I almost didn’t listen to this, I don’t like metal. That was a good enough in my head. But, I clicked it anyway. I don’t know why, I just wanted to listen. And I’m so glad I did.

Bloody hell, so not what I expected at all!

Very different from the original by Simon & Garfunkel. But better in my opinion.

Hooked from the first five words! But not so much the actual words, but that voice. Deep, emotional, and mysterious. It carries weight! Not what I thought a metal singer would sound like at all.

There’s something in his voice. It’s not just singing, it’s emotion. He tells a story, or gives a warning, or both maybe. There’s this deep, haunting stillness in his voice, which builds and intensifies as the song progresses, making the lyrics feel heavier with every line.

We are surrounded by people, but not really with them. You can be sitting next to someone but not actually be there. Suddenly the song doesn’t feel just like a song. It feels like commentary.

This tells me that silence isn’t empty. It spreads between people, and I start thinking about how normal that’s become. How often we are technically together but not actually together. Sitting in the same room but everyone somewhere else mentally, scrolling, half-listening and nodding without really hearing.

It’s not even intentional most of the time, it’s just how everything is now; how sad. The strange thing is, the quiet can feel loud. But an empty loud.

I think that’s what this version of the song is really pointing to, disconnection, not necessarily silence. The space between people is getting bigger even while we’re more “connected” than ever. Which is kind of backwards when you think about it.

We have more ways to communicate now than ever before: messages, calls, comments, reactions, video, everything is instant. But somehow it still feels harder to actually be with someone. To actually be present in a conversation without something else pulling their attention away.

I don’t think it’s just technology, it’s also us, our attention. The habit of splitting ourselves into a hundred directions at once, always half here and half somewhere else.

Maybe that’s what makes this song feel so intense, it forces attention and it doesn’t allow multitasking. It just pulls you in to listen. It makes you realise how rarely we actually stop, not just physically, but mentally.

I think that’s why this song has stuck, because it makes silence feel visible.

Even now, thinking about it, it feels less like a song and more like something that temporarily tuned me into a different layer of perception. One where disconnection isn’t just emotional or social, but something like a frequency drift that no one is consciously correcting because we’re all moving in it together.

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I’ve tried using AI in the past, and I’m glad I did. It taught me a lot about how to recognise AI written content. I played around with AI written articles and quickly noticed patterns. The same phrases used over and over, the same little dashes used instead of commas. The same corny words used to start sentences. It became repetitive and soulless.

So, it didn’t take long for me to abandon AI as a writing companion. However, I thought it was probably still handy for editing my work because I make a lot of mistakes. Use it as a tool right?

And yeah, AI is great for fixing my spelling mistakes, my grammar, and anything that just doesn’t flow the way it “should”. But even that felt wrong to me. AI would change my writing to be perfect! You might think, “well that’s great!” We want our writing to be perfect before publishing it right? Well, I think not.

The more I read other people’s work and see these perfectly AI written posts, the more I can’t stand reading anymore. At least online. I want the humanness back. I want the clunky sentences and the spelling mistakes. I want to enjoy getting to know a real person through their writing, not a robot.

I’m sure there are many uses for AI as a tool. I haven’t found this yet, but I will keep an open mind. But for now, anything that is creative can only be done by a human. Creativity needs emotion, struggle, and well, a soul. We want to make people feel something, or understand what’s going on in our heads. AI can’t do that. That’s why AI “creativity” feels empty. Because it IS empty.

I really hope AI articles die out soon. I want more human-creativity. I miss reading real work. I’m sure it’s still out there somewhere, but right now it’s being drowned out.

If you are a real writer, please let me know. I want to read your work. I want to connect with the humanness that used to dominate our world. And hopefully will again soon.

Don’t be perfect, be you :)

This morning, I came across a video explaining that the word of the year is slop.

Not something fancy. Just, slop.

At first, I almost dismissed it. It sounded not-so-important to me. But the more I watched, the more I realised that this is something I have been pondering on for a while. It isn’t just about low-quality content or lazy creativity. It pointed me to something deeper. A change in how we relate to what we create, consume, and even what we feel.

These days, creating something has never been easier. A couple of clicks and you can get an image, a full article, a logo, or whatever you want, perfect and completed. It all seems amazing, time-saving, and just, so easy. But something about the result feels wrong to me. Hollow is the word that resonates with me the most.

As someone who writes to produce something, and also to understand something, I’ve started to notice something more and more. There’s a huge difference between something that’s been AI written and something that has been lived and human-written. I mean, the information may technically be correct, but the ‘soul’ is missing from AI.

When creation becomes soulless, we lose the process that shapes us as humans.

I see this pretty clearly in the way I live with my own sensitivities. My body doesn’t let me rush things. Whether it’s food, environment, or stress, there is always feedback. Sometimes it’s subtle, but sometimes it’s impossible to ignore. Over time, I’ve realised that sensitivity is actually a kind of guide. It forces me to slow down and notice. To question what I’m taking in and how it’s affecting me.

And in a strange way, maybe it has made me more resistant to what I consume mentally and emotionally as well.

Because slop isn’t just content. It’s anything that fills space without nourishing something deeper.

Like the video explained, we’ve always made trade-offs with progress. Every tool gives us something, but it also takes something in return. The changes are rarely immediate, or obvious. And over time, we realise we’ve lost a certain intimacy with life that we didn’t even know we were giving up.

• We traded long conversations for quick messages.

• Navigation skills for GPS.

• Stillness for constant stimulation.

• The connection to nature for technology.

And now, with AI, we are being offered the ability to outsource thinking and creating itself!

But what happens to us when we no longer engage in the effort of doing?.

Meaning doesn’t come from effortlessness. It comes from struggles, inconvenient, and the hard times. The moments where you don’t know what you’re doing. The frustration of trying to express something you can feel but can’t fully articulate.

The imperfection of being human!

That is a process that changes you. It requires something of you. And the end result carries a kind of depth that can’t be manufactured.

AI can replicate patterns. It can mimic tone, structure, and even emotion. But it doesn’t have a body that feels, or a life that gives meaning to what it creates. It doesn’t sit in the discomfort of not knowing, or feel the shift that happens when something finally becomes clear.

And this is why the word ‘slop’ becoming so popular, is hopeful to me. Because it suggests that people are noticing it.

I think it shows that we haven’t completely lost our sensitivity to what is real and what is empty. There are still many of us who recognises when something lacks substance, when it hasn’t been lived, felt, or earned in some way.

And, I think there is a growing hunger to bring back meaning.

People are returning to physical books instead of endless scrolling. I’ve noticed many going back to physical media like DVDs over AI driven content, myself being one of them. We are choosing slower forms of creativity that require patience and presence. Or seeking conversations that aren’t optimised or filtered, but slightly awkward and real.

Even in my own life here, in a slower, more rural setting, I notice how different things feel when they aren’t automated. The rhythm of the day isn’t dictated by efficiency, but by what needs attention. There’s a kind of groundedness in that. It’s not always easy. It’s often inconvenient, but it fees alive.

But, I agree with the video. And I thought maybe I was just being hopeful, or in the minority. I don’t think we’re heading toward a future where everything becomes artificial. We won’t be taken over by AI.

I think we’re being pushed into a clearer, more natural life.

On one side, there will be endless content, fast, polished, and increasingly repetitive. Easy to consume, easy to forget.

And on the other side, there will be something much more valuable. Work that carries the imprint of a human life. Writing that feels like it came from the soul. Art that reflects struggle, curiosity, and imperfection.

Things that take longer, that require something of us. And because of that, actually mean something.

For me, writing sits firmly on that side.

I don’t reject tools or technology. AI can certainly be used as a tool, and can be useful. But the value has never been in the finished piece. It’s in what happens while I’m writing it. That’s not something you can outsource.

Maybe this is what we’re being asked to remember.

Our worth was never in how efficiently we can produce something, or how perfectly we can get a result. It was always in our ability to feel, to struggle, and to create meaning from our own experience.

And in a world that is increasingly filled with slop, humanity won’t become obsolete. It will become priceless!

I wrote about my escape from the city to the country about 8 months ago called ‘Edges of the Map’. At the time, I thought I had finally figured out the kind of life I wanted, actually I was sure I had. Well, how things have changed! After becoming a hermit for just over a year, I am ready to get back into society. I need to get back into the world.

I know many love to live in rural areas. It’s peaceful, nothing much happens, and you are isolated. Well, it’s not for me. Although I do not regret the move, and I strongly believe it has been good for me, I need activity, I need people around me, and I need Kmart, dammit!

The past year has been good for me. I needed the break and the recharge. I needed to learn that rebelling against the system only increases it’s strength. I learned that I can live in the “system”, enjoy the good bits, and not get involved in the bad bits.

After a while, something else became clear. Stepping away from the world had helped me see it from a different perspective. When you are constantly moving, commuting, working, scrolling, buying, you don’t have much space to question why you are doing any of it. Life becomes a hamster wheel.

For the first time in years, there was silence. Real silence. The kind where you can hear the wind move through the trees and notice your own thoughts without interruption.

At first, that silence felt like relief. But after a while, another truth appeared.

It works beautifully until you have to deal with other humans again. Living quietly in the country helped me realise something surprising:

The goal isn’t to escape the system entirely. It’s to stop letting it run my inner world.

I used to think there were only two choices, either you chase the game, or you reject it completely. Work harder. Buy more. Impress people. Or walk away and pretend none of it matters.

But there’s a third option that took me a year of quietness to see.

I can step back into the world without handing it the steering wheel. I can enjoy the good parts, the convenience, the creativity, the people, yes, even Kmart, without tying my sense of worth to them.

And that feels like a much healthier way for me to live. So after a year of the hermit life, I’m ready to re-enter society. But not as someone trying to win the game. Just as someone willing to play it my way.

And somewhere in that realisation, another thought started forming.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what it means to really live, not just exist in routines, responsibilities, and things that look like stability. Somewhere in the back of my mind, a feeling has been growing that life is too short to wait, the world is too big to stay in one place, and my soul is too restless to stay confined by the rules of the ordinary.

So, I’m leaving. I’m leaving the rural life, this house, the possessions, the familiar patterns. For a while, my home will be a caravan, and my days will be measured by the rhythm of the road, the changing light, and the small, sacred moments that often go unnoticed.

Starting in Western Australia, I’m moving across the country, slowly and intentionally, toward Tasmania. But not just for the scenery, to see life differently, through my own eyes. To step fully into a life that feels alive, unchained, and true to me.

This is a conscious choice to step outside the expectations, to listen to my own guidance, and to honour the inner compass that has been quietly nudging me. To me, this is more than travel, it’s a spiritual practice, a letting go of what no longer serves, and a reclaiming of creative and emotional freedom.

I see the world differently, think differently, and want to live differently, beyond the familiar patterns, beyond what everyone says is “normal.” This isn’t impulsive or reckless. It’s calculated and full of both excitement and fear. I’ve realised that staying where I am, holding onto what feels safe (but boring), would be far more constraining than embracing the uncertainty ahead.

Maybe the point was never to escape the system entirely. Maybe the point was simply to step far enough away to see it clearly. The past year gave me that distance. It gave me quiet, space, and the chance to question the things I had been running on autopilot for years.

Now I’m stepping back into the world again. Not to chase it, or to fight it, but to move through it more consciously.

And if a caravan, an open road, and the occasional Kmart stop are part of that journey, then that sounds like a pretty good place to begin.

It wasn’t a thought exactly. It was more like a feeling, a silent download, that appeared during that space between being awake and asleep.

The answers are in your dreams.

That feeling, or more like a knowing felt important. It sat in the background of my mind for years, but for some reason, recently it returned and I began paying attention.

For years I had circled the idea that “we are all one.” I read the books and listened along to philosophers. I have even resonated with the famous line by Albert Einstein: “Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”

But I still felt like me. Separate. Contained just inside this skin. A pair of eyes looking out at a world that clearly wasn’t my own creation. Until I began to look at my dreams more carefully.

When I dream, the world is real. The ground has texture. The air has weight. The people have personalities. Some are kind and some are mean. Many ignore me completely!

Inside my dreams, I never question the reality. But when I wake up, I understand something amazing:

Every single thing in my dream is coming from me.

The buildings, the trees, the weather, and all the strangers in the crowd.

But, they feel separate. They appear to have their own will, their own interior world. But they are all coming from the same mind, my mind!

If I stand in a crowd of hundreds in a dream, that is hundreds of expressions arising from one mind. Mine.

I just happen to be focused through one character at a time.

Sometimes I even shift perspectives. Sometimes I’m watching the scene from above, like a camera pulling back. Sometimes I’m not anyone, just awareness observing its own creation.

All of the landscapes generate themselves. The dialogue appears to write itself. Weather systems form without my effort. It feels autonomous, but it is not separate.

And when I wake up, the whole thing dissolves. Instantly.

That’s when the deeper question began to bug me. What if this……..this life, is not fundamentally different from a dream? What if it only feels more solid because I haven’t woken up from it yet?

I’m not saying that this world is fake. It doesn’t feel fake. But my dreams don’t feel fake either.

There’s a children’s song that always lingered in the back of my mind:

Row, row, row your boat
Gently down the stream
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily
Life is but a dream.

When I was younger, it was just a fun song. But now, it feels instructional.

The boat is the body.
The stream is the current of experience.
The “gently” is the key.

When I fight the current and I try to force outcomes, or control everything, resisting what’s happening, life feels heavy and stagnant.

But when I let go and allow (which I struggle with), things begin to move with an almost eerie intelligence. Like the stream already knows where it’s going.

In my own dreams, I never consciously push the plot forward. It unfolds with its own intelligence. I don’t consciously design any of it, at least I don’t think I do. It simply appears.

So who, or what is dreaming?

Sometimes I imagine each consciousness like different bubble worlds or dimensions. A dream within a dream within a dream. Bubbles can overlap with other bubbles depending on the frequency. Creating interactions with other bubbles (consciousnesses).

Perhaps what we call “God” is not a separate entity, but a vast field of awareness, dreaming universes the way we dream worlds.

Maybe each of us is a focal point, a perspective through which that awareness experiences itself. But in a dream, the consciousness feels slightly dimmed compared to waking life. It’s kind of like another step down. Like when you photocopy a photocopy. The quality starts to reduce.

And interestingly, many people who have had near-death experiences describe something similar in reverse, they say the other side felt more real. More vivid. More awake than this. Like this world is a slightly lower resolution of something more clear.

The signal strength is fading as it moves further from the source.

I don’t claim to understand it fully. These are just my ideas.

And yet, in “real life” I don’t fully believe this means we are all just one single mind pretending. That feels too simple, flat. A bit depressing for my liking. What if this dream is more collaborative than that? What if consciousness is not a solitary dreamer but a shared field, something that allows multiple centres (bubbles) of awareness to participate at once?

A bit like online gamers joining the same game.

In my night dreams, every character is generated by me. But maybe this larger “life” dream is a little more complex. Maybe it is co-created, woven from countless perspectives, each genuinely aware, each contributing to the unfolding. Not one pretending to be many, but many arising within something deeper that holds us all.

But if life is dreamlike, that doesn’t make it meaningless. Its impermanence is part of its design. Everything here shifts. Nothing stays fixed. Just like in a dream.

And maybe the point isn’t to grip it tighter. Maybe the point is to row gently.

To participate fully while remembering there may be a larger level of awareness holding the whole thing. To play your character well, even if you suspect it’s a role.

Sometimes, when I wake from a particularly vivid dream, there’s a brief, disorienting moment where I wonder which layer I’m in.

As if, at any moment I might wake up again, into something even more awake than this and realise that what I called “my life” was one strand of an vast consciousness, exploring itself from countless angles.

If I were to wake from this life, would I feel the same as waking from a night dream? Would I look back at this body, this personality, this name, and smile at how convincing it all was?

I don’t know.

But the more I treat life like a dream, not dismissively, but curiously, the fear loosens and the urgency softens. My need to control every outcome relaxes.

Because in a dream, the point isn’t to dominate the storyline. It’s to experience it. And maybe enlightenment isn’t about escaping the dream. Maybe it’s about becoming lucid within it. About realising that the dreamer and the dreamed are not separate.

Sometimes I wonder if my larger consciousness is watching through my eyes right now, the way I watch through the eyes of my dream character at night.

And maybe, one day I’ll wake up again into something brighter. More awake.

And I’ll remember that this was just consciousness, exploring itself from countless angles. Dreaming itself.