[FBT] on Envy and Entropy

Maybe I’m envious

Right, well. After last week’s admission that I’ve been banging my head on the proverbial wall and waiting for the demons to subside, I should use this second FBT of the year to proclaim positivity and lust for life. It’s utter bullshit, but who cares, fake it til you make it and all that. I’ve been reading enough that I have decided that I should probably stop wishing I were someone else. Instead I should STFU and get on with it. Write my little stories. Make my little projects. Live my little life.

We all have such little lives.

This week, I’ve been rereading “Bird by Bird”, a book by Anne Lamott. I’ve also been reading Margaret Atwood’s autobiography, Not the End of the World by Hannah Ritchie, The Creative Act from Rick Rubin,  two back issues of Jacobin, random shit on the internet and the first half of the Dark Forest Anthology of the Internet.

I didn’t read much in December, so I can’t seem to settle on one thing now that I remembered how to read. For reference, my critical review having not finished any of these books (except for Bird by Bird, which I’m reading for the second time) goes as such: Great, lovely, helpful, tired, political, sporadic, Berlin.

Looking across the field at the people who seem like they have big lives and feeling the enraging flush of envy is no way to spend a Tuesday morning. Envy is a cardinal sin, and the thing about the big life is that it is just a lie.

street art by Morley

The big life, which is also, mind you, a lie, is crippling in its incessantness. Unrelenting, such a life, unrelenting. If you are the one living it, people want to know you and they expect things from you and they call you and they write you and you write them and you have to be smart and they want you to speak at their thing and you travel a lot and know a lot about airports and train stations and hotels and you keep chasing the feeling you got the first time someone you admired made you feel like an equal and you feel obligated to be the person that you used to be and you feel like you need to pretend to believe things you no longer believe because otherwise the big life might slip away and you will have to face the fact that you are, actually, just a human. 

A finite lifespan awaits you. Memento Mori.

If you see the lie then at some point you are chewed up and spat out and you can’t think and don’t know anymore and your ego goes past death. Maybe the attention economy’s seductive pull eviscerated your intrinsic motivation and the conflict between your lizard brain and the cultural expectations of success is no longer mitigated by a rational entity. Maybe you realise that there is really only one thing left to do and that is to just not givafok anymore and do your own goddamn work.

Maybe this is easier for some than it is for others. Maybe you’ve been doing your own goddamn work for a very long time anyway, you’re just brain damaged and that takes up a lot of your time.

Maybe every once in a while you catch a glimpse of the big lifers and at first you’re envious about their cocksure interpretive neo-futuristic cultural optimism. Then you realise that you’ve already been to Berghain and they’re really just reinventing the wheel and giving it a new name. Maybe they have the capital to reinvent said wheel. And maybe, just maybe, the envy fades because you realise that although they seem to have some sort of purpose, they don’t actually read the science and their ideas only seem innovative on the skin and besides, we all have such little lives.

And then you see a big lifer who radiates light and kindness and authenticity and you wonder if your authentic self is worth the benefits bleeding from the responsibilities of the big life and it makes you tired so you just lay down. Sleep. Try to forget.

When you wake up you think about how little you know about all the little lives and how big every little life actually is. You remember the ripples that other “little” lifers have left on your life, and you remember how little the big lifers impacted you. That’s where the shame comes in. Shame that you had to spend any time at all dealing with your envy. 

• We are living in a time of polycrisis. If you feel trapped – you’re not alone > https://www.theguardian.com/wellness/2026/jan/14/new-year-polycrisis-psychology-feeling-trapped
• The year of technoligarchy > https://www.citationneeded.news/the-year-of-technoligarchy/
• The pivot > https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2025/10/the-pivot-1.html

Maybe I need help

street art by Morley

I’m not sure most people really feel their feelings, identify them and adjust their behaviour accordingly. I try very hard to control myself. I write cryptic screeds detailing my weekly emotional journey instead of being a troll. I wish other people did the same. 

None of us are what we appear to be. We are not our diagnoses or our accomplishments. We aren’t our profiles or accolades. We are meat bags of mess, and there isn’t a person on the planet who isn’t. It’s just whether or not they realise it.

We are collapsing super storms of atoms. I call this knowledge “solace”.

Rumination is bad for me, and I said I would be positive. I feel positive, but rereading this FBT doesn’t sound…optimistic. Oh well, I need practice. I’ll stop for the day, and ask you to hit reply. I’ve not heard from you lately, maybe you have something to share?