There’s a specific moment, usually near the end of a good hour — hands in dishwater, or halfway up a hill, or three bites into something you cooked slowly for once — when a thought arrives before the pleasure does:
For me, the impulse to produce something of worth to others, an impulse that is definitely exhausting and despiriting, is rooted more in a sense that I haven't yet found a way to make my life meaningful (measured by contribution to the "greater good", not by likes, subscribes, salary). Everything written here rings true for what I see around me, everywhere, and I also think a society centered around technology and consumerism can still produce a spiritual/existential crisis in those of us who don't post to social media or judge their output by its financial value.
It's the modem dilemm. I rest, then I feel inspired and want to create. But when does creating stop feeding good and inspired and become something that traps you into a cycle of overwork.
"The founder forgot they were also the customer" is the line that lands hardest. You end up managing your own life instead of living it, and the two start to feel identical until something forces you to notice they aren't.
There's something worth noticing about this particular piece of writing.
It describes, with precision and genuine feeling, the moment when experience converts itself into content before it has finished being experience. The walk that becomes a caption. The thought that arrives before the pleasure does.
And then it was written. Carefully. Revised, probably. Published on a Wednesday.
Which means somewhere — hands in dishwater, or halfway up a hill — the thought arrived: *this would make a good post.*
And it did. That's not a criticism. It's the thing the essay is actually about, demonstrated from the inside, in real time, without quite saying so. The founder forgot they were also the customer, the essay says. But the essay exists because the founder remembered just long enough to make something.
That's the part worth sitting with. Not that the instinct to convert is the wound. But that it's also, sometimes, the only way the thing gets said at all. Montaigne had his internal audience. So did whoever first told a story around a fire and noticed, mid-telling, that the good part was coming.
The unobserved afternoon may be less the destination than the essay suggests. The real question might be whether, after the caption is written and the post goes out, there is still a self left who goes back to finish the walk.
Most of the time, quietly, there is.
That part doesn't get written about. Which may be why it survives.
Interesting...and so too is the way you expressed your comment in the style the writer uses. Regarding the substance of your comment, yes, without that tendency to think of an audience for our experience, or to objectify experiences for consumption or examination, a lot of creative outputs wouldn't happen. And this isn't a new instict.
But it seems so much more prevalent due to modern tech and capitalism and they ways they infiltrate our personal lives.
As our writer said, which rang so clearly and sadly true to me: "Somewhere in the last decade, the audience moved inside the head and stayed there, uninvited and permanent."
For me, the impulse to produce something of worth to others, an impulse that is definitely exhausting and despiriting, is rooted more in a sense that I haven't yet found a way to make my life meaningful (measured by contribution to the "greater good", not by likes, subscribes, salary). Everything written here rings true for what I see around me, everywhere, and I also think a society centered around technology and consumerism can still produce a spiritual/existential crisis in those of us who don't post to social media or judge their output by its financial value.
It's the modem dilemm. I rest, then I feel inspired and want to create. But when does creating stop feeding good and inspired and become something that traps you into a cycle of overwork.
"The founder forgot they were also the customer" is the line that lands hardest. You end up managing your own life instead of living it, and the two start to feel identical until something forces you to notice they aren't.
There's something worth noticing about this particular piece of writing.
It describes, with precision and genuine feeling, the moment when experience converts itself into content before it has finished being experience. The walk that becomes a caption. The thought that arrives before the pleasure does.
And then it was written. Carefully. Revised, probably. Published on a Wednesday.
Which means somewhere — hands in dishwater, or halfway up a hill — the thought arrived: *this would make a good post.*
And it did. That's not a criticism. It's the thing the essay is actually about, demonstrated from the inside, in real time, without quite saying so. The founder forgot they were also the customer, the essay says. But the essay exists because the founder remembered just long enough to make something.
That's the part worth sitting with. Not that the instinct to convert is the wound. But that it's also, sometimes, the only way the thing gets said at all. Montaigne had his internal audience. So did whoever first told a story around a fire and noticed, mid-telling, that the good part was coming.
The unobserved afternoon may be less the destination than the essay suggests. The real question might be whether, after the caption is written and the post goes out, there is still a self left who goes back to finish the walk.
Most of the time, quietly, there is.
That part doesn't get written about. Which may be why it survives.
Interesting...and so too is the way you expressed your comment in the style the writer uses. Regarding the substance of your comment, yes, without that tendency to think of an audience for our experience, or to objectify experiences for consumption or examination, a lot of creative outputs wouldn't happen. And this isn't a new instict.
But it seems so much more prevalent due to modern tech and capitalism and they ways they infiltrate our personal lives.
As our writer said, which rang so clearly and sadly true to me: "Somewhere in the last decade, the audience moved inside the head and stayed there, uninvited and permanent."