Rebirth.

How many books are there in the world?

The answer is surprisingly difficult to pin down. One widely cited estimate put the number of unique books in existence at just shy of 130 million.

How many humans have ever existed?

Approximately 100 billion.

The dead outnumber the living by an absurd margin. Which means, statistically speaking, there are a lot of ghosts, guys.

For tens of thousands of years, humans have been telling one another stories. Before books, before printing presses, before the internet, there were voices around fires passing knowledge from one person to another.

And so much of it is gone.

Stories disappeared through famine, war, genocide, disease, migration, and simply the passage of time. Entire lives were lived, lessons were learned, jokes were told, and thoughts were thought that we will never know existed.

Today, we have access to more information than any generation before us. We can look into the depths of the ocean. We can see galaxies billions of light-years away. We can communicate with someone on the other side of the planet in seconds.

We are living in a world that would have been incomprehensible to most of the people who came before us.

And yet...

Nothing is new.

I believe the dead, as they exist outside the boundaries of mortal time, are the keepers of everything that has ever been known—and perhaps everything that ever will be.

Which raises a question:

So why write a blog?

Surely, anything I say has already been said somewhere else.

Someone has already written about depression. Someone has already written about trauma. Someone has already complained about society. Someone has already given terrible relationship advice on the internet.

Whatever profound realization I've just had has probably been scribbled onto a piece of papyrus by some woman who lived 2,000 years ago.

And that's okay.

Because while the thought isn't new, the person thinking it is.

You're here right now.

I'm here right now.

How unlikely is it that you would stumble upon this particular collection of thoughts, stories, opinions, and experiences written by this particular person during this particular moment in history?

The world is enormous. There are billions of people, millions of books, and more information than any human being could possibly consume in a lifetime.

And somehow, you found this.

I think that's pretty cool.

It is a privilege to share knowledge.

It is also a privilege to have nearly unlimited access to it.

But sometimes I find that access terrifying.

There are still so many things we don't know.

There are boundaries we're unlikely to cross within our individual lifetimes. There are mysteries surrounding the universe, consciousness, death, deep oceans, distant worlds, cryptids, aliens, demons, angels, Area 51, the Illuminati, and whatever the hell else is hiding in the dark.

Maybe some of these things are nonsense.

Maybe some aren't.

Maybe the dead know.

Maybe they don't.

I certainly don't.

And that's part of the fun.

So here we are.

You found this blog.

In short, I talk about mental illness, generational trauma, hot takes, polarized opinions, things I find interesting, advice I wish I had received sooner, and the things I've learned from simply being alive.

I don't expect any of it to be entirely original.

How could it be?

But even if every thought I've ever had has been thought before, there has only ever been one me thinking it in exactly this way.

There is only one you, too.

The same elements that make up my body have existed in stars, oceans, rocks, plants, animals, and countless other people. Matter is recycled endlessly through the universe.

And yet, somehow, this particular arrangement of stardust became me.

And that matters.

One day, I will die.

So will you.

Eventually, neither of us will be here to explain what we learned.

I don't want everything I've learned to die with me.

Maybe something I write will make someone feel less alone.

Maybe it will make someone angry.

Maybe someone will read something here and think, Holy shit, I thought I was the only person who felt that way.

Maybe someone will disagree with me so strongly that they write their own response.

Good.

That's conversation.

That's connection.

That's what humans have been doing for thousands of years.

I don't personally believe that life begins at conception. To me, life begins when you're Earthside, with air in your lungs and light in your eyes.

That's when you're thrown into mortal time.

From that moment onward, you have a finite amount of it.

You are given a body, a mind, a collection of circumstances you didn't choose, and some degree of free will with which to navigate them.

You learn.

You adapt.

You fuck up.

You survive.

You love people.

You lose people.

You become someone you didn't expect to become.

Everyone reacts to life differently. Sometimes you've encountered something before and know exactly what to do. Sometimes you're thrown into completely unfamiliar territory and have to figure it out while falling headfirst into the unknown.

But even then, you're rarely as alone as you think.

Your exact experience may be unique, but the feelings underneath it probably aren't.

Someone has been heartbroken before.

Someone has been afraid before.

Someone has hated themselves before.

Someone has survived something they were convinced would destroy them.

Someone has sat awake at three in the morning wondering what the hell they're doing with their life.

Someone has been exactly where you are.

Maybe they lived 2,000 years ago.

Maybe they're alive right now.

Maybe they're reading this.

That's the strange paradox of being human:

Our experiences are universal, but our existence is unique.

We've all experienced grief, but nobody has experienced your grief.

We've all experienced love, but nobody has loved exactly the people you've loved, in exactly the way you've loved them.

We've all been afraid, but nobody has been afraid inside your particular body, with your particular memories, your particular history, and your particular collection of scars.

The story isn't new.

You are.

And I think that's enough reason to tell it.

A lot of this probably sounds like gobbledygook.

(I had to look up how to spell that. 😅)

Maybe it is.

I'm only human.

These are just thoughts flowing through my fingers onto an electronic screen.

It's binary code traveling through machines, translated into words, carried through radio waves and fiber-optic cables, somehow arriving in front of your eyeballs.

And you're reading it.

That's fucking incredible.

So thank you for being here.

Thank you for letting me share a little piece of my consciousness with you.

I hope you learn something.

I hope you disagree with something.

I hope you laugh at something.

I hope something makes you think.

Most of all, I hope that somewhere along the way, you feel a little less alone.

One day, I'll be part of the dead too.

Maybe my words will disappear.

Maybe they'll sit on some forgotten server until the internet itself becomes ancient history.

Maybe someone will find them long after I'm gone.

I don't know.

But while I'm here, I might as well leave something behind.

From my stardust to yours.