mental-health – Centre of the Web

Learning To Live Slowly

May 21, 2026 !Epic Tomorrows

By Robin Boardman, co-founder of the global Extinction Rebellion (XR) movement; originally published on April 7 2026 on Robin’s website here. Republished with his permission.

This week, I let go of the last small thread of work I’d been holding onto with Revolution in the 21st Century. A few hours here and there — just enough to feel like I was still the person I used to be. Still contributing. Still part of something I’d spent years building.

But my brain has shut down to that kind of work now. So I wrote a gentle goodbye email to the team, and a farewell on social media. I’m hoping that by shrinking my world — and my worries — I might give my body the space it needs to recover.

Now I’m lying down with a migraine, dictating these thoughts into my phone. Speaking, in a strange way, both into the void and into the world’s largest language machine.

Chronic illness takes things from you slowly, and then sometimes all at once. Work — that identity of doing and producing — was one of the last things I was still quietly clutching. Letting it go feels significant. Not just practical, but existential.

Who am I, if not someone who does? What do I do when I see climate collapse unfolding across our gorgeous blue-green earth, yet live bound by these four walls?

I’m still working that out. My values are the same. My love and motivation undimmed. Yet physically, I can give a lot less. So meaning has gotten smaller. More specific.

I’ve started sewing again — patches, small art projects, techniques I haven’t touched since school. I bake for my housemates and neighbours. I keep the common spaces clean because I’ve noticed how much it changes the feeling of coming home to something cared for.

It’s not the life I imagined for my twenties. It looks, in some ways, closer to that of a retiree. But there’s an honest craft in it. A kind of housebound purposefulness — stripped of the stereotype associations of age or gender. Just a person who happens to be home a lot, trying to make that mean something for the people around them.

I hold it lightly. Some days it feels like a silver lining. Other days, it just feels like what’s left.

The hardest part, most days, isn’t the physical limitation. It’s the relational cost.

Illness makes you unpredictable. Unavailable. Hard to reach.

People you love have their own rhythms — their own crises, their own windows of openness. And when your body doesn’t run on a schedule, you miss each other. You fall out of sync.

So you find other ways.

Letters. Voice notes. Small things made with care. Slower, more asynchronous forms of love.

It’s an adjustment. And it’s ongoing.

Not everyone understands. Some are drifting away. That’s okay. I’m taking it one day at a time.

I’m still doing EMDR therapy. Still trying to bring my nervous system somewhere closer to rest — films, audiobooks, sitting in the garden, whatever works on a given day. Still watching for those small windows of recovery, and trying not to measure my life only by their absence.

Six years in, I’m not the person I was before.

But I’m still here. Still finding small ways to nourish the life I actually have. Still trying to keep despair at a distance with purpose, however quiet.

That feels like enough, for now.

Ecology of the absurd, DIARIES & MEMOIRS: COUNTRIES A-Z, England

Building Silent Haven: Chapter Two

May 20, 2026 !Epic Tomorrows

Featured image: ‘Lunchtime Concerts’ 1979; Pencil and collage on paper (College project)

When I left college in 1981, I was offered a council flat on the eighth floor of a tower block in Wood Green, London, so I took it. I had to go through seven doors and a lift to get out, but I didn’t think about it then, I was living in a totally ungrounded, drug-filled fantasy world, and so being in the air suited me. I imagined it as my high-rise apartment in New York. The famous artist. This is who I believed I wanted to become. But I was extremely self-critical, not even knowing I was being so hard on myself. It had been a normal part of my childhood. This and my lack of confidence kept me in a cycle of wanting to block this harshness out.

After 3 years at college, I had had enough of Graphics and began doing freelance illustration. I did commissions for The Magic Circle, BBC, Channel 4, The Fiction Magazine, Spare Rib, World Wildlife Fund, Live Aid and various publishers. My work was small, black and white in ink or pencil, and it was detailed.

Gemini. A commission for ‘The Complete Astrologer’ by Derek and Julia Parker. 1981

I also explored my own realistic and abstract artwork and crafts, sculpture, clothes design, generally with a nature or recycling theme. Artwork was my healing journey from a childhood bereft of emotional comfort.

Embroidery eagles for a shirt collar. 1981

My work got bigger and bigger in size as my confidence grew.

‘Blue Grass’ 1981 pencil and watercolour on paper.

In 1982, when I was 23 I had a motorbike accident and broke my leg in three places. The woman I was living with, Yvette was on the back and thankfully only bruised her knee. It was a complex fracture and they couldn’t operate immediately as I had friction burns on my leg. I found myself in traction, (they put a pin through the ankle and dangle a weight from it to pull apart the bones so they can realign them. Sounds like torture and it was!). Obviously some nurses and doctors were considerate but my experience of doctors standing at the end of my bed with their white coats on and clipboards talking about my condition without including me, stuck with me. Also asking a nurse for a bedpan and being told it wasn’t time for the bedpan round and I must wait. These were just two examples of emotionally unsafe behaviours that stayed with me for a long time. It was frightening.

Yvette came to visit me every day and when I came out of hospital I vowed I would never see a doctor again as I had felt so out of control. It was another pivotal moment where I began unconsciously building my need for complete autonomy and to find a healing space. The accident completely woke me up. I wanted a more spiritual life and I started to explore complementary medicine, diet and fasting to improve my physical health.

I met Simo and Checca, the Italian twins at the women’s bathing pond at Hampstead Heath. Yvette moved out and they came to live with me. They had been brought up in rural Italy and moved to London when they were 11. They had gone to school at the famous Summerhill and were very open minded. They were outgoing sannyasins, disciples of Osho, an Indian Guru and I loved living with them. Through Osho, I learned about meditation, mysticism and spirituality. It was comforting and life affirming. Seeing life through the perspective of spirituality created a positive outlook. I also found a book called “You can heal your life” by Louise Hay and read it over and over. Its basic principle is “you are in control of your mind; it is not in control of you” and she provides exercises to let go of past painful conditioning and find that empowering place of being in control. She is also the queen of positive affirmations.

Simo, Checca and I visited Italy for months and I loved it there. They both also knew about wholefoods and introduced me to cooking brown rice.

In 1987, when I was 28, I was having a conversation with my friend Roger and someone I had just met. This person asked me what I did for a living. I avoided the question and mumbled something about crafts. Roger said ‘she’s an artist!’ That was the first time I began to give myself that title.

That same year, Checca and I went to live in Italy. This created the real foundation for my connection with nature. My first activity was to collect figs from a tree and eat them, I loved it and it made complete sense to me. We collected and cracked pine nuts on a stone and made pesto with fresh basil. We stayed with Checca’s dad for a while. He was an accomplished artist. He foraged, including mushrooms.

‘Antonio’s Garden’ 1990 ink on paper.(Checca’s dad’s house)

After almost a year with Checca’s dad and also staying at our friend Roberto’s house, we found a house to live in at the edge of a quiet village in the countryside. I meditated, (working on my inner demons of depression) and got a job working for Walt Disney drawing cartoons of Donald Duck for ‘Paperino Mese’. I would work at home during the week and go to Milan on Saturdays to the Walt Disney Studio to have my work assessed.

In 1990, when I was 31, I came back to the flat in London which had been kept on by Simo. Checca stayed in Italy, Simo moved out of the flat and I lived there on my own.

As I was healing, the eighth floor of a noisy tower block next to a main road with noisy neighbours all round me and no sound insulation, became a place of deep suffering. I could even hear my neighbour Tracey downstairs sweeping the floor. The sound of Tracey’s bass-heavy music in the night for two years and environmental health being unable to catch her brought me to a nervous breakdown, a catharsis, in 1998 and I was sent to a psychiatric hospital for a week. I then spent further spells in crisis centres and took anti-depressants until one day during a massage at the crisis centre, I broke down and exclaimed to the masseuse, “I’ve lost my soul”. I stopped the anti-depressants immediately.

The outer issue was always noise. The noise that humans create which, to me, made the sounds of nature harder and harder to hear. I longed for silence and the only sounds being the sounds of nature, I was obsessed with it. I felt breathless without it. I told a carer in the crisis centre that I longed to hear the sound of the birds and she said “well, we’ve got a birdsong tape!” I could have screamed; she didn’t get it. I wanted to be so immersed in nature that there was no separation. Birdsong on a tape was just another human invention and all part of my disconnected environmental crisis. I wanted the real thing, but I was on the dole, DHSS (Department of Health and Social Security) feeling ashamed and guilty. My friend Prabhu helped when he said, ‘Don’t feel guilty, it’s DHSS—Divine Help for Spiritual Seekers!`. I was living on £50 a week, no money in the bank and living, ‘existing’ in a noisy tower block in London. Sometimes I sat on my balcony at the flat with my hands over my ears, rocking from the insanity of the noise; traffic, household noises from uninsulated flats, police sirens, fire engines…and nature seemingly so far away out of my reach. My solace was to walk through Alexandra Palace park to Crouch End to buy my shopping from the health food store. Alexandra Palace was a walk across a little park next to my allotment and over the railway bridge. I also started to see counsellors and this gave me a feeling of strength and security. However, I couldn’t get out of the flat. No-one wanted to home swap to a tower block, I was trapped.

I was continuously burdened with the thoughts of how to raise enough money as an artist to get a mortgage and buy my own place. It was a crazy idea, I was an Artist! Money was an alien concept, and consistently making money without feeling utterly stressed was even more alien. I had been on and off the dole for years, coming off to do a few months of freelance work and then signing back on again. I couldn’t cope with the pressure of relentless work; it sucked the joy and the purpose out of making art. Thinking only of the conventional route clearly wasn’t for me, but what was the solution?

I spent the next few years going in and out of the crisis centre, figuring out in my mind, what I wanted. On one visit, I met a man who did photography. He showed me one of his pictures. It was a barge going through a tunnel and there was a small bright light at the end. It made me ask, “What is my light at the end of the tunnel?” and my first thought was “America”! So I made that a goal. Unbeknownst to me at the time, my trip to America was to be another foundation for my deep inner craving for a more natural life.

AI Tomorrows, DIARIES & MEMOIRS: COUNTRIES A-Z, FLASH!, Many feminisms, Reflections, South Korea

The Woman Not on Any List

May 14, 2026May 18, 2026 !Epic Tomorrows

by Jo Eunyoung (South Korea, poet)

“Noblesse Matchmaking — we find you the partner you deserve.“

A temporary but urgent call to action! Centre of the Web partner Versy Talks is kindly running a free public online debate about the publishing industry from 21st to 31st May 2026. It does not take long to take part in the debate and state your opinion, and everyone is welcome! Sharing your voice will help boost both COTW and Versy Talks. Please help us grow, so that we can platform diverse and underrepresented voices from around the world. More information can be found here.

Even past forty, matchmaking agencies still send me messages. Maybe I’m still on their list of women who haven’t — or couldn’t — marry. Maybe it’s just an automated system firing into the void. Either way, I feel two things at once: a small admiration for their persistence, and a faint irritation at still being considered a target. I never delete the messages immediately. I leave them there for hours, as if one day even this might begin to feel urgent.

One day, a younger colleague leaned in close, as if sharing classified information. “Unni, I actually met my husband through a matchmaking agency (gyeolhon jeongbo hoesa: Korea’s paid marriage brokerage service that scores and ranks members by age, education, income, and appearance). You should try it too — I worked really hard at it.” She believed she was doing me a favor. The story of their fated, romantic meeting had apparently been constructed overnight — a tidy narrative designed to erase the fact that it had started with a checklist.

It’s not that I never tried. I dated steadily, loved recklessly. I was a bitch to some and an angel to others, just as certain exes were to me. I broke up and started over, again and again, and somewhere in that repetition, time slipped away — “hulsseok”(the sound Koreans make while swallowing tears).

People offered what they called gentle advice. You studied too long. You were too focused on work. They followed this with their own marriage success stories. A question rose in my throat — so are you actually happy?— but I swallowed it every time. I didn’t want to come across as the bitter unmarried woman, sneering at other people’s choices.

What they said always sounded less like advice and more like self-reassurance: that raising children is nobler than any career, that some men feel burdened by women who think too much, that love is fine but marriage is reality. I listened and nodded. You’re doing so well. I’m honestly envious. It was the kindest thing I could offer.

They say marriage is a choice now. But most people I know — born, like me, in the 1980s — didn’t quite choose it or reject it. They simply married, the way you do things when that’s just what’s done. A small number of us didn’t. Not entirely by choice, but not entirely by accident either. I live in the gap between those two worlds, and sometimes it’s hard to breathe.

I had actually joined that agency years earlier. Even then, in my mid-thirties, I was categorized as high-risk — too old for safe childbirth, too educated to be appealing. My PhD was a liability, they said; men worried I might correct them. They suggested I list only my bachelor’s degree. Still, they found reasons for optimism: I looked younger than my age, I wasn’t overweight, and my voice was soft and pleasant.

Suddenly I was a product approaching its expiration date. A new agency promised AI-based matching, as if intimacy were a logistics problem. When I saw the ad, I thought: I’ve walked into the wrong place entirely.

This isn’t where I belong. Run.

An unmarried woman in her forties. Neither young nor old. Studying literature. On television, forty-something single women are always successful — corner offices and sleek apartments. The term gold miss (a glamorous, financially independent single woman) comes from that image.

But I can’t claim the gold. My degree didn’t translate into salary. I spend my nights revising poems, asking myself: will I ever publish a collection? Will I become the poet I want to be? I am, by most measures, badly out of step with this era.

I can’t join my friends’ conversations about stocks, real estate, their children’s tutoring costs, the latest housing policy. I’ve grown a little strange, just as they predicted. The future still frightens me, but I’ve stopped chasing someone to make that fear quieter. That’s left me lonelier in some ways.

I’ve also stopped obsessing over my weight. I prefer streets with trees to streets with people. I’ve started to understand why middle-aged people photograph flowers. I have no children, but I tend my writing with the same careful attention — softly, gently — and I love it deeply. I take care of myself. I protect my small world.

Then I heard that younger Koreans had coined a term for people like me: yeong-poti (Young Forty: started as a compliment for energetic forty-somethings, now a slur for those who refuse to act their age). I checked myself against the criteria. I don’t wear streetwear brands. I have no money to spend chasing younger company. I didn’t buy property cheaply and profit from rising prices. I wasn’t even pretending to be young. I’ve just never quite grown up, if I’m honest.

In the marriage market: not on the list. Among the targets of generational contempt: not on that list either. Nowhere do I fit neatly into the available categories. For a while, I shrank under the weight of that. The world says it has changed — women’s rights, feminism, marriage as personal choice. In some ways, yes. But I still have one foot in a world that sees my life as a problem, and one foot in a world that has no name for what I am. Too hot, too cold. I move between them, belonging fully to neither.

I live alone. I cook for myself. I write. I handle each poem the way you’d handle something you love — carefully, then carelessly, fighting with it, making up with it, coming back to it again. Sometimes someone looks me in the eyes first, and there is warmth. Not fire, but warmth. Somewhere between the cold bath and the hot one, in that lukewarm in-between place — that’s where I am.

Tongue

May 8, 2026May 19, 2026 !Epic Tomorrows

By Hyoungshim Choi

A temporary but urgent call to action! Centre of the Web partner Versy Talks is kindly running a free public online debate about the publishing industry from 21st to 31st May 2026. It does not take long to take part in the debate and state your opinion, and everyone is welcome! Sharing your voice will help boost both COTW and Versy Talks. Please help us grow, so that we can platform diverse and underrepresented voices from around the world. More information can be found here.

The alarm clock went off. “A new day has dawned, rise and shine everyone……” I pressed the switch. I needed to change the wake-up call on that damn alarm.

—Did he really do that as a joke? No matter how much I think about it, our senses of humor just don’t match. It’s good that we broke up.

I muttered about this to myself as I got up and brewed some coffee. With half-closed eyes I cursorily washed the mug that was sitting by the sink. Apart from the fact that the inside had yellowed from frequent use, it was an ordinary cup. I poured the coffee into the cup. It was the same coffee that I always drink, but today it tasted incredibly bitter for some reason.

—This is disgustingly bitter. Is it so that even the coffee is bitter just because I broke up with him?

I grumbled to myself as I gulped it down.

—Ah, stop bitching and just drink it. It tastes the same as usual.

Just as the coffee was about to go down my throat, I heard this from somewhere.

—What the hell?!

I was so startled that I jumped out of my skin. No matter how many times I looked around, I was the only one in that broom closet of an apartment. I looked inside the washing machine, checked that the front door was locked, and even rummaged through the built-in closet. But there was not a single trace of anyone anywhere.

—Have I been alone so long that I’m hearing things?

It made sense, though, come to think of it. I had been stuck at home for four months now due to Covid, after all. When I first heard that I had to work from home, I cheered, just like anyone else would have. I wouldn’t have to listen to assistant manager Kim’s cheesy, cringe-inducing jokes, nor hear the shrill voice of my team leader, who was extremely irritable from all the sleepless nights taking care of a newborn baby.

However, I was disillusioned pretty quickly. Video conferences on Zoom and the like that were so boring they made my butt cramp, and the KakaoTalk (1) notifications coming through all the time under the pretext of attendance management, weren’t actually a big deal. Living alone in this cramped studio apartment for months on end without ever leaving is practically like solitary confinement. It got to the point where I even started missing the people I hated seeing! I decided to go to a cafe to get some work done for a change of scene, but the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases began exceeding 1,000 on a daily basis. Eventually, the cafe I was visiting closed down. As the number of confirmed cases surged, I started shopping online, too. As a result, I came to rely on online platforms for most of my daily requirements.

Eventually, it got to the point where I was breaking up with my boyfriend through KakaoTalk. As soon as I saw the message that began, “If it weren’t for COVID, I’d like to meet and talk……”, I sensed that we were breaking up. I sent a reply saying, “Okay. Let’s stop seeing each other.” A long message followed, in which he rambled on about how we weren’t meant to be, told me to find someone better, and so on. I didn’t reply and coldly blocked him. Thanks to working from home, or to being confined at home, we ended things neatly and cleanly, so I should have been relieved, but I didn’t feel good at all.

I felt utterly terrible.

After finishing my coffee, I was at the sink, stirring my finger inside the cup to rinse it, when I felt something bulging out. Wondering if a grain of rice or something might have somehow gotten stuck, I looked inside the mug. However, there was something reddish rising on the white porcelain.

—What the …?

I scratched the inside of the cup with my fingernail.

—Ouch, I’m going to get hurt. Try to be careful.

Right then, the voice I’d heard earlier came from out of the cup. I was so startled that I dropped it on the floor.

—Hey, have you lost your mind? You almost broke me. No wonder you got dumped by a man.

I was completely dumbfounded.

—You’re only just a cup……. Who taught you such bad manners?

—Who else but you? Who’s the one who’s been talking all kinds of nonsense right in front of me every day? If I had ears, they’d have already rotted away by now.

Come to think of it, as working from home had gone on, it’s true that I had spent the days mumbling to myself the whole day with this cup in front of me. This symptom worsened especially after breaking up with my boyfriend. In the days following the breakup, I grumbled about him nonstop, pouring out curses at my cup. No wonder, since there were no cafes open even if I wanted to meet people, and since I didn’t have a friend to vent to at a time such as this……. All day long, the only things I faced were my computer and my mug. If my computer was what spoke to me, then my mug existed for me to speak to. While drinking water, while drinking coffee, I was in the habit of talking to the mug as I muttered to myself.

—You should have just left me alone. How much pent-up frustration must I have had to have grown a tongue?

the cup said, sighing. Hearing this, I felt sorry. Without a word, I took out a soft tea towel and carefully cleaned the cup before putting it back in the cupboard.

After that, I occasionally thought about the mug, but I never opened the cupboard. This was because I didn’t want to exchange a single word with that irritable, insolent, manners-nowhere-to-be-found jerk. Moreover, a cup with a tongue sticking out of it creeped me out so much that it just didn’t feel right to put anything in it to drink. Of course, I did think about throwing that strange thing away. But considering its personality, it was clear that if I threw it away it would blabber all sorts of things about me to anyone, so I decided to just put up with it. So I swapped my cup for a tumbler and strove to break my habit of talking to myself. I felt like I was going crazy keeping my mouth shut while just staring at the computer screen all day. But what could I do? I had to just suffer.

—Give me some water.

It was about 2 in the morning when I heard that voice. I had finally fallen asleep after tossing and turning since 10pm, having developed insomnia due to a lack of outdoor activity. I covered my ears with the pillow and pretended I hadn’t heard.

—Hey, I said I’m thirsty. Can‘t you hear me?

That jerk goaded me again. It piqued my irritation.

—Let me just sleep.

I sprang up, opened the cupboard, and shoved a tea towel in the cup.

—What are you doing? I said I’m thirsty, thirsty! Take this thing out of me right now.

—Don’t be ridiculous. You think you’re human just because I talk to you. You’re so loud it’s driving me crazy.

I went back to bed and tried to sleep. As soon as I did, the jerk quietened down. I’d just dozed off when his sudden screaming jolted me awake. My heart was pounding.

—What’s going on?

—I can’t breathe! Get this damn tea towel out of me.

—Ah, seriously, you’re so loud. You’re making a fuss over nothing. Do you know what time it is right now? Just be quiet.

—Be quiet? Won’t you come over quickly and get this out of me?

—I don’t care.

I spat this out, rummaged through a drawer, pulled out a pair of earplugs and put them in, then victoriously went back to bed. But then he screamed breathlessly, at a high pitch of about two and a half octaves above normal, like a dying soprano singing a climax.

I could hear him screaming through the earplugs.

—This is suffocating me! I said I’m thirsty!

Since the jerk wouldn’t stop screaming and raising hell, in the end I got up again and irritatedly opened the cupboard.

—This damn cup, I’ll just……

I picked it up and hurled it against the wall. The cup shattered with a crash.

—Ow, I’m dying! I’m dying!

he screamed in what seemed to be one last desperate struggle, before suddenly falling silent. At that very moment, the doorbell rang.

—Police! We’ve had reports of a domestic disturbance.

The police, in the middle of the night! This is all because of that jerk! As annoying as it was, the problem at hand now was coming up with an excuse.

—But what in the name of God should I say?

I asked myself, into the wall.

—What do you mean, what should you say? Just tell the truth.

Out of the blue, the wall replied. I looked to face it in shock. This time, exactly where the cup had hit, a really huge tongue had sprouted.

—Ah, seriously! Who would believe that!

I felt like I was going to lose my mind with anger and frustration. But I resolved to control myself and open the door.

—What seems to be the problem?

Two officers wearing black masks were standing in front of the door. I hesitated, not knowing how I should begin. Since they had eyes, I figured that if I just showed them that thing then they would understand the ridiculousness of the situation.

—Do you see that over there? The big tongue. It was originally in that cup down there.

I pointed to the shattered cup on the floor, and the large tongue that had hung limply from the wall since the police showed up.

—A tongue? What do you mean, a tongue?

one of the police officers asked, looking back and forth between me and the wall.

—You don’t see that tongue there? That tongue….

***

1. KakaoTalk: Korea`s most widely used chat app

Reflections, South Korea

The door called the organization

May 4, 2026May 8, 2026 !Epic Tomorrows

By Kim Ja-heun

Human relationships are like that. When people gather, whether they like it or not, they must open their mouths to speak. You have to reveal words that could have remained hidden, and you must listen to words that would have been irrelevant had they gone unheard. Furthermore, in any gathering of an organization, words inevitably pour out—this way and that. As the mass of the organization grows, the volume of words swells, branching out in every direction.

Even on a single agenda, conflict arises because thoughts differ. It is not a matter of “This is my thought, what is yours?” but rather an attempt to inject one’s own beliefs into others: “My thought is right, so why is yours like that?” It would be ideal if conflicting opinions reached a consensus, but when they don’t, the situation escalates into raised voices and flushed faces. When the clash is over petty interests rather than a grand cause, a sense of self-reproach washes over me as I watch, listen, and participate: Good heavens, why do I even have to be here? It feels like a homework assignment where the distinction between right and wrong will never reach a resolution.

Yet, I also realize that the opinions each person puts forward can be interpreted as a desire to do things well. If a few say one thing but the majority says another, it could be that the majority is right. When opinions are expressed, synthesized, and deduced to create something new, the resulting conclusion might return as a different kind of vitality.

Late at night, returning home through the pouring rain in Gwanghwamun, a junior colleague who lives in the same direction and I got into an extension of the meeting’s debate on the subway. My junior argued that the activities of the Self-Discipline Committee are ultimately political and that we must, therefore, increase our influence through numbers. To be honest, I couldn’t actively agree. My conviction is that a writer’s political expansion should be expressed through their writing. As political assertions clashed with my professional philosophy, the junior—who seemed to be from “Venus”—exclaimed, “Ah, senior, you’re being frustrating again!” I, coming from “Mars,” grew weary of the same problems repeating and closed my tired eyes, saying, “Hey, let’s just stop now.”

***

On a day like today, I feel an immense fatigue from belonging to an organization. Is it regret, or perhaps a realization? I think to myself that if I hadn’t joined this organization in the first place, I wouldn’t have to deal with this bitter energy on my way home so late. I realize once again that I am, by nature, ill-suited for the confines of an organized framework.

Closing my eyes, I sink into thought. I wonder, as my junior poet said, how a senior writer who is respected should behave. And is that junior, who says such things, behaving correctly as a senior respected by their own juniors? While pondering what human relationships are all about… I eventually lean toward the positive: Yes, this is all just everyone trying to do their best!

They say that as you get older, you should keep your mouth closed and your wallet open. Since I am not in a position to gallantly open my wallet, I suppose I should act my age by simply keeping my mouth firmly shut.