Let’s get this out of the way in which on the fore of the put up: I’m not, to my data, actively dying. I don’t — once more, to my data! — undergo underneath any specific illness apart from the passage of time and the regular nibbles of entropy that can finally result in my demise.

However! I’m about to show 50 in *checks watch* just below a month, and that implies that I’ve been considering so much about demise and dying just lately, which is to say, the identical as normal, most likely. It’s not that fifty is previous — although after I was a child, I definitely would’ve believed {that a} 50 yr previous was mainly a strolling mummy, some antediluvian creature who had simply slithered up out of the mucky swamps. Now turning 50 simply feels regular!

Ha ha simply kidding it completely fucking feels previous. It shouldn’t! It’s not — not likely. However it generally actually feels previous as I get up with extra creaks and crackles and peculiar bumps and barnacles and now comes the regular drumbeat of, welp, time to get on statins and/or a blood stress treatment and/or hey have you ever heard of those GLP-1 medication and you have to be consuming much less and exercising extra and don’t neglect to get this most cancers screening and that most cancers screening and do you will have your retirement found out and the place is your grave plot don’t you will have a grave plot but nicely jesus christ have you ever at the least picked out an urn wait what do you imply you simply wanna be swaddled in natural cotton and buried within the yard with an apple tree planted over your carcass so that individuals can in the future eat apples powered by the decay of your inert corpse goddamnit what’s incorrect with you.

Anyway. It’s tremendous! It’s enjoyable. New stage of life and all that. I’m wiser and beardier and sexier than ever even when my knees make bizarre noises.

That’s not exactly the purpose of this put up — which I’ll get to, admittedly after a really lengthy and ambling stroll, which I hear previous individuals get pleasure from! — however relatively, on this hastening parade of deathly considering, I got here to a collection of small however impactful revelations.

(Small however impactful to me, not essentially to you. Your mileage might range.)

So the opposite day I made waffles for the household, and as an alternative of simply utilizing maple syrup, I wish to richen the syrup with melted butter, which lets me use much less syrup as a result of fats carries taste fairly properly. (Don’t fear, I’m not consuming the waffles, I make eggs for myself like a superb little nearly-50-year-old boy. I say this in case my physician is studying. It’s tremendous, doc! Actually.) Which implies a part of the method includes melting butter within the microwave, and since I’m bizarre, I generally stand in entrance of the microwave and watch the butter go from “dice” to “goo” because the, I dunno, nuclear-powered kitchen-box pelts it with lasers or regardless of the fuck goes on inside a microwave. At this time, whereas watching the dissolution of the butter chunk, I believed–

That’s demise.

I imply, demise for the pad of butter, clearly.

However, metaphorically — it’s demise for me, to me, as nicely. For you. For all of us!

If you happen to ever watch the Colbert Questionnaire on his present, that’s one of many questions — what do you suppose occurs to us after we die.

And I believe that’s what occurs to us.

I believe we’re like butter melting.

I suppose it sounds horrible, this bubbly and seemingly closing dissolution — however I don’t see it that manner in any respect. Watching the butter go from strong Minecraft block to tender puck to lively ooze, I believed, nicely, the butter hasn’t gone anyplace. It’s merely modified types. It’s nonetheless butter. It misplaced its form, nevertheless it stays what it was, however now in an fascinating new container — an un-container, in a manner. And then you definately’re going to eat the butter and perhaps that appears horrible, too, additionally closing, nevertheless it’s not. The butter will get unfold on toast or poured into the gridwork of waffle sockets and eaten. And nonetheless, it stays butter, till it doesn’t — then it will get damaged down, absorbed by the eater, used not simply to gas them when it comes to power and vitamin but in addition to make them glad not directly, as a result of butter tastes scrumptious. Its constituent components have come aside, but stay to serve the physique. And finally that physique will take what it might from the butter bits after which do away with it, or, in the event that they’re over the age of fifty, that butter will lodge of their coronary heart in an oleaginous lipo lump fatberg and possibly kill them in some unspecified time in the future, after which that individual — plus the butter they’ve consumed! — will soften, too, a corpse into the corpus, gone to the earth, nonetheless a physique for a time till it too is consumed and damaged aside, all of the components of it used. The one who’s fed turns into the one who feeds.

It’s form of stunning.

We’re all simply melting butter.

However, okay, okay, that doesn’t actually account for what might be the scariest a part of demise and dying — the existential half. Like, that’s fucking nice if all my particular boy butter molecules* return into the universe, however these aren’t me, not ME-me, not the thought-avatar that’s me, not the desires and wishes and peccadillos and concepts and anxieties that add as much as me, it isn’t the recollections or the attention or any of that shit. That every one simply goes to vapor. All of the id components of Chuck Wendig are within the bonds of the molecules and aren’t the molecules themselves, and when the molecules separate and the bonds break, so does the Chuck Wendig a part of the equation.

Which is why after all we we wish to envision an afterlife, proper? Positive, the crass physique stays behind, caught within the floor or turned to kitty litter, however the us half, the thought half, all that soul enterprise, it floats up into the sky or sinks down into the chthonic channels. It escapes the hungers of birds and earthworms and flits as much as Heaven or oozes into Hell or escapes to some Third Area, like a cosmic Starbucks or an Finish Occasions Regal Cinemas.

The afterlife presents us with consolation. The You half, the Me half, the id half, will get to stay on. You realize. On a farm. Upstate.

It’s simply…

I don’t know if I consider in any of that — okay, I don’t disbelieve in it, certain. If there’s one thing After, then it’s going to occur no matter whether or not I consider in it — if my lack of religion in a selected entity displeases that entity sufficient that he/she/it doesn’t wanna hang around with me for all eternity, nicely, so be it, that’s unlife within the massive metropolis, child. If I don’t get get into the post-death VIP part resulting from some ethical quibble, nicely, I assume that’s on me. I fucked round and as soon as I’m cooked, I discover out. Presuming the cosmic order shouldn’t be topic to such fickle pissery, no matter’s coming is coming whether or not I do know it or not.

What I do consider although is that sure, the method of demise and dying breaks down the bodily physique and leaves a bodily legacy — and there may be an equal breakdown and legacy that occurs when the WHO WE ARE slash id slash soul portion of our existence.

That, too, is left behind as a legacy. As soon as we’re gone we’re left nonetheless as a robust impression on those that knew us and liked us, and simply because the butter finally is absorbed into the eater, so too are we absorbed into these we knew, these we affected. And so they go away, too, however that doesn’t actually imply we’re gone once they’re gone — we go away behind little concept threads, little items of ourselves, little jokes and japes and notions, little quirks and questions, and people I believe keep it up in some kind, evolving and devolving as wanted. All these items of ourselves, residing items, put on the market within the universe, after which cascading on the market, fractally, endlessly. Stones thrown into cosmic ponds.

Ripples going out, hitting the shore on the finish of the universe, rippling again.

I like that so much.

And it makes me take into consideration writing and storytelling.

For a really very long time I’ve advocated for simply leaving all of it on the market on the narrative discipline, so to talk — put all of it on the web page. Bleed there. Cry there. Crack open your chest and take out your coronary heart and smoosh it into the story such as you’re abandoning a primal signature. I’ve advocated for this partially as a result of it’s sensible, good recommendation — tales usually are not significantly unique, however the factor that’s unique about any story is the teller. You’re a confluence of distinctive parts that has by no means been repeated, and so a part of the worth you carry to the web page — or actually to any creation you make — is the YOU half.

I’ve additionally advocated for this as a result of, actually, it’s good for you. It’s good on your coronary heart and soul to be in dialog with it. It’s good so that you can discover a place on your anxieties and your goals. It’s good to make use of all of the components of the pig; the pig being, nicely, you and your massive bizarre meaty mind. And once more: it’s sensible! It’s a lot simpler to make use of YOU and YOURSELF and ALL YOUR WEIRDNESS as an alternative of, like, attempting to get away from all that. You have got all these components shut at hand — seize them. Use them.

(And that is to me the true worth of write what you understand, by the way in which.)

However I see now how that recommendation, that advocacy, goes past simply the sensible and the narratively-useful and turns into… nicely, a form of non secular recommendation, actually. You’re placing your self within the work realizing that in the future that work is what will probably be left of you. It’ll outlive you. It’s a legacy. It’s a part of the narrative molecules that stay within the universe — not simply in bodily kind, like a e-book, and never simply as 1s and 0s, like in an e-book, however in that anybody who reads that work has taken a part of you into them. You’ve affected them. Usually subtly, generally profoundly. You’re a part of their mental and emotional flora, similar as how somebody’s intestine has a choir of micro organism that informs them — you’re now singing of their choir, whether or not as a loud voice or slightly one, you’re in there. Your track, your story, is in them. Which meant it’s within the universe. These discordant notes, these stunning echoes.

After which that’s after I suppose, for this reason you don’t use AI.

First, I do know, I do know, I’m a damaged fucking report with this AI factor, I actually am, and I get that it’s most likely annoying. (Sorry not sorry too dangerous.)

Second, I do know, there are an unholy host of causes to not use AI.

However one which hadn’t actually hit me was this — your work is a part of you and your legacy, however in case you let AI contact that, it actually isn’t yours. It isn’t you. It’s like stolen existential valor. You simply put a You Masks on a model and threw it out of a aircraft. You’ve finished nothing, you’ve contributed nothing, you’ve supplied no legacy, your life has solid no shadow. You’ve finished nobody any favors. Not readers, for certain. Actually not your self. That Issues You Didn’t Make doesn’t carry you ahead. The very best it does is carry ahead a lie — it carries ahead another person, not you.

Lifeless echoes. Flat ripples.

A stone that doesn’t skip throughout the floor of the pond–

It simply fucking sinks.

AI is soulless — so don’t let it sub in as your soul.

And whenever you write, or make artwork, or do something, put your self into it. As wholly as you’ll be able to. With out reservation. Be unabashedly your self. As a result of that’s what goes out into the world. That’s the track you sing. These are the echoes on this nice cave. You’ll stay on in others in case you permit your self to.

We’re all simply melting butter. Wonderful, tasty, melty butter.

Anyway. That is all very foolish and possibly up its personal ass. I simply imply, separate from no matter we take into account the soul, after we finish, the components of us exit into the universe as soon as extra — we get to borrow this mortal shell and trip it round like a robotic, and that shell returns to the cosmos in its constituent components. But additionally whereas on this fleshbot encasement we do lots of issues and meet individuals and make stuff, and that stuff is stuff we additionally go away behind, and I believe all of the extra motive then after we make artwork and inform tales to make it as human — and as private — as we will.

OKAY BYE

p.s. if you wish to get me a birthday current, get your self a gift by shopping for a e-book — ideally a e-book by me, as a result of hey, I have to pay this pesky mortgage factor the financial institution retains telling me about, however actually, any e-book, as a result of books are superior and do your soul good**

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* I promise to by no means once more kind the phrases “boy butter molecules” ever once more

**in the event that they’re written by a human