How do we sleep? Like not physiologically or whatever. What am I supposed to do to fall asleep? No one tells us; we are just supposed to know. Evidently, I do know, since I fall asleep every night. But I never remember falling asleep. I remember getting into my pajamas, turning my lights off, laying in my bed, and closing my eyes — but that's not sufficient, obviously. I could do all those same things and just not fall asleep. That happens a lot actually, and it keeps me up. So there must be some other thing that I do or that happens that I don't remember but is necessary for me to fall asleep. And every night I have to figure it out.

Obviously I do it, but I don't know I'm doing it. Which means that I must already be in some stage of sleep. But how did I get there? Maybe I figure it out and then forget by the morning. Maybe I'm overthinking it. But you know how when people take your photo and you have to ask what you should do with your hands? What do you do with your brain when you're trying to sleep?

There are a lot of things I don't know how to do. I don't know how to do a lot at my internship. I don't know how to act as an adult, as a professional. But I guess you kind of just do it? Like my supervisor must have been confused when he first started how many years ago, but eventually through conscious practice it became unconscious. The knowledge became as second nature as going to sleep — though of course, he can consciously recall it.

I went to the gym a few days ago and now I'm feeling a lot of soreness because I think I pushed myself too far. It was the first time I went to a gym that wasn't in my school. I didn't know where my limits were. You can't articulate where the limits are — you just know. But there are some growing pains along the way.

There are some bigger things I don't know. I don't know how to find love. I hear that it comes at you when you least expect it, but that goes against all my social knowledge. When I was in elementary school, I had a period where I had no real friends, and I was obviously upset about it. But my dad said that I can't expect to find friends if I don't look for them. It took him saying it about 20 times for me to get the memo, but now I live by that. You're unhappy about something? Do something about it. But I've been putting myself out there for two years and getting rejection after rejection. And you might say, “two years? That's nothing!!” And I say that's a fair point, but it doesn't change the fact that I can't control this. Maybe I need to act aloof so I become desirable, but that's so fucking annoying and I don't think I could do that. At some point, it will happen, but I don't think I will have learned anything that I don't already know.

It's like that philosophy thought experiment, Mary's Room, where this scientist lives in black and white but learns everything there is to learn about color. And then she goes into the world and sees color, and we have to ask if she learned anything new. I personally think yes, but that doesn't change the fact that if she were to be placed back in the black and white world, she couldn't experience color again. That was a stupid analogy.

I do sometimes wonder if I will die without finding love. I feel so privileged in almost every other way, maybe the universe is fucking with me and the unlikely event of never finding love will happen to balance things out. Ehh I can't ever really know, can I?

I don't know what life is about. I'm personally in my nihilist arc — going on about a year now. Maybe I'll change my opinion, maybe I won't. I don't know. Guys do you get it I don't know it's like the title of the thing

I'm working on my music, and I don't know how to do things. Like what the fuck is compression??? Why do I do it? How do I know how much is enough? How should I properly EQ my tracks? There's not one correct answer and it's really annoying. I feel like I'm pushing myself so much in every area of my life and it's draining. Music is supposed to be a haven and yet I'm pushing myself to ensure that the music doesn't sound like crap. If I don't push, it will sound like crap. I'm really in a lose-lose. I could look at it as a win-win, but I will not because I want to annoy my therapist.

The lyrics are the most annoying thing right now. It is really easy to write cheesy lyrics. Obviously I don't want to do that. I want to include more literary techniques, but how one does that is the question. Maybe I'm putting too much pressure on myself and I should just do it and edit it later. But that's easier said than done, and if I just put shit on the page, I will just have to rewrite it anyway and I really haven't gotten anywhere, have I? Maybe I need a partner to help me write lyrics. But this is a project of solitude for me, I don't think I could do that.

I used to get writer's block when I was in first grade. I had to do this “on demand writing” shit like four times a year, where they give you no prompt and just expect you to write. But I could never figure out what to write. I think it stemmed from the fact that I'm a perfectionist and I didn't want to do it wrong or make mistakes. But in order to do things right, you have to risk doing them wrong. I know at least that much. Maybe I forgot that.

Ok but still, where do the ideas come from? When Joni Mitchell talks about red and green in Marcie, how the hell did she come up with that? I have a note on my phone where I put some ideas I spontaneously come up with, but that couldn't fill up an album of songs a year. I can't imagine Joni did that. So some of these ideas are just, what, generated at whim? On demand, if I may? At the end of the day, what makes a good idea from a bad one? Is it what people think? What if the people who view my stuff don't know any better? Is it, in effect, good because my select audience thinks it's good? If I were to expand my audience, would the badness of the lyrics be realized? If a tree falls in a forest and no one hears it, does it—

I really wonder if what I say makes sense. When I say things, do other people understand them? Like do you get what I'm saying here or am I talking nonsense? I don't care, but I'm still curious about the answer. Is there a difference? I think I'm becoming esoteric. I'm fossilizing, perhaps.

I don't know how to end this but this is probably ok