I stay up late typing because I want the page to help me remember what really matters. It’s easier at night, the day’s pressure having lifted. I most definitely have the hardest time with anxiety (and its capacity to neutralize meaningful emotion) during the day. Darkness whittles the universe down to the small amber radius illuminated by my desk lamp. 

A gnat lands on the glowing white screen. It’s so small that it’s translucent, just an outline of little wings against an LCD backdrop. If I were to flick it away, I’d surely kill it, dirtying my screen and feeling a flicker of guilt. Guilt, I suppose, because the gnat is just gravitating towards a sensation that matters to it. Warmth, light. The gnat flies around but continuously returns to the screen. 

How big are my problems, really? How valid is my anxiety? Am I not just sitting at a desk and gravitating towards a sensation that matters to me? Am I not just moving towards warmth, light?

Man, I’d love to know what it looks like, what forms of intelligence embody it, that parallel universe in which all I’m doing is landing on someone’s screen.