composed but not sent 6/20/22

Geoffrey Lewis
4 min readDec 3, 2022

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way too many founders, men with cameras and computers, typing, paying attention, talking; too many of us, painful multiplicity (that’s a good line, could it go somewhere? I of course believe in just ripping, start talking and let yourself get lost, go out for a walk with your voice, the one thing that won’t abandon you, the one way to stay bolted to life (my body falling apart, slowing down — could workout and then sing later, eat better, hydrate, lose some weight, get some speed back, rehabilitation after loss or bad luck; what did I do? What was I eating in Groton? Snacks? Did I ever prepare a meal? On good nights I’d buy a $15 salad with protein somewhere, breakfast was sugar, butter, fat, salt, something tasty, coffee with milk and cream and sugar, crap, really not treating my body well at all, not caring about progress, an unprofessional environment, stranded on the street in the middle of town; it’s a cinematic failure, no big failure per se, were the people mediocrities or was I? I had no family there, no friends, and winning wasn’t going to happen; an absent boss who wasn’t paying me, endless line of excuses and problems, delays, and I didn’t find it funny; it ended up being seven weeks off from my usual suffering — the Upper West Side of Manhattan was of course nice; would I go back? I would; it’s a fine place to live, if I had the money to fly back regularly; how to get rich off doing my crazy shit lol; if I could maybe set my nervous breakdown and magnificent awareness to a beat, get it communicated…no, no, I have friends, and they’re sick of me, they don’t really want to hear from me, they tolerate me; they certainly wouldn’t pay for it if I was a stranger: “Oh wow, look, a guy having a nervous breakdown splaying out his inner thoughts on digital paper, and I can read it as a break from mine.” Ha, maybe that’s good digital marketing copy; should I form an LLC, shitpost endeavors? What would it be for? To justify the freedom to remain a child, to prove and believe in the power of not growing up. Ah, to make sense to the audience, the world, the other ~ this is magical drivel now, filing it away in the annals of my messages, sending to one friend, one reader, if only to keep going and keep the blinking cursor a hot slab where new good stuff comes out — I could just do this all day and maybe it would be enough, or maybe I have to play a lot of bad stuff; I can tell friends, “I’m trying to get my writing back” ha ha ha and really mean it, really do it for an hour then eat something then go for a walk then do more, and more and more and more, forever night and day until i die or my life becomes too stupid to justify anymore (again i am not suicidal i am just aware of the space i take up and doubting whether i deserve to live; i don’t really; i don’t do anything for anybody else; somehow i have to turn this into a gift and into a product and learn the hard road of maybe getting paid but then giving it all back in taxes, and sighing at my age, will be pushing 40 soon which no one will have sympathy about, that’s not old, of course there is no trophy or letter from the President, what i’d like is a potluck where women have prepared something like potato salad in a nice big glass pyrex; yes, i miss being loved; maybe i miss it from my mother’s generation, entertaining in the home, kindness…my mom sometimes chuckles and scoffs about women going back to work, because now who’s at home? are children raised by anyone but TikTok? they’re suicidal messes shooting up schools! dying for attention, to be looked at and seen, but the woman is climbing a greasy pole in corporate America speaking the truth of her frustration which is obviously valid, but the men just sigh and archive the email and hope to be left alone, hope the managers and enforcers are tired too. but maybe justice will come today, maybe everyone’s too tired to keep going in the old life

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