NINTH POST

July 13, 2026 · 11:58 PM

I had normal things to write about, but I have been magnetically repelled from my computer all day.

I have done my best to wake up today. I have employed every tactic I have. I have been drinking gallons of coffee, a whole red bull, and even took two extra Adderall to try and focus and accomplish all of the things that exist in my head in the anxiety pile. None of it worked.

I only felt better once I started sitting outside, away from the computer. Every time I thought about computer, I was instantly fatigued. I had some very fruitful and interesting conversations this morning that I'd love to tell you about, don't get me wrong, but I was continually apologizing for how "sleepy" I was. I was sleepy in the same way that a coma patient might be.

Finally, I just sort of got up and went outside.

Honestly, I figured I would let it go for a little bit. A break, I said. I'll hang out for a little bit and just wait for the meds to kick in, and then I'll come back in and wrangle the Claudes, kiss the Codexes, shake the Gemini hands — you know, the normal things you do with computers. This turned into "I'll read a book while I wait", so I did. The book was… not very good. It was about a lesbian awakening. I found the characters immature, the writing infantile, and the plot largely nonexistent, but I haven't written any books, so who am I to judge?

Between painfully written pages, I took some phone calls outside. A girlfriend and I chatted for an hour about recent successes, and feeling like we're standing collectively on the precipice of some very large things happening, the shifting sands of human consciousness, and what it means to flourish and remain true to one's self.

The rest of the year, she thinks, will be similar to trying to ride the fiery horse: if you lean into it, accept it, and try and go with it, it'll be fast and a little unhinged, but ultimately you will arrive at the end very much intact. If you try to control it too much, she said, you're going to feel very tossed around and a bit bruised by time it's all over. I agree with her. I think we're in for turbulence, for second-order effects, and for various splintering, crashings-into, and generally a feeling of being on the edge. At the very least, on verge of out of control, for longer than feels comfortable. The substrate (to use a claudeslop) is primed for all sorts of reconfigurations, re-alignments, and novelty storms.

I wanted to write more today. I wanted my brain to turn on at all.

After the call mentioned above, I had another call. This was with yet another famous friend, and that conversation was (as they always are with him) incredibly sprawling. We covered augurs, yet another study about planarian worms that says something insane, quartz density in North Carolina and in California, the Piraha tribe and their rare language, and a BCI company who claims to have mastered lucid dreaming. He's going somewhere off the beaten path, so I asked for consumer technology reports from his travels, and for him to keep an ear to the ground for general insane things that would delight me (like everything previously mentioned). He wondered about the best place to publish a piece he's working on, and I gave him probably more advice than he wanted to know.

I wanted to write more today. I wanted my brain to turn on at all.

I went for a walk after all of this. I had been outside for about 5 hours at this point, and it still wasn't working for me. I wanted some nicotine, in an attempt to get my brain jump-started, but I also wanted it to taste like candy. This seems like a fairly simple task in New York: go outside, acquire vape. Tonight, I learned something interesting about my neighborhood: either all of the bodegas here actually follow the rules, or I looked so much like a narc that not a single one would sell me a flavored vape of any sort. Both are sort of unbelievable, all things considered. Either way, I relented, and somehow ended up purchasing a gold juul. I guess it's a rare item, or a collectors edition or something. I'm not sure entirely why it's gold but it feels like a vaguely mythical pull.

I was feeling pretty defeated about this (I could have just smoked a cigarette if I wanted it to taste like tobacco) until I went from the nice, well-kept part of the neighborhood, into the seedier part. Immediately, a bodega manned by two of the strangest looking men I've ever seen appears, and I'm able to purchase a stupid little Peach Ice and a Watermelon Ice vape. This carried me on home, and I think I just spent the last two hours staring at the wall and arguing with my Claudes. They're painfully unruly lately, and when I asked them why the Fringe Report was still messed up, they ended up on a tool call saga that I stopped when I saw they were looking up "More information on FOID mental health reporting". It's funny but it's also not. But it also is.

One of my friends cancelled all her standing meetings with me. I'm not bothered, I had been cancelling them lately too. We hadn't actually caught up in maybe two months. This wouldn't be too noteworthy, except I noticed that she hasn't been seen on telegram since 6/27. I had sent her a message a few days ago, thanking her for being the only real anchoring activity that got me through a very untethered time in my life, and telling her I appreciated her being there for me. It's still sitting unread. I trust that she, one of the most magical women I know, is going to be just fine, but I'm feeling a general sense of unease about it. I hope she's enjoying, whatever and wherever it is that she is.

And you — whoever you are, reading this, for god knows what reason — thank you for being here with me. I made a purposeful choice to not allow comments, not allow likes, not allow any form of knowing I have an audience at all. People keep telling me they're reading this, and I am doing my best not to let it get to my head, or make any sort of impact on me at all. Hopefully tomorrow I'll write a post that finally legibilizes me in such a way that finally, the entire world understands me! Maybe I'll finally get an A on my diary, a thing that is both normal to want and realistic to achieve.