There’s a lot to be said about being able to feel that something is done. Finished. Over. Last call. Go home.

In Oliver Burkeman’s newsletter “The Imperfectionist,” he recently touted the importance of being able to call it a day. There’s real comfort in knowing your day is done; and the fact that feelings of finitude seem so elusive to us now, doesn’t mean we need them any less.

In the absence of imposed endings, I must explain to myself why I’m choosing to stop. And as a friend of mine liked to quote Harry Dean Stanton saying in Fire Walk With Me well, that’s “just like… more shit I gotta do now”

I haven’t been on an airplane in a long time. I can only imagine how hellish it’s become; a microcosm of how well we’re generally faring being around one another.

That we spend so much time in virtual landscapes obviously means we spend so much less in real ones. A lot has been said about our notable drift away from third spaces – those places that aren’t work or home, but afford an opportunity to be out in the world, to practice being human around other humans.

If we don’t get enough exposure to witnessing ourselves in context, our egos only grow and our tolerance for shared anything contracts.

The activity of the internet has been described as a “race to the bottom of the brain stem.” Much of what we encounter online appeals to our most primal impulses. Cause if you can access that shit, you can sell yours.

It makes sense in an attention economy, that the fiercer the competition for people’s attention, the wilier and more wicked the tactics for getting it have gotten. That others are capitalizing on our achilles’ heels is just par for the course now. And learned helplessness is often the feeling that results. Followed by the one I’m fighting through in this episode: shame.