My therapist* gave me homework at the end of our last meeting: a list of three philosophy books to read. That might sound like an odd thing for a therapist to do, but it’s not odd at all given the nature of the existential dilemmas I bring to him. One of the books was Rollo May’s The Courage to Create. It was a thought-provoking read. Let’s talk about some of the thoughts it provoked.

I think I wrote about this before, but there are two values that inform how I live my life in my 40s. One is curiosity and the other is humility. I consider curiosity to be a humanistic value: it is the passion to learn and engage with the world and with my and others’ humanity. Humility goes hand in hand with it: it’s being open to the process of change that engagement with the world engenders. It’s being comfortable with “I don’t know all the answers.” It’s the courage not to look away, even when presented with something that challenges you. To accept the possibility of making mistakes as the price of personal growth — indeed, as an intrinsic facet of the human condition. We are not perfect and we should not be scared to confront and accept the limitations borne of our imperfection.

One of my favorite mantras related to humility is “strong opinions, loosely held.” Not so loosely that they scatter away at the lightest breeze; just loose enough that they don’t become tethers that stop me from growing and evolving. I found a more eloquent description of this in May’s book, where he writes about the curious paradox of courage: “It is the seeming contradiction that we must be fully committed, but we must also be aware at the same time that we might possibly be wrong.”

He goes on to write: “Commitment is healthiest when it is not without doubt, but in spite of doubt.” I could also substitute “curiosity” for commitment here. Curiosity is healthiest when it doesn’t exclusively seek comfort and confirmation, but rather possesses the courage to accommodate discomfort and doubt. 

May concludes:

“To believe fully and at the same time to have doubts is not at all a contradiction: it presupposes a greater respect for the truth, an awareness that truth always goes beyond anything that can be said or done at any given moment. To every thesis there is an antithesis, and to this there is a synthesis. Truth is a never-dying process.”

Reading the book, I was able to see a connection between the values of curiosity and humility and the concept of creativity. In my discussions with my therapist, unpacking my experience of creativity, I had previously spoken about how, after self-reflection, I have come to understand my creative process as a dialogue between myself and an Other. In retrospect, I am not surprised that he recommended me to read The Courage to Create, because here is May talking about creativity:

“Creativity occurs in an act of encounter and is to be understood with this encounter at its centre.”

“Creativity … is the encounter of the intensively conscious human being with his or her world.”

To this, I would add that curiosity and humility mediate that encounter. Must do so. Encounter implies a mutual (ex)change. It is something that affects both participants, which means that it can only genuinely happen if the participants allow themselves to be affected — if they have the courage to remain open to the possibility of transformation/change/growth.

Creativity has different manifestations. For me, the obvious one is my writing, which can be conventionally labeled as “creative.” To put it in May’s terms, the act/process of writing is one means by which I encounter the world. Put differently, my books are a means of making sense of (and making legible to others) my experience of the world. Writing it down helps to give shape and meaning to that lived experience. In reading my books, the reader interprets (and re-shapes) that meaning in their own fashion, through the lens of their own lived experience. Whether or not they transmit the resulting ideas directly back to me, thus completing a loop, the encounter has happened. Both sides have (hopefully) been transformed by it, in small ways or otherwise. It’s like a conversation that happens in two different rooms, being no less impactful (to both parties) for all that it takes place at a distance.

However, The Courage to Create makes it clear that creativity isn’t limited to those acts that society labels as such. The essence of creativity is much broader. May writes: 

“Persons in therapy – or anybody for that matter – are not simply engaged in knowing their world: what they are engaged in is a passionate re-forming of their world by virtue of their interrelationship with it. This passion for form is a way of trying to find and constitute meaning in life. And this is what genuine creativity is.”

The fear of meaninglessness is an existential one, an inescapable aspect of the human condition. Countless philosophers have wrestled with it and offered different ‘solutions’ or answers to the problem. As a humanist, I have come to the conclusion that the answer is creativity – that is to say, the passion to go and encounter the world and find and create meaning in spite of the seeming meaninglessness of the world. The “in spite of” draws on the concept of courage. To create, one must have courage. (And, I would add, curiosity + humility.) 

There are many ways to create meaning. Indeed, all the ways in which we encounter – engage with – the world represent an opportunity to create meaning. In each of those encounters, we shape ourselves and our values and, through giving them expression, the world around us. That is an incredibly potent alchemy. Don’t be afraid to tap into it. 

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*who is really a psychoanalyst, but I feel weird typing that. 

Being online, and specifically on social media, in 2026 feels an awful lot like being stuck in an episode of Black Mirror you didn’t consent to watch in the first place. Every part of the experience has been ensh*ttified to the point that it’s barely recognizable as the thing I was once doing for fun. Now, the only thing keeping me there is the inertia of long-established habits, but even that is starting to wear thin. For me, the breaking point is fast approaching, and it has to do with the death of community.

Connection has always been at the core of the work I do as a writer and content creator. The search for community is why I joined social media, and the humanistic values associated with community — authentic human connection, above all — have informed my approach to social media. I have watched capitalism slowly poison the potential of social media, and the internet in general, to deliver those “third spaces” that have been eradicated (also by capitalism) in the non-virtual world. I have persevered, determined to hold on to whatever small pocket of community remained … but, friends, I fear I am losing the battle. Social media, in its current form, no longer connects us — not even in an accidental fashion, while it operates primarily as a marketplace. It now actively dis-connects us, isolating us into empty echo chambers populated by vampire robots whose job it is to extract every nugget of human creativity so it can be repackaged and capitalized by billionaire technocrats.

I know that sounds like overblown ravings but, honestly, it doesn’t even scratch the surface of how bleak it feels to be on social media these days.

Things were bad before, but AI has made them 1000% worse. To participate in social media as a content creator now is to willingly participate in your own exploitation — and for absolutely zero reward. I’m not even talking about monetary compensation. I’m talking about access to your own audience, the people for whom you are creating the content in the first place. The algorithm will make sure they never see it. Meanwhile, AI is given free rein to scrape all your content and do with it God knows what.

The answer — quit social media — has been growing on me for many months now. I have been on Instagram since 2013, almost as long as I’ve been writing this blog. I have met countless of wonderful people through my accounts, including some I consider close friends. The idea of abandoning my little IG community is gut-wrenching … but, at the same time, every day I’m being forced to face the painful truth that my community has already vanished, if not entirely then as good as. What remains is a mirage, one that grows more transparent every week.

But the yearning for community is ever the same. I believe it’s an existential one, ingrained in human nature. Part of what makes us human, in fact. So, where do we go from here?

For me, that answer can’t be another corporate-owned platform. I have learned my lesson; these platforms will dangle the promise of audience reach, but at the cost of unilaterally setting all the terms of engagement. I don’t trust that what’s happening with Instagram today won’t happen with Instagram 2.0 tomorrow. I’ve seen that movie before, and I know how it ends. I consider myself lucky in that, for all these years, I’ve kept this domain alive — one, tiny refuge in a storm of sh*t. I don’t have a huge audience here, but at least no one else dictates who can engage with my content and how. At the same time, I know that this blog is less conveniently accessible to people than, say, Instagram. To engage with my content here requires extra steps, and people are busy, and constantly bombarded with content from a myriad of other sources. So, I don’t have anyone directly throttling my reach, but my reach is small for other reasons. This is the part I’m working on making peace with.

I am starting to think very intently/intentionally about what it might look like to fully step away from social media and focus all my content-creation energy here. The complicating factor is the writer side of things — that’s to say, my online presence as an indie author, currently using social media as a primary means of marketing. In fact, social media is not actually effective as marketing these days, but it’s “better than nothing”. I need to figure out if there’s a “better than nothing” alternative that can replace social media. My pie-in-the-sky goal is to be able to start 2027 with a social media hiatus.

This is not necessarily a call to action — though if you have suggestions or commiserations, please share in the comments — but I am going to take the opportunity and ask you to bookmark the blog so that it has a better chance of not getting lost in the noise of *gestures around* everything going on. And to make an extra little plug: if you appreciate authentic, 100% human content, please engage with it when you have a spare moment: comment on and share posts that resonate with friends, and help make spaces where community can flourish again.

Edit: I have decided to start a free weekly email newsletter, where I can share fun highlights from my life. It will be similar in format to my Friday Feels posts (which will transition off the blog) but expanded. I will continue to post longform writing here, once a week. If you are interested in signing up for my newsletter mailing list, drop a SUBSCRIBE in the comments. Thank you to all who have reached out, here and on social media, to commiserate. I appreciate you. We will get through this.

Busy weeks are stressful, but busy weeks also tend to be distracting, which leaves less room for existential angst. I’ll take it. And the best news is that Alberta remains (as it should be) Canadian. In an increasingly mad world, it’s nice (and such a relief!) to see sanity prevail now and then.

I wish I could tell you what I did this week but, honestly, I’ve already blocked most of it from my mind. Lately, stuff happens, and five minutes later, I’ve forgotten about it. I’d blame it on perimenopause but I think it’s just good old fashioned executive overload. To tackle the next thing, I gotta make mental room, so out goes the old task (that, hopefully, I actually completed). I’m pretty sure there were some parent-teacher conferences, doctor appointments, the usual chores, and at least half a dozen dropped balls of some sort.

I did read a couple of books, finally – yay! Admittedly, they were short books. But also quite substantial. One was The Courage to Write by Rollo May, and one was The Courage to Be by Paul Tillich; both recommended to me by my amazing therapist. [Who is actually a psychoanalyst, but I don’t like to call him that because it sounds pretentious when I hear myself say “my psychoanalyst”, lol! Anyhoo.] I am still digesting them, and all the food for thought they’ve given me, but expect to see them mentioned again in some future post(s).

I have been dealing with a lot of creative angst lately, and finally had a major breakthrough in my last therapy session. Yes, I talk about that sort of thing with my therapist. It’s all existential, when you dig down far enough, I assure you. It couldn’t have come at a better time because I was teetering on the verge of abandoning my current WIP, a new urban fantasy series in which I’ve poured massive amounts of energy, these last 5 months or so. Now, I feel like I have a better handle on both the creative process as a whole, and this specific work in particular.

I also got feedback from one of my trusted beta readers on the first 9 chapters of book #1, which was mostly encouraging. I have some ideas for fixing/improving some of the issues they raised, but most importantly, I feel reassured that I have a fun story worth the continued investment.

It might sound like I’m putting an awful lot of value/faith in the opinion of one person, and that’s true, up to a point. Beta readers are a part of the writing process that isn’t perhaps well understood by many who aren’t (seasoned) writers. Plus, in this case, my beta reader is also, in part, a writing critique partner (being a writer themselves). It’s someone I’ve known for a long time, whose judgment (creative and intellectual) I value a lot. Not more than my own, ultimately, but enough to carefully consider as part of my decision-making. I think every writer who is serious about their craft needs someone like that in their corner.

On the other hand, too many opinions (especially from random people) can be more detrimental than helpful. When I hear of people having 4, 5, 8 or more beta readers, I wince. More power to them if they find it helpful, but I would probably end up tearing my hair out and never finishing any piece of writing.

I have been informed that the snow forecasted for this weekend is now on a two-week delay, so I have no excuse not to tackle the garden this weekend – alas. Is there anything less fun than winterizing? At least the recent windstorms have cleared a good chunk of the dead leaves. Thanks, Mother Nature!

Have a great weekend!