Some days, it’s just not worth the effort.

Not the effort of writing. I can do that mechanically. But the effort of trying to formulate an idea that will catch the algorithm’s attention, rise above the vast ocean of competing opinions, and somehow matter in a feed that refreshes every few seconds.

I lost a childhood friend yesterday.

Some days, loss comes in waves. Not just one wave. Several. Not all the same kind. Each one is a gut punch that arrives before you’ve caught your breath from the last. And you sit there, absorbing each one, wondering if the ocean has always been this relentless or if you’re just now noticing.

You wake up, look at the screen, stare at the keyboard, and have to ask: What do you do with it all?

We spend so much of our lives trying to be seen. Seen for what we’ve built. Seen for what we know. Seen for who we are beneath the titles and the timelines. We craft, refine, and position, hoping that the right combination of words will finally make someone understand our value.

Then a door closes. Or several doors. And you’re left wondering if maybe they never saw you at all. Just a version of you that was convenient to consider for a while.

And still, we keep showing up. Pouring ourselves into a machine surrounded by noise. An endless display of extremely opinionated gunk, where the soul of our content, the passion behind our words, gets trampled by a desperate need to be noticed. We curate ourselves across resumes, portfolios, and profiles, hoping someone will see through the performance to something real. Hoping it will matter.

But in times like now, even those efforts, no matter how genuine, how honest, pale. They don’t make us feel seen. They don’t bring back what’s gone.

Because being seen isn’t a metric. It’s not engagement or impressions or a seat at a table. It’s someone knowing your voice. It’s being valued not for what you produce, but for who you are when you’re not producing anything at all.

Why do we do any of this? Why do we pour ourselves into ideas that get measured by strangers who will never know us? Why do we keep showing up to a machine that takes everything and promises visibility in return?

I don’t have an answer today.

Some days, the kindest thing you can do is close the laptop. Sit with the weight. Stop performing for an audience that may or may not be watching. Remember that you existed before the feed, before the applications, before the endless cycle of proving yourself.

And you’ll exist after it.

Some days, you just have to step off the machine and remember what it felt like to simply be. To remember that being seen also means carrying those we can no longer see. The ones who knew us before any of this mattered. The ones whose memory of who we are needs no algorithm to survive.