscribing for other unemployed adventures. For one, I’m thinking of going to Taiwan….