Forgetting is a gift. We don’t like to forget, but it’s a gift nonetheless. If you’d ask random people on the street whether they’d like to have perfect memory, most of them would probably say yes without giving the question another thought. But imagine for a moment, if you may, the absolute curse of perfect, eternal memory. All your mistakes, all your regrets, all the terrible things you did in the past, every time you failed, every time you made a fool of yourself, every missed opportunity, every loss, every heartbreak; in short: every bad thing that ever happened to you or happened because of you. All recorded perfectly, in high fidelity, ready to be recalled at a moment’s notice.

Hell.

Forgetting to write is something I’m excellent at. Forgetting to write my friends, my mum, the people I care for. A simple hello. A short I’m thinking of you. I’m terrible at it. I think the reason is exhaustion, mostly. I wake up most days with a couple dozen DMs waiting for me. Some days it’s hundreds. It’s a side-effect of the internet. Instant communication. Always-on availability. My inboxes have been rekt for years, and by extension so have I.

Forgetting to write in general is something I’m excellent at too. Essays, articles, books. I’m supposed to be writing, and I’d love to write more. But I had to leave all writing behind because … well, I don’t think I would’ve managed to survive if I had to write “on the side” in addition to all the other stuff.

As I was starting to write these paragraphs I had the title “Switching Gears” in mind. Followed immediately by the intrusive thoughts of “I’m not sure if I’ll manage” and “I’m not even sure if I’m capable of it.” But I’m at a point now where I have to make a choice: continue to “function” as I have in the past, or switch gears and maybe, hopefully, God-willingly, create again?

“Choosing is not optional,” says one of the books I’m currently reading. “All outcomes, including doing nothing, are choices. At its core, moment-to-moment living is a problem of investment and returns.” And of course, as the book goes on to elaborate, we all want to invest as little as we can get away with while maximizing our returns. I love the next part: “These problems seem straightforward until we consider the stakes involved for real creatures in the real world: life or death.”

Life or death. That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it. I think that’s what’s at the core of the issue that I’m facing. Each day that I spend functioning, or perhaps “grinding” as the kids might say these days, is a day I don’t spend creating. It’s a day I die a little death. And I don’t mean it in the French orgasm sense of “la petite mort.” I mean it in the sense of I wasn’t put on this earth to write another email, or review another spreadsheet.

The last 6 years have been years of instability. I barely had room to breathe, let alone to think. Hence my hiatus from thinkboyism.

I’m not even sure if I want to expand on the root causes of said instability. Maybe one day. Maybe it’s something I should do. Maybe it’s something I have to do. Who knows.

Someone came up to me recently and out of all the things I ever wrote they thanked me for writing about my father, which is strange, since it’s a personal piece I wrote to process his death. I wrote it for myself. I’m not even sure why I published it, but I did. I guess most decisions are like that: we barely understand why we do something, but we do it anyway. And we try to rationalize it after the fact.

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life,” to quote the late Steve Jobs. “Almost everything—all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure—these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.”

Memento mori. We all have to die. You, me, your dog, your loved ones. Everyone you ever saw, everyone you ever knew, everyone you ever loved.

My mom got diagnosed with cancer yesterday. Pancreatic. Liver metastases to boot. It’s the fourth time she’s been diagnosed with cancer, and I have the feeling that it’s going to be the last time.

“Death is nature’s way of forgetting,” is what I wrote about a week ago. And now death is knocking at the door. Again. “The single best invention of life,” to quote Jobs once more. “It’s life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.”

He died of pancreatic cancer too. I keep forgetting.