Dear Quiet

Dear Quiet,

You have made me face a lot of things, that I didn’t even want to acknowledge… stuck here in the silence of this s****y quarantine…

you have made me face the things I avoid with work, and play, and entertainment. I cannot go to work. I’m not allowed to play… and my entertainment resources have run out.

I don’t hate you… in fact, I enjoy you very much. Sometimes you are peaceful and remind me of things that I really love. Sometimes you give me space for my music or things that go best when nothing interrupts you.

This time. It made me realize something I don’t really like to think about…

I hate the way our world runs…

Money is a really stupid thing. It makes people fight. It makes people hurt one another. It allows the ones who have it, to lord over others who break their back for it in order to barely survive. The problem is that our alternatives to it are just as bad… there is no system in place that is done correctly. It is designed for imbalance…

It is because people are too easily corruptible… when people check their conscience for some reason, selfish survival in any form, seems to be the only way to prevail. It is designed that way. I know this isn’t the case for everything...but it always seems to dominate.

I enjoy being surprised when people go against what society has made normal… but I feel like it would be better if I was unpleasantly surprised by bad things more occasionally, rather than occasionally surprised by the good things…

Quiet…

I know that this isn’t your fault. My brain just needed something to do… you see, even though it is with you… it gets bored and still likes to find solutions (It is a problem solver after all). Without its own problems, it just happens to explore larger problems on a grander scale… and it forgets that it is not responsible for everyone’s problems… I’m not sure why it thinks it needs to take care of everyone… It can be silly like that sometimes. I try to distract it as best as I can, but it doesn’t know how to enjoy you like I want it to… It can be rather frustrating… especially when I want to sleep, or I have other things that I need to do… A.D.H.D. and brain damage, never helped it any.

When I try to write, it takes me to sad places, that I don’t really want to go. It’s not it’s fault. I’ve had a lot of trauma in my life. They are things that I can’t change… I’m not sure why, but it thinks that if it can examine them, it can come up with better solutions. It forgets that those problems are gone. It thinks that if it solves them, then I will have a better future. So it obsesses over past fears, hoping that I can be better at handling those things in the future… It sometimes forgets that despite my efforts to be objective, it can start to worry about little things that didn’t really matter. It made them matter even if they were just little things, in a bigger picture.

But quiet… I am frustrated…

I feel like the things that control our world, are too arbitrary… it doesn’t give them a good enough foundation… and I think this is why our world has become so flimsy. We have shorter attention spans… we get so bored so easily. We genuinely don’t even know how to interact with other people honestly. We place judgments before we even take the time to learn anything. We lack trust, because we lack honesty. Our world prefers filters, because it’s scared to look at honesty. It thinks it might be ugly, or hurt, or be something uncomfortable…

The world we have built up just needs a stronger foundation because the truth weighs more.

Things that seemed solid, can disappear so quickly now. Security isn’t so secure anymore. There is no such thing as a “sure thing” … I know you know this… but Youtube is a good example.

People who became “Youtube famous” didn’t have some magic plan. They didn’t understand the system. They just wanted to create based on the things they love. When it came to their success, they were mostly lucky. They showed up at the right place and the right time. They also had the good fortune to be considered like-able on a larger scale. Or dislike-able enough to continue watching the train wreck… (This before the age of trigger-happy snowflakes)

However, in the past algorithms were designed in a way, that even bad attention counted as attention. A negative comment was just as good as a positive one, because the system didn’t register good and bad. It was just thinking attention meant attention. It didn’t take money long to dig its teeth in and now the interface has changed completely. It became another machine… Freedom of speech was lost again, as it became an advertising corporate machine… It is sad, because now creators suffer.

I get it. the system was abused by some pretty awful things. I just don’t understand why the good stuff had to suffer to punish the bad. It just seemed like an expedient and short-sighted solution to a larger problem.

Quiet… this is just one of many examples and I know I’m overthinking because I have too much time on my hands right now… but it seems like creators always seem to suffer the most in these situations…

This isn’t to mention the people who try to exploit the market, becoming “content pushing monsters” that are less about thought and more about click-bait.

Why wouldn’t they. If they have the time, money and resources. They could take the whole world for a ride, and no one would even know it. They only stand to gain in a system like that! Which is why it’s really broken.

It makes me sad, because what used to be about passion and real feeling. Creating in a place of pure joy… it has just become another thing that is fake… this makes something that should be beautiful become inherently empty. That isn’t fair to the ones that are real. The ones who know what those things actually mean, and work hard to become a part of it.

It just doesn’t make sense to me. I just don’t understand why it’s like that, and wish there was a good way to change it.

Bad people get away with hurting good people. Stupid people have power over smarter people, because it is how a system was designed. On top of it, everything else seems to be at the mercy of things we can’t control…

How is that fair?!… what we should be able to control is being controlled by others, despite our efforts for it to not be that way… and what we can’t control, we are helpless to…

I need to stop... I know injustice is not my problem to solve… and I know some day people will stop sleeping… I just want to do more, and I have no idea how… So, I have to learn to just be, and be ok with myself, just as I am. Not worry about this stuff… but it still affects me… It’s a tough place to be and overcome.

I am sorry that I blame you for this time with myself that frustrates me. It’s not your fault that my brain went there. It’s not your fault that the world is impossible to understand or navigate.

I do need to thank you, for helping me learn something new about myself, because you know I never would have reached that place without you.

I hope that you can teach me a few more things. If nothing else, we can learn to enjoy each other’s company more.

I want this to be less about rebellion… I need you to know that you are not inherently bad. I am still young, and my childish ways of thinking are still having a hard time adjusting. Just be patient with me. I will get there.

Thank you. I’ll see you again soon.

With Love,

Mischka