Author: Aidan Badinger

I build up my expectations for what I’m supposed to write; what’s supposed to flow out of me naturally and with unmatched novelty. But guess what. I get stuck. It’s not my lack of ideas, but the unwillingness to devote my entire attention to them. It’s not even unwillingness, it’s the unconscious telling me that I don’t deserve to express myself any fucking way that I want.

That is one of the most harmful things I could possibly do to myself. And what’s worse? I do it all the time and pretend not to care.

I have talent. So what? Why do I let that stop me? Will I embarrass anyone who has less talent than myself? I might inspire them to do better and act in a way conducive to building their own self esteem while I gain a sense of fulfillment.

Wow, what a crime that would be! Displaying my talent and knack for uncovering emotion could cripple the egotistical, and wouldn’t that be a shame?

Of course there are better practitioners than myself. But they didn’t reach that level of their craft by undermining their own efforts at every turn.

Frankly, I’m amazed that I haven’t completely sworn off this whole thing called writing.

But you know what? It’s not my decision and it never has been.

Essayification is a silly made-up word, but it represents something silly and real. And what might that be, you ponder? That’s it! You ponder! That’s what an essay makes you do (in theory)! Ponder about what, you ask? Oh boy, there’s no end to that list. The subject of the essay you’re reading might be a good start. But after that, you’re off to the races with your own inferences and insights. Every person takes away a different message from a piece of writing, so it’s futile to force them to conform to an ideal. An essay is made to guide thought through the reader’s own custom pathway, snaking and winding and forking and dipping and hopping and floating and shaking and whipping and sneering and laughing and torturing and flagellating and… wow, that got interesting.

Your subconscious takes you wherever it wants to go, and you are constantly subjected to its whims, whether you like it or not. There is no taking control over the thing that connects us to the rest of the cosmos; it’s been there before you even thought about getting here, and it’ll outlast you by a good long while. What is that thing? You’re asking me? That’s a silly question. Everybody has a different answer for it! That explanation can be considered a copout, but I dare you to go up to 50 people on the street and ask them (in your own words) what that thing is. If you ask them a specific enough question (for instance: “What do you call that thing that you can’t quite explain? You know, the one that you just feel in your guts to be there. It was there before you were born, and it’ll be there when you die.), you’ll either get an earnest answer that seeks innate Truth, or you’ll just get shrugged off (sometimes violently).

These are things with which we grapple for every waking moment of our existence, whether we know it or not (Don’t delude yourself!). The things we acquire are simply methods for trying to achieve a few of the infinite facets of that indescribable thing. Some people think that they can just get so many objects that they’ll have a good enough idea of what that indescribable thing is. That’s a foolish notion. For each object they possess there are infinite other objects that will be completely unobtainable. That doesn’t feel too good when you think about it.