jeg bærer overstimuleringen som et dyr under huden

enten spriker jeg med tennene eller faller stille bak øynene som om noen skrudde ned lyset i meg

og alltid den samme feilen:

jeg blir værende i rom som ikke tåler meg til jeg mister meg selv i forsøket på å virke ufarlig

og jeg sier unnskyld til mennesker jeg ikke engang husker hvorfor jeg lot røre meg

etterpå kommer varmen som flauhet gjør: en stille beskjed om at jeg solgte integriteten min for billig igjen

så jeg går hjem og lukker døren til alle som tror at min høflighet var for deres skyld

den var bare et symptom på at jeg hadde vært for lenge blant fremmede.

“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

—Unknown

Five ⟺ Seven

Five loses hope distancing themselves from intrusions. With a worn down buffer, empty reserves, and a sense of scarcity that has progressed to starvation, they are forced to open up, indicating the transition from Rejection to Frustration. Afflicted by a profound state of depletion, they have nothing to lose by getting out in the open and filling up less discriminatingly at Seven.

At Five you gave up focusing on the source of intrusion and start focusing on what to be affected by instead and how to achieve this. Losing hope that diving into the current realities of a situation will be constructive, they start recreating and asserting their own reality irrespective of what already has been created. That there is something to fear or avoid in immediate surroundings may be so taken for granted that Sevens can be downright reckless in the face of negative consequences and risks.

Seven is a Five who has already been invaded. Already robbed, needs become more immediate. In the extremes of this state we can only do what is intrinsically motivating to ourselves, or we run out of fuel. Having lost their foundation at Five, Seven starts from scratch each moment. Their safe shell no longer exists, whether that be physically in the form of armor or psychologically in the form of detachment.

When defenses are overwhelmed, they give them up and stop investing in them. The starting point for Seven is having some pest to fend off, but having to do so indirectly; circumventing, avoiding, evading, or outmaneuvring it. Common pests include constraints, interruptions, insults, attacks, indications of being wrong, of having built something on shaky ground, and obstacles to what you want. We may for example hold beliefs that are incompatible to each other, enlivening whichever suits us in the situation we are in. Or we avoid facing an argument someone made, tricking ourselves we have addressed it when we are merely imagining that doing so is possible.

While postponing a confrontation can give us the chance to attain the resource or solution that were missing in the moment, this creates debts which have Sevens continually trading their energy to pay off the present moment. This in turn can make resting feel like standing in place while the ground falters underneath your feet, and they try instead to solve every deficit by finding some source of replenishment. Seven finds themselves on an endless search when as they branch out to find what solves their current debts, they encounter more and more drains and challenges which in turn create new needs, and on it goes.

Losing hope also of your capacity to hold onto resources, storage of possessions feel uncertain. This can explain an irrational spending habit, where the ego unconsciously responds to a situation where spending beyond one’s means would be fully reasonable. Of course there are just as many situations where spending is the better choice. Spending money is just an exchange of a general resource for a specific one. 

Without a controlled environment where you can limit what can impact you, Five to Seven can’t rely on preparing for what will be required in the future. They cannot expect what challenges tomorrow brings, as conditions may change at any moment. Under these circumstances, making long term choices is not as rational. You do not have the luxury of long term planning when the demands of existence can’t be predicted beforehand. At Seven you have the constant task of reinvesting your valuables or currencies, making sure they suit the situation at hand, making sure of their relevancy. The skills you honed for your given set of conditions at Five may be useless in a different setting. Your chosen currency may turn illegitimate. Commitment may be avoided as it means being vulnerable to future unforeseen demands.

Seven has more acute and unpredictable challenges, and therefore a more varied spectrum of interests compared to Five. They prioritise mobility and adaptability over storage and amassing, though may locate and hunt down a wide variety of sources of fuel or charge that may never be revisited, as it didn’t end up being the panacea hoped for. Yet, when you can’t carry a large pouch, you need constant refill, and become hyper-attuned to shiny treasures and other fascinations. As the highest Frustration type, Seven has a belief in the possibility of attaining them, and get bursts of energy to go after them.

Sevens have to learn to quickly navigate unknown territory, and therefore develop more general and translatable talents like improvisation and making quick approximations. They begin to seek ways to generate what they need as they go, investing what they have into the next target of attention instead of holding it, and become dependent on getting something out of every moment and on their productions yielding frequent and sufficient returns on investment. They continually scan their surroundings, seeing its positive potential and engaging with the environment in exploring, probing ways that hopefully generate some unexpected beneficial result.

The fun-seeking of Seven is usually seen as a luxury need, when what is fun and interesting to us is a flaming sign of what is relevant to the challenges we perceive we have. Interest springs both from needs and from what supports the desired development for one’s life. It is an excellent indicator of what is genuinely beneficial for you, as long as it stems from true interest and not avoidance of something else. Being in a prolonged thrill-seeking state indicates some chronic impoverishment, where it may be all you can do to be survive until you can find the missing piece to a chronic problem. Our descent into habitual coping begin if we forget the original problem and stop registering when improvement can be made to it. A gluttonous tendency is often a combination of the presence of some resource and the absence of another, such as a spoiled child who feeds the hole of lacking parental presence with toys and candy and is dependent on their overconsumption to compensate.

One way to view Wisdom, the virtue assigned to Seven by Claudio Naranjo, is knowing what is relevant in a given situation, such as how and when to use information or other resources, knowing what’s needed, and seeing the place of something relative to the full picture. A classic example of lack of wisdom is when a usually very knowledgeable type of person insists on their correctness after delivering a fact which is not the centrally relevant truth of the situation, however true it may be in isolation. This person does not see the whole picture but focuses on the veracity of their piece in itself, while the person on the receiving end often can’t explain why the know-it-all is wrong even if they are right.

The act of clarifying, successfully selecting what is relevant and what is to be discarded, is another integration to Five. Sharpening the signal; what you can make sense of, and neutralising noise; what you can’t. There is no noise, however, only too much complexity for our minds to make sense of, which would lead to mental overwhelm without appropriate noise reduction or holistic thinking to scale.

Selecting a vantage point, a central perspective, with which to see the world from when finding one you sufficiently believe in, is yet another. You choose a permanent ground when you found one solid enough to convince you of its incomparable payoff or long-term stability, such as when a belief, a relationship, a home, or a challenge continues to yield fruits and you can sustain its cost and inherent constraints. Sevens can struggle with the lack of a sense of spending time, energy or other resources on the right activity, wondering whether what they are doing is the best use of their time and focus, wanting to follow many trails at once. Choosing and choosing out of one such trail, like of a train of thought, demonstrates how integration and disintegration continually happens at a micro level.

Sevens are distractible by new stimuli because investment has to be redetermined with any change in overview. By finding a worthwhile focus they integrate, and mental direction is more unified and stable at Five. You can choose to cut off alternatives and narrow down your reality when you believe an experience will cover its costs, that the present moment supplies you enough to deliver you to the future. Or better yet, that it is the optimal way to spend your time.

When for any reason you lose faith in how you invest your attention, Five zooms out, going from focus to overview and moving attention quickly between several foci, scanning their mental space or physical surroundings at Seven. They gain accuracy at the expense of precision, going from deep understanding and high resolution of one area of focus to quickly comparing and contrasting different appearances and their dynamic interplay. Appearance means surface level depth, or as far as you can quickly grasp something without getting stuck at a plateau that requires greater effort and investment to break past.

A Merry Little Ex-Mas, Netflix 2025

3.5/5 Hot Chocolates

So begins Larry's 100 Holiday Movie Season! My family and I have been studying the genre for a decade, and for the past five years, I have been reviewing them on my Instagram. I am now applying the format of the Drable/100 Word review and cataloging them here. But don't worry, Instagram Fam, I will still post them there to preserve this cherished tradition.

Notable Stars: Alicia Silverstone, Jameela Jamil, and Melissa Joan Hart. Silverstone, Hart produced for Mellisa Joan’s Mom’s Heartbreak Films production company.

Alicia Silverstone joins the Christmas Movie industrial complex.

Consciously uncoupling Silverstone and Oliver Hudson attempt to maintain post-breakup holiday normalcy with their young adult children, new paramours, friends, and Granddads. Awkward festive gatherings, hurt feelings, and rekindled emotions ensue.

After years of trying, Netflix got its version of the Hallmark Christmas RomCom right, mimicking the look/feel with a few meta inside jokes while tweaking the Young Professional Female Gets Stuck In Wintertown trope.

Middle-aged “what now” angst and Silverstone's puppy-dog eyes ground the plot, and the writing sprinkles the story with core genre elements: humor, empathy, warmth, and baking.

Stream it.

#100HotChocolates #100DaysToOffload #Larrys100 #100WordReview #MovieReview #ChristmasMovies #HolidayMovies #Netflix #Cinemastodon #FilmMastodon #AliciaSilverstone #AMerryLittleExMas

WolfCast Home Page – Listen, follow, subscribe

Wolf In Wool is finally available on your favorite podcasting platforms. Happy to have you reading, and it’s a superior way to be in my head. But sometimes, it’s fun to listen too.

I’ll still include a link so you can listen here if you prefer the simplicity of wolfinwool.

In either case. Thank you and happy to have you on my journey.

—

And I'll always add a soundcloud link for those who prefer the purity of a listen without the hassle of the podcast system:

---

#podcast #wolfcast #confession #essay #story # journal #poetry #wyst #poetry #100daystooffset #writing #story #osxs #travel

Nominate your ideal dinner companion. This could be someone from the past or a contemporary, alive or dead, but who has an established reputation. What about this person’s reputation has impressed you?

I would like to sit down with Sylvia Plath and talk about the richness of her imagery and the breadth of her reading. Her writing, poetry as well as her journals, is full of obscure references and associations. I may have been too shy, but I would have liked to ask her how much her marriage to Ted Hughes bled through into her poems. In her journals, she described intense anxiety explained by Hughes as paranoia, which in retrospect seems to have been a cruel act of gaslighting. Sylvia Plath is almost entirely defined by The Bell Jar and her eventual suicide, but her journal reveals an intelligent person who thought deeply about the world and her place in it. Perhaps if we had had dinner she could have told me about the journals her husband destroyed after her death.

in 2024, the Shrine of Chandavila in Spain, where two girls claimed to have seen apparitions of Our Lady of Sorrows, was approved by the Vatican as a location for Catholic worship (Brockhaus, 2024). While the Vatican recognised the shrine’s importance, it did not address the visions, revealing a tension between Catholic doctrine and everyday expression of faith.

The Catholic News Agency—an organisation devoted to promoting ‘the Dogmas, Rules and Regulations of the church’ (Eternal Word Television Network, n.d.)—quoted the ‘nihil obstat’ judgment issued by the Vatican as saying that the shrine may ‘continue to offer to the faithful . . . a place of interior peace, consolation, and conversion’ (Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández quoted in Brockhaus, 2024). The girls are portrayed as virtuous, dedicating themselves to charity. A ‘nihil obstat’ judgement is an endorsement of the positive impact on the faithful, without authenticating any supernatural phenomena, which seems to reflect a tendency of the Vatican to encourage devotion while maintaining control over claims of divine intervention.

According to the Catholic doctrine of the Virgin Birth, Mary is honoured as the obedient mother of Jesus, chosen to bear God’s son. In Catholic art she is often depicted in imperial blue robes. The imagery of splendour, and her indifference to it, reinforce her purity and elevate her above humanity (Sinclair, 2019, p. 69). Blessed to bear a child without sin, she is the ideal the faithful should strive to emulate. In popular Marian devotion, however, Mary takes on a different character—an understanding Mary who suffers with her followers. She endured the pain of childbirth and her son’s death, an image central to Marian shrines and apparitions (Sinclair, 2019, p. 86-87). The power popular faith has attributed to Mary—as a divine being who can touch the world—is in stark contrast to the passive role assigned to her in the official canon.

When the Vatican approved the Shrine of Chandavila for worship in 2024, Cardinal Fernández remarked that ‘[t]here is nothing one can object to in this beautiful devotion’ (Brockhaus, 2024). By describing the pilgrims’ experiences as subjective, and stressing the girls’ virtue, the Vatican shifted the focus away from supernatural intervention. The girls’ experiences were re-contextualised in the light of how, they for the rest of their lives, sought to emulate the celestial Mary. A more overt example of the regulation of popular devotion to Mary can be seen in a 2025 article in the Catholic News Agency. Hannah Brockhaus reported that the Vatican put to rest a decades-long debate about Mary’s role in the redemption of humanity. The title ‘Co-Redemptrix,’ used in some denominations, was rejected as inappropriate (Brockhaus, 2025). Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández is quoted as saying, ‘’[t]his text . . . aims to deepen the proper foundations of Marian devotion by specifying Mary’s place in her relationship with believers in light of the mystery of Christ . . .’ This statement shows how the Vatican reasserts Christ’s role while defining boundaries for Marian veneration.

Lived religion sometimes reevaluates and supplants established religious dogma. Within the Catholic faith, Marian devotion has morphed beyond the role defined for Mary in the Bible and by the Vatican. The Vatican’s careful endorsement of the Shrine of Chandavila shows it deliberately interpreting spontaneous spirituality under official canon, while downplaying its more independent claims.

References Brockhaus, H. (2024) ‘Vatican approves devotion to 1945 apparition of Our Lady of Sorrows in Spain’, Catholic News Agency, 23 August. Available at: https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/258883/vatican-approves-devotion-to-1945-apparition-of-our-lady-of-sorrows-in-spain (Accessed: 9 November 2025). Eternal Word Television Network (n.d.) Press Room: Our Mission. Available at: https://www.ewtn.com/pressroom (Accessed: 9 November 2025). Sinclair, S (2019) ‘Mary, the mother of Jesus’, in The Open University (ed.), Reputations, The Open University, pp. 45-106. Brockhaus, H. (2025) ‘Vatican nixes use of ‘Co-Redemptrix’ as title for Mary’, Catholic News Agency, 4 November. Available at: https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/267563/vatican-nixes-use-of-co-redemptrix-as-title-for-mary (Accessed: 9 November 2025).

Cleopatra is a potent but mutable construct of femininity. Her name conjures up common associations-power, beauty and sex-these reputations can be called upon with no explanation, as in this Palmolive advertisement from 1910 (A111, Cleopatra Option 1, module materials). An elaborately clad Cleopatra can be seen seated on a curule-style sofa smiling, leaning over a vase of soap. In a time when the suffrage movement started gaining traction and gender roles were changing, Palmolive stripped Cleopatra of her intellect and title. They took a safer, reactionary route when drawing on a collective Western understanding of Cleopatra. This advertisement presents a sanitised and decorative sensuality stripped of intellect and agency; beauty is fulfilling, and a woman’s power stems from her role as consumer.

Palmolive’s advertisement shows Cleopatra sitting on a sofa in an elaborate headdress, constraining bodice, and heavy jewellery. She is smiling, leaning over her attendant, who is kneeling on the floor holding up a vessel filled with soap. To the right in the image, the merchant who brought the product is bowing with his arms crossed over his chest. Bright and colourfully decorated with vases and flowers, the illustration projects intimacy and innocence. Cleopatra is the epitome of femininity, and she is smiling because it was her goal all along. The ad-copy reinforces the message: ‘Once you become acquainted with . . . Palmolive . . . no other soap will satisfy’ (A111, Cleopatra Option 1, module materials) promising that Palmolive Soap will fulfil you.

The modern interpretation of Cleopatra may be softer than that of Roman historians Plutarch and Cassius Dio, but it is still influenced by it. Plutarch described her beauty as incomparable, and the ‘. . . attraction in her person . . . a peculiar force of character . . .’ (Plutarch, 1965, p. 294; quoted in A111 Book 1, p. 30). which put all under her spell. Cassius Dio also emphasised Cleopatra’s power as a kind of seductive magic; she bewitched and enslaved (A111 Book 1, p. 31). In the Roman accounts, Cleopatra did not convince; she enthralled; the Palmolive advertisement carries this idea forward. Cleopatra does not do, she is.

In this ad, Cleopatra is depicted as a woman who is unconcerned with matters outside of the domestic: the ruler, even the ‘master of a thousand flatteries’ (A111 Book 1, p. 31) is absent. There is one man whom she may command, a deferential, dark-skinned man eager to deliver products just for her. By representing itself in a role naturally inferior to a white woman in the early 20th century political landscape, Palmolive empowers her to consume, while signalling her appropriate lack of authority in other matters. By contrast, in medieval Arab accounts, Cleopatra was a noble and able monarch who furthered scientific learning. She was admired for her intellect and skill (A111 Book 1, pp. 33-35), not her beauty.

Cleopatra is one of the most well-known women in Western culture, and while the view of her has become more nuanced, Palmolive’s Cleopatra embodies the enduring Roman idea that a woman’s influence lies in her appearance, not her intellect. The advertisement leverages her reputation as a seductress but cuts her claws and turns consumption into a symbol of power.

References Palmolive Soap Company (1910) ‘Buying Palmolive 3,000 Years Ago’. Advertisement. Milwaukee: B. J. Johnson Soap Company. Fear, T. (2025) ‘Cleopatra’, in Jones, R. (ed.) Reputations. Milton Keynes: The Open University, pp. 5–43. The Open University (2025) Cleopatra in Hollywood. A111: Discovering the Arts and Humanities. The Open University. Available at: https://learn2.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=2487399 (Accessed: 15 October 2025).

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Atomic Empire	https://www.atomicempire.com/
Moby The Great	https://www.mobythegreat.com/
AllStora	https://allstora.com/
Little District Books	https://littledistrictbooks.com/
Books on Broad	https://www.booksonbroad.com/
Mystery Lovers Bookshop	https://www.mysterylovers.com/
Bookshop.org	https://bookshop.org/
Seven Seas Entertainment	https://sevenseasentertainment.com/
Magers & Quinn	https://www.magersandquinn.com/
Powell’s	https://www.powells.com/
The Next Chapter Hermiston	https://thenextchapterhermiston.com/
Watermark Books	https://watermarkbooks.com/
Bull Moose	http://www.bullmoose.com/
Learned Owl Book Shop	https://learnedowl.com/
AbeBooks	https://www.abebooks.com/

#books #danmei

Zelenskyy (pt. 2)

Son of Easter, It is ringing to you A frozen island blessing your grip Of course there were dozens, But this name is yours- And has been, In Jesus Christ And you are competent and ablaze For the fortieth dimension Which is one man an hour, taking the pride of entirety And building Senates and courthouses, and appointments.. I am aground, And look to see you again Where cut off from my cue, The turnstile of war There are blessings- That are rivers But they pale in time With water so precious, A piece of the pie The Dnipro is yours, in weary amounts.

For other people, in Christ, Unabandoning war- There are moments of affliction that cannot be known And in this war, of the interlocutors, One more intruant Cares not for Ukraine The man of maga- satan’s power And nine in the heart With metals and bones Thinking of putin Treachering you I know this reach to Greenland It studies my wellness In two states of flow, Your water and ice To baptize and heal In Christ, [Amen] To Ukraine!

Tuesday-2-DK 🇩🇰

Impossibly at the river Standing for a moment Jangles of money to the flow Reverent sounds of the opera Had it this day An open year for the loss of a friend Supercharged and in the family Tightness and talk Who’s driving to The Empress Ghetto work to the giants I love you oil And this work of vinegar Is all mine For the known forever Deep fact is known as this A play for St. Charles Don’t be known And don’t deliver And wear a white hat And see the promised girl 8 feet in studio square Linked to Peter Whilst pretend The United States is a game For twelve and over And the Presidency is for Andrew Leading men, We love the fear And interns have news 4DN is years away But look at that calendar clock And a used affliction

JOURNAL 29 novembre 2025

Je finis mon thé puis je redescends. Il y a beaucoup de monde aujourd'hui, ça sent la fin de l'année scolaire. Les parents viennent voir un peu comment ça se passe ici pour les inscriptions en janvier février...

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Terminé ! olala yaura des inscriptions en février on dirait 😎 Il paraît les enfants et les ados font une super publicité autour d'eux 😅 Maintenant on va enfin aller manger, A, T.san l'ex secrétaire, Yôko qui a officiellement les clés, c’est elle qui va fermer la boutique, ka chan et moi.

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On s'est quittées, chacune repartie de son côté. Restent nous deux, on se paye le love hôtel ce soir, demain matin grasse mat´ avec petit déjeuner de reines et baignoire à remous, on se refuse rien, on est fatiguées on a besoin de se dorloter. Takaichi trouve que les Japonais ne travaillent pas assez. La plupart n'ont même plus de vie privée, le métro le soir est plein de zombies, mais le matin aussi ! On est en train de tous devenir fous. Comptez pas sur moi, je veux pas mourir au travail, et je veux pas que ma chérie meure aussi. C'est dingo que ce soit moi la Japonaise qui la force à ralentir. La France m'a convaincue de ça, une vraie révolution culturelle, mais j'ai intégré. Même si c’est vrai que moi aussi je travaille trop, mais il y a un truc quand même, c’est que nous deux on travaille, oui, mais on fait ce qu'on aime faire, alors c’est supportable. En attendant le bain est prêt, on a une baignoire immense même pour deux !

Hemingway is an app that checks your text for difficult sentences, adverbs, and passive voice. The new desktop version has just landed, and I'm testing it now.

The app highlights readability problems:

• hard sentences (yellow)
• very hard sentences (red)
• adverbs
• simplifiable phrases
• passive voice

If you strive for lean prose, having the problem areas flagged makes editing easier.

It ticks the minimal writing environment boxes. In Write mode, it's just you and your text. There’s Markdown support, live preview, and HTML export. And it has a nice icon, which matters more to Mac users than they'd care to admit.

But I won't be switching to Hemingway just yet. The app is buggy. On a newish iMac, scrolling lags. Misspelled word underlining can be in the wrong places.

Despite my system language being set to British English, Hemingway marks Britishisms as errors. And the licence agreement permits only one user on one machine.

Still, these are fixable problems. What interests me more is a criticism that can also be levelled at the web version: Hemingway can leave text a little limp.

Here's the famous opening of A Tale of Two Cities:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

Hemingway app scores it at grade 58 — essentially unreadable. Add the 14 full stops Hemingway would like, and you get this:

It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. It was the age of wisdom. It was the age of foolishness. It was the epoch of belief. It was the epoch of incredulity. It was the season of Light. It was the season of Darkness. It was the spring of hope. It was the winter of despair. We had everything before us. We had nothing before us. We were all going direct to Heaven. We were all going direct the other way. In short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

Grade 2. Much better.

Is it an improvement? No: Dickens was Dickens. But there isn’t a sub-editor alive today who wouldn’t punctuate the hell out of that sentence.

The edit doesn’t ruin the Dickens. It’s the same words in the same order. But it does drain its identity and its specialness.

The app assumes all long sentences are hard to read. I’m not expert on readability, but Dickens’ introduction isn't that hard to read.

Some adverbs are advisable. The passive voice is occasionally useful. Long sentences can be beautiful.

Its recommendations are perfect for utilitarian text — for which there are many uses. But for creative writing, handle with care. Let your instincts arbitrate.

Plain English doesn't have to be dull. But for the jobbing writer, Hemingway app isn't ready to be first-choice editor—not yet. And if creativity is high on your priority list, it may never be.

#notes #july2014

17 November 2025

Floor 2 still life: In a 1956 interview with James Johnson Sweeney, Duchamp explains that “the danger is to lead yourself into a form of taste,” and this painting feels like it may have been an affirmation of that idea. The tension between that concept and dogged will to repeatedly poke at the personal/familiar is a potentially fruitful gap to widen; a cultivating of the ability to simultaneously self-reflect and self-negate. Relevant to how after being a vagabond for close to four months now, the idea of the familiar has warped. Paintings that are emerging are of consistent concerns popping up in the least consistent of places. They're waypoints, places to slow the senses into thought.

As London wraps itself in autumn grey, I'm back at my desk in the corner, tapping away at a mechanical keyboard by the glow of an upward-pointed anglepoised lamp.

Outside: dinge, drizzle, perhaps a gale. Inside: a favourite cardigan and the consequential satisfaction of lower gas bills.

There's something about putting the clocks back that feels like permission to settle in. The walk to the cafe comes with sodden leaves to kick and to contemplate.

I've always watched the seasons change, but the slow death that is autumn remains the most beautiful.

Spring and summer are for going out, keeping up, being busy. Autumn and winter are for actually doing things. Proper, considered, slow doing.

Autumn is the season of working from home. Autumn is the season for writing.

#notes #october2013

Person Media — Journey To Fix Loneliness!

❞ If you keep gazing at your inspiration, you could become a genius. ~ me

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Yes — that was me staring at a random ad card someone slipped under my door.

Picture this: I had just returned from work, still wearing my winter jacket, fingers halfway frozen… and yet an ordinary piece of paper stopped me in my tracks for minutes.

Not TikTok. Not Instagram. Not an inspirational book.

A card.

But before I tell you why that card shook me, let me rewind a little.

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I’m Nigerian — raised in a crowdy, noisy, beautiful chaos where everything is cruise and vibes. If you told someone you were sad, they’d ask if you’ve eaten. Depression? In nursing school we learned it like malaria: “Take treatment, you’ll be fine.” Simple. Surface-level. Clinical.

Then I left home.

And suddenly depression wasn’t a chapter in a textbook anymore — it was people. Real people. People groomed in loneliness without even knowing.

Traveling and working as a nurse, something hit me hard:

Depression is often rooted in loneliness — and loneliness doesn’t respond to medication. It responds to presence.

And loneliness isn’t just “sadness.” It can lead to suicide. It can break marriages. It can destroy teenagers. It can make a whole city feel emotionally hollow.

You know what shocked me?

People in crowded trains… lonely. People in noisy restaurants… lonely. People married for 10 years… still lonely.

Presence is not “someone else in the room.” Presence is someone with you.

But modern life has turned personal space into emotional walls — and those walls became normal… and the normal became unhealthy.

To fix loneliness, you don’t start with therapy apps or events or endless swiping. You start with Presence → Relationship.

But even those two are not enough. There’s something deeper under them… hiding.

---

Let’s talk about social media.

Yes, we have “connection apps.” But do we really connect?

Social media did something strange: It took our human walls, digitized them, and then added an algorithm on top.

So instead of reaching for each other, we reach for screens. Instead of being ourselves, we perform. Instead of presence, we get content. Instead of identity, we get profiles.

Humans became spectators of each other. And the world became lonelier than ever.

So I kept asking myself: If loneliness is this bad… and we have ALL these “social technologies”… then what solution has the world still not tried?

Finland made the question louder for me. A calm, beautiful country — and yet loneliness is everywhere. Even in Helsinki, a crowded city where everyone looks present but feels alone.

Events? Meetups? Apps?

They try. But they miss something fundamental.

I knew we needed something different. Something weird. Something bold. Something out of the box.

And then… the card happened.

---

So back to that evening.

On the card, someone listed:

• Home tidying
• Dishwashing
• Errands

But the last item made me freeze:

Companionship.

In Finnish. I don’t even remember the exact word. But the meaning was clear: spending time with someone.

And instantly, something burst open inside me:

“Yes, Paul! This is possible! This is doable! This is what you’ve been trying to articulate!”

I paced around my room like a madman. Not because the card had the answer — but because it exposed the missing piece.

Because my first reaction wasn’t excitement.

It was fear.

Who is this person? Man or woman? Older? Younger? Safe? Unsafe? Can I trust them? Can I let them into my personal space?

And immediately I understood:

The real problem wasn’t loneliness. The real problem was identity.

Loneliness is the disease. Identity is the immune system.

If I don’t know who you are, I cannot let you into my life. Not for companionship. Not for presence. Not even for a 30-minute conversation.

THAT was the revelation.

To fix loneliness, we must fix identity first.

Identity → Presence → Relationship → Time.

Not the social media way. Not the current real-world way. But the human way.

Every system today uses the wrong order: Person → Relationship → Presence → Time.

That’s why “personal space” becomes a wall. That’s why everything feels unsafe. That’s why presence feels risky.

But the natural order — the human order — is:

PERSON → PRESENCE → RELATIONSHIP → TIME

Person = who Presence = what can they do with me? Relationship = what are they to me? Time = what are we becoming?

That’s companionship.

That’s humanity.

And that’s exactly what both the online and offline world broke.

Identity was the missing key. Companionship starts with a person, not a profile. Presence starts with identity, not with content.

This is the real beginning of the journey.

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And that’s why we’re building PERSON MEDIA.

Not social media. Person Media.

Where the medium isn’t content or feeds — the medium is the person.

Our tagline says it all:

Putting the real you with the people that matter.

PUTTING → presence THE REAL YOU → identity WITH PEOPLE → relationship THAT MATTER → meaningful time

That’s the entire blueprint.

And I’m starting with something simple but powerful:

The Presence Calendar.

A living map of human presence:

• Yesterday: mood
• Today: presence
• Tomorrow: companionship windows

A gentle reminder that the world hasn’t abandoned you — it’s just become harder to see.

Person Media is built for:

Identity. Presence. Companionship. Humanity.

The world already has feeds. What we don’t have is each other.

More soon.

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Before you go…

How do you feel about this?

I want to hear your story.