Quiet in the wrong way

Sometime last year, a question arrived and just wouldn't leave. Why does any of this matter?

I remember standing in the shower when the weight of it landed. Like something heavy had been lowered onto my chest while I wasn't paying attention. Kim (my wife) was in the room, and I said it out loud before I could filter it: I think some kind of depression is about to hit me.

That's a strange thing to say out loud. You hear yourself say it and part of you is already trying to take it back, already scanning for a softer word, something less alarming. But the truer part of you knows you said it because it's accurate. Because you can feel it arriving like weather you can't outrun.

Three things happened around the same time. A collaboration ending. Finding out I was going to become a father in eight months. And a deep dive into AI 2027 that made the future feel enormous and somehow airless. Any one of those I could probably have absorbed. Together, they cracked something open that had probably been sealed for years. And once it was open, the question walked right in.

Why do I do what I do, and why does it matter?

I tried listening in to the people around me. Friends, family, mentors. I'm surely not the first person to ask this question. Someone must have found an answer I can borrow. I do it for my family. I do it because I love the work. Because it creates value for my clients. And I almost believe them. But then that voice shows up, the relentless inner critic, the one who won't let anything land without cross-examining it first. But why does that matter?

So I did what any reasonable person spiraling about the meaning of life would do. I picked up Rutger Bregman's Utopia for Realists. And something in it crystallized for me. That life is about leaving the world in a better place than you found it. It felt true. It felt like the kind of answer that should have settled things. So I started looking into what it would take to launch an NGO. And I remember sitting with that idea, waiting for something to ignite, and feeling absolutely nothing. Just my mind performing what purpose was supposed to look like, while something deeper in me stood there with its arms crossed, completely unconvinced.

That's what I mean when I say it felt airless. Still. The complete absence of wanting to make anything at all. A place without creation isn't violent or dramatic. It's just quiet in the wrong way.

For months, there was no answer. And that sitting with a question you can't resolve, refusing to grab the first comfortable answer just to make the discomfort stop, is part of what started these notes. If I couldn't answer the question, I could at least stay close to it. Keep writing toward it.

Then one night, I was reading The Creative Act by Rick Rubin. Listening while reading, a habit I picked up from Alex Hormozi that changed how much I retain. I was tired. Half paying attention. Already sliding toward sleep. I'd barely started when a line stopped me.

Creativity is a fundamental aspect of being human. Our birthright. Something every one of us carries.

Something about hearing those words in the dark, on a night when I wasn't looking for anything, let them bypass every defense I had up. I put the book down. Lay there in the quiet. Not sure what had shifted. But certain something had.

I woke up the next morning and the weight was different. Not gone. Different. Like it had been redistributed.

To create is to bring something into existence that wasn't there before. As long as something is being made, things are moving. As long as things are moving, there is life.

That was the floor I'd been looking for. And it had been underneath me the whole time.

When I feel low, even from something as small as a song that pulls me back to a lonely time, my instinct has always been to go deeper. The full album. More songs from that era. More of the feeling. I told myself I was being honest by sitting with the hard thing. Brave, even.

I'm not sure that was true. I think I was just staying still. And calling it honesty because that felt better than admitting I didn't know how to move.

The answer I have now is smaller than I expected. When I feel the pull toward stillness, I make something. Anything. A sentence. A voice note. A picture. A meal I've never cooked before. What matters is that something exists afterward that didn't exist before.

This still feels new to me. Still turning it over. I don't know yet if it will hold. But it's the most honest answer I've found to a question that had me completely still for a long time.

When do you feel most alive? And does creation, in whatever form it takes for you, have anything to do with it?