Two months of war in Ukraine made it impossible for me to write. In the time when, it seems, it’s only natural to try and capture everything you feel, i was paralyzed by the absurdity and the hell of war, and unable to put anything down on paper. Maybe the shock is wearing off. I’ll write bit by bit, unimportant things, as the important ones keep being stuck in my throat, and the pain and the tears and the analysis of it all — just impossible.

I’m in a hurry all the time. I’m doing one thing, and thinking about the next, almost always counting time, how much I have left till the next activity. Even as I’m relaxing with a book, or a cup of tea, or both, I think, 15 more minutes, or 40 more minutes — and I already feel sorry, as if I’m in that moment ahead, where I have to stop and do something else, something that is a must and not a nice-thing-for-myself. This probably takes away half of my relaxing experience, but that is all I know. All I’ve ever known, really. “I have to” dominates my life emotionally, even though mentally I know that I’m a lucky one with a lot of “I get to.”

How do I switch? Why am I like this?

There are sounds that make you comfortable. Here are some of mine.

• A muted conversation of parents in another room as you’re falling asleep, or waking up from a nap. Known from childhood, but also as you visit them, you get into this special comfort zone of yours.
• Almost anything by Radiohead playing in the background.
• Sound of a coffee shop — chatter, coffee machines, music, clatter of cups.

(To be continued as I think of more things like this.)

I’m not adding nature sounds, they probably soothe everyone, but I rarely wake up to the sound of birds in the woods or a mountain creek. Okay, rain happens, and birds tweeting outside the window too, but they are too common to mention.

Overnight trains, when you wake up to the clickety clack sound of the train wheels on the rails — this can be soothing, too, but often there’s more excitement and expectation of what’s waiting for you where you’re going. Visiting someone, or coming home.

There is an old discussion on what sounds and smells people find comforting. Apart from the usual suspects like rain and ocean, there are a lot of mentions of food cooking. It’s usually me cooking — and I find the activity very comforting, but I wouldn’t single out the sound of it, as it is part of the process.

As easy as it is go get annoyed by sounds, it’s good to pay attention to what you find pleasant.

A lot of things, once they become “life hacks” or “routines,” create a reflex-aversion in me. Gratitude, for example, became “a thing” — and immediately started shouting fake and pretentious. What’s wrong with gratitude in itself? Nothing! Amazing if you can feel it. But “cultivating gratitude” looks forced. There were things that haven’t been mainstream, like meditation. Maybe it was mainstream, but I found my own way to it, in a society that knew nothing about it, all on my own, when I was fourteen. I uncovered zen, and appropriated it, started breathing and living it, learning to weave it inside my all-too-western lifestyle. Now, meditation propaganda is everywhere, not as a way to experience the world, but more like a pill to achieve better results. Nootropes for the soul. Yuck

I realize that’s nothing but the ego speaking. Like someone who finds pleasure in listening to obscure music — and as soon as something becomes mainstream, they stop asking themselves if they like the music itself, it’s time to switch to something else. Using others as a reference point — the most common of habits.

The fight of niche vs mainstream is pointless, and it’s becoming less and less important. Subcultures are so numerous that it’s already hard to tell what is a chunk of mainstream and what isn’t, and whether something “niche” is necessarily cool.

Looking at what makes you click is the only measure. What you like.

I used to scoff at Christmas and New Year’s. First, it’s a marketing event. Second, it’s all for one night, maybe two, when people eat and drink (often too much) and open presents. Meh. Today, I have to admit, I like it. The festive season. The lights. Christmas markets, all of it.

Reasons? I have plenty.

One. I stopped thinking about it as one night, and experience it as a season. Two, Europe, where cities and homes actually look festive. Three, family with a small child. For children, it’s joy and surprises. Next, I really like the idea of making the cold and gloomy season less gloomy. We need celebrations in the cold and dark times. This time, homes become more important. I really enjoy baking cookies with the kid. I look forward to making a festive dinner. Hell, I even bought a sequin dress, knowing all too well that I’m probably going to wear it once or twice. But I’ve never had one before, and I really, really want a celebration. Joy and decorations and candlelight and smell of baking and delicious food and mixing some music and some drinks in the confinement of my home.

Stereotypical? Stale? So what? I’ll take it.

Knowing what makes you click and pursuing it actively, making sure you give it enough time and attention, makes a lot of difference in life.

What makes me click? The literal clicking of keyboard when I’m writing a text. Looking at the blank screen with a sizable chunk of time ahead of me devoted to nothing but this — clicking of the keyboard under my fingers, in an attempt to dig deeper inside me, trying to see something that I haven’t seen before.

Somehow, everything I write is an exploration, an attempt to find a way towards a spot that was hidden from me before, to make something better, to get something right. This is it — again, after sorting through some versions, going through motions, I found what I was looking for, a phrase that matches. “To get something right.” This is what I’m looking for, completely aware that “right” and “wrong” are just notions, that the duality is an illusion, that words overall don’t matter. Years of Zen Buddhism practice — I should know better. Maybe I do, but I also feel the tingling in the tips of my fingers. Holding a pen is one thing. Typing on the keyboard is another, but they are closely related. They are blood relatives, united by my blood, words that inherit the rhythm of my pulse. They are part of my DNA, external to me, left as a sign, as if nature (I wanted to write “as a signature” here, but even the typos, they are nothing but footprints of my neural activity). What I write right now hardly makes any sense. For this simple reason, can we call it poetry?

I was trying to put on symbolical paper the emotions that arise in me when I am writing. This is what happens to my leisurely mind, it just spits out sentence after sentence, to my complete ignorance of what I wanted to say, and if I even wanted to say anything at all. After all, so many times I can sit down to write with no purpose other than exploring what it is that’s going to appear on page when my mind is aimless.

I dreamt of becoming a writer. With time, I thought, that’s not why I write, and it’s not how I write. I write for the inside of me. I’m not sure I got what it takes to write a book, as entertainment. Professional one, non-fiction, maybe, a humble one. But that’s not really what I’m interested in, either. I write for the sake of these surprises that happen when I sit down to write. Graphomanic much? Possibly. I don’t think I even qualify. There should be way more kilometers of text than what I produce.

Why does anyone write?

I’m reading a graphic novel, or an illustrated essay, River of Ink, by Étienne Appert. It focusses on a similar question, why does anyone draw? A shadow drawn on a wall by a woman, to keep a trace of her man while he’s away. Writing can be similar — only it’s traces of yourself that you keep on the page. There’s no solid, unchangeable I. There’s only different kinds of I that flow from one point in time to the next. Sitting down and writing is a way to reveal one of them, a momentary glimpse of flowing nature of self. Not just to uncover it to the outside world, but also to be able to see it by yourself — and this is the moment where I’m completely losing the difference between outside and inside. Where does “I see myself for what I am right here, right now” ends and “I show myself-here-and-now to the others” begin? There may be no others. If a piece of writing is kept private, who is the “inside” and where is the “audience”? If the writing gets online, what happens if no one reads it? What changes if someone reads it? Does the transformation happen when the first reader appears? And what does “appears” mean here? The author might not know. What changes — where? And here, my friends, is where zen shows how the mind and logic fail us, every day. Books have been written. There’s nothing for this writer to write. There’s no reason for writing. Or drawing. The only thing that exists is the connection between fingers and words appearing on the page or on the screen. It is really all there is. And the next moment won’t be like this one.

What i understood. Every day, there is a choice. To uncover something within me. For some people, it’s their writing. For others, it’s their art. Their work. Growing vegetables. Building things. Creating something. Making music. Anything that happens not by the need to make money, “make a living” (who says that!) — but by the tingling and the connection, the pull to do something that feels right. Every day, there’s a chance to get something right. If you don’t use it today, you will use it tomorrow, but it’s already going to be a different thing, a different moment, a different string of thought.

If I chose now to read a book instead of opening a blank screen, I wouldn’t have thought these thoughts, today or tomorrow, or any other day. On a different day, I’d write something else. The truth is, I never know what I’d write, that’s probably why I will never write a book. I write something — anything — curious where the new page will take me. Books, they grow from roots, to stems, to branches and leaves, like trees. From outlines to publishing house and page turning. My writing doesn’t have a root. It has a momentary gush of wind, that’s all there is. It’s empty, it’s shallow, and there are hardly any pearls to be found. It is just an impulse, with no vector, with no goal. I’m doing it all wrong, this is not a business, this is not “making a living”, this is breathing. No one breathes for money. This is additional oxygen to my mind, to my essence. This is what nourishes me.

My writing is why I’ll probably never write a book, or start a business. Two things that, when I was younger, I was a little obsessed with, thinking that it’s what my future holds, otherwise — failure. My future held something different for me — a different kind of happiness, another source of truth. My writing is still with me, through all these years, and for the years to come. The illusion held in those ambitions is simple — the feeling of importance. I could say there are better dreams to follow. But dreams are only dreams — I don’t even know if I have them now. Maybe I call them different names. What I know is there’s happiness, there’s quiet joy that I never knew existed before. Having an empty space and a completely free and worry-less time is part of it.