Brain Drizzle and Cosmic Smog

Today's mental weather report

I host a weekly Writers’ Support Group every Thursday on Zoom, and lately we’ve had a common refrain: overwhelm.

The creative folks around me report a sluggishness, brain fog, decreased motivation, increased artistic resistance, and a feeling of needing to do too much. Burnout, but caused by an exterior pressure we can’t quite identify. Is it social media? AI existential dread? The News? I’m calling this The Cosmic Smog, and I’m feeling it as well.

Are you?

The Cosmic Smog

Maybe the Cosmic Smog is also caused by winter turning to spring because seasonal affective disorder is actually the worst in the spring. For those of you in cold climates, during winter, you’ve been getting less and less sun, so by spring, vitamin D levels are the most depleted. This causes a host of problems, including low energy.

However, in Florida, where I live, vitamin D isn’t a valid excuse. I get plenty of sun. My excuse is that the dengue fever I had in March really kicked my ass. I didn’t experience full mental energy for weeks, though I can feel it slowly returning.

In light of this Cosmic Smog, I’m offering you less of an essay today and more of an assortment of things I’ve been thinking/overthinking about.

Let me know if any of them resonate with you. I’ll call this Brain Drizzle—a type of mental weather that commonly occurs during Cosmic Smog.

Brain Drizzle

These are the thoughts on my mind lately as I absorb and react to the world around me:

1. Soon we will have no real media representation for “the fat and the poor” (I use these words with love) because every celebrity, every influencer, and everyone in the media is on some form of Ozempic, and even fat champions like Lizzo are becoming thin.

   1. I watched the new season of The Righteous Gemstones this week and noted with a strange sadness that multiple “once-plump” characters are now Wegovythin. That’s great for them, but soon, the only chunky people in films will be made with CGI or will wear fat suits like Brendan Fraser in The Whale.

   2. This lack of representation will make the lives of people unable to afford Ozempic more depressing.

      

2. Low performers never become high performers… in the same job.

   1. I heard Naval Ravikant say this weeks ago, and it’s been clouding my thoughts ever since and causing brain drizzle.

   2. Think about it, has anyone you’ve ever worked with who began as a low performer in a position ever really improved enough to become a high performer in that position? I think the answer is no. People who start off sucking continue to suck. People who impress you from day one continue to impress you. This is kind of a hard pill to swallow.

      1. For this reason, low performers should be fired immediately so they can find something they’re actually good at. And if you’re a low performer, you should switch to whatever you’re actually good at. Maybe?

      2. My Substack is actually “low performing,” so I’m considering ending it or doing a major pivot.

3. Beware of friends who constantly optimize because they will eventually optimize you out of their lives.

   

   1. Tweeted recently by one of my favorite authors of all time: Nassim Taleb.

   2. It hit me because I’m a person who tries to constantly optimize my life… and I occasionally DO decide that I can’t be friends with someone anymore because they’re “not optimal.” Yikes. I think this is bad. I need to watch out for this tendency.

4. Are our bodies cellphones, and consciousness is our data plan? Who owns the network?

5. Does information compression = mind expansion?

   1. Said another way, is the increase and compression of information around us tantamount to mind expansion?

6. New Internet Words I’ve Learned This Month:

   1. Stay at Home Daughters — Rich unmarried women who flaunt their lives on TikTok and live off Daddy’s money with pride.

   2. Funemployed — the trend of quitting your job just to have fun.

   3. Cyber Animism — the idea that consciousness is not created by hardware as materialism would have you believe, but by different “software” running on different objects. Heard this first via Daniel Pinchbeck.

   4. A Large Media Organism — just sounds cool, could be applied to many things

   5. Hypersition — doomer psy op designed to become reality. Beliefs or narratives that, through their existence and spread, become self-fulfilling and create their own reality or truth. Used in reference to the show Black Mirror.

      

   6. Information Plumber — also just sounds cool, could be applied to many things

   7. Jeterosity — when good-natured rich people take you for rides on their private jets.

7. I’m so glad I wasn’t a teenager in the thong era.

   1. At the beach recently, I saw soooo many young women in thongs. There was absolutely no point in my life when I would have looked good in a thong in public. Not at 18, not at 19, literally never, and I’m glad I didn’t have to exist as a young woman with this butt floss pressure.

8. Low-key digging Miu Miu’’s Literary vibes

   1. In case Dua Lipa’s book club and podcast weren’t enough for you, the high-brow purse brand Miu Miu is going hard on the bookish crowd.

   2. Example:

9. I read my first Donna Tartt book (The Goldfinch on audio) and now I’ll be a forever fan. I’m sure it will probably be my favorite book of the year. Omg. All 800+ pages. Highly recommend. Don’t watch the movie, though. I made that mistake after I finished the book, as I do… Almost never a good idea to watch the movie version of a book you love.

   

10. “Health and wellness is porn for anxious people.” — Andrew Wilkinson

    1. Very guilty of this type of anxiety porn.

That’s all for today.

Now You

What is your current brain drizzle?

Are you experiencing the Cosmic Smog?

Any favorite new words?

Any questions? Complaints?