Perhaps the trick to this is not to come into the experience expecting to walk out of it somehow more clever, with better hair or a more slender body. After all everything’s a trick of the mind, really, even the arbitrary flip-flop coin-flip box-office-crashing rotten-tomatoes-smashing nature of good and bad, because what’s really good at all anyway? There’s some clever guy, probably an academic or a philosopher or something like that who said the more you try to be happy, the less you will be. I say that’s something someone who’s already given up would say. I mean, if you never try to be happy then you wouldn’t even notice how un-happy you are. Perhaps the trick to getting through life unscathed is to use plenty of cliche – liberally. To sprinkle your morning coffee with words shaken out of the nearby newspaper, or BuzzFeed article, to tear off with your fingernails each and every label on every can of food you own. Can’t be too disappointed when there was never any level of expectation. I don’t open a silver cylinder expecting guts of beans, I open the tin to find food. I don’t go out of the house expecting to be surprised anymore, I find surprise. How can I be depressed when I don’t have any thoughts? Check my pockets. They’re full of nothing. Tell my therapist I’m leaving on the first cruise out o this country. Tell my dog I am taking her for walks until I can do it blindfolded. Tell the government I am doing alright. Tell my mother that I wished I were better to her, but no-one knows what that means.

Freewriting Explanation: Every day, Valen shall use 5 minutes to write completely unprompted and uninterrupted, letting the words lead the way. There is no end purpose to each piece, but rather, the pieces are allowed to develop naturally in their own way. The pieces are then uploaded without edits.