Born On Earth

How four years of stepping back rewired my thoughts and brought me home.

Once you stick with books, conversations, a simple life —

Swimming, running, a physical alarm clock with a heavy sound.

Waking up before the sun does. A cheeky wine at midday. A few friends to catch up with on Thursdays.

A job that doesn’t deplete your mind, but your body. A mandatory siesta.

A house garden to tend to.

Writing like it’s your religion.

A place you can call home,

Maybe a chicken or two;

My uncle’s chickens

Something shifts.

Your thoughts become your friends. Or your foes.

Don’t try making enemies with them — it never ends well.

Although sometimes it’s inevitable. And other times, even tempting like that toxic friend group who does all the cool illegal shit.

Sweet at first. Never ends well.

Anyway.

Did I mention no scrolling?

I can finally say —

I’m done. I quit. Geez, how refreshing, you’d think.

But let’s be clear. This isn’t one of those “social media detox, look-how-grounded-I-am” type essays.

There is no cute comeback story. It’s an addiction. And it wasn’t for a weekend, or a month. It’s been over four years now.

That said —

Well… I’m not sure I can recommend it.

You see, for a while I’ve immersed myself in novels.

And my thoughts? They’ve never been more imaginative. They wander like a character’s personality through chapters. They twist, they swell, they spark and collapse.

Sometimes I wonder: are thoughts living entities?

Do they have consciousness? Energy? Power?

I think so. I’ve felt them move through me like spirits, like Atlantic storms.

A frequency that penetrates so deep, I’m not even sure if it’s real; a dream or the past.

Anyway, with the extra free time, I went straight to the classics.

Books that have resisted time, space, generational loops. Fun guaranteed.

Steinbeck, Miller, Woolf, Murakami, Hemingway, Thompson, Borges, Bach, Llamazares — just to name a few.

The scaffolding book-club, featuring my friend Mr. Katz in the background looking cute af.

Their characters have become part of me.

Weighing me down. Lifting me up.

Completely destroying my sense of self — then rebuilding it in silence.

Sometimes all I can do is lie on my back and stare at the ceiling for hours.

Just thinking.

“What is this?”

Last year, I still had the urge to pick up my phone in those uncomfortable in-between moments;

In waiting lines.

In the dead space before bed.

Right after waking up.

That urge has vanished now.

No more itchy feet.

No more sweaty hands when my phone isn’t nearby.

But it took 1,460 days of suffering to get to this point.

Of loneliness.

Of feeling completely lost.

Of self-doubt, weird looks & fights I wish I never had.

You wouldn’t imagine

I felt like I couldn’t see beyond a meter in front of me.

Like a thick, dense fog clouded everything.

Why?

Thoughts.

In some strange way, the scroll, the algorithm, the feed, influencers, whatever the screen throws at you — it guides you.

They comfort you like a thin, fresh blanket on a spring night, or a winter’s fire on a snowy day.

But they mould your thinking patterns, your decisions.

They tell you who you “should” befriend, what to believe or where to go next.

At first, it feels like guidance, until you realize you’ve been led. Somewhere along the way, you stopped driving and without a fight, you gave them the wheel. The worst part?

I didn’t think I could take it back for years.

As it felt natural, almost like I didn’t have a choice. Until one morning, for some strange reason, you wake up and realize you’ve been drifting and decide to go all-in — With no land in sight and no one steering.

Imagine having a captain on your boat.

Then one day, the captain gets scurvy.

And suddenly, it’s all on you — direction, sail maneuvers, fishing, knots — everything.

So, like any good sailor, I learned by doing.

From the best.

I read ancient philosophers.

Psychology bestsellers.

Anything to understand the winds inside my mind.

And here’s what I learned:

Thoughts are the most powerful living entities we know of.

If attention is the currency, thoughts are the central bank.

If the latter collapses, your money is worthless, baby.

All those sweat and tears will get to know what true inflation means.

Let me tell you —

Thoughts, like scurvy, can spread and kill you.

They can shape the course of history.

That thought alone — the idea of someone else trying to manipulate the sails of my own mind, my own savings?

That became my final motivation to get away.

Books, also change the way you think —

but they hold your hand and ask for permission.

They caress your skin like a sunray does, lifting you up, not dragging you down.

They give you the skills you need to survive a recession.

Even though I left the scroll four years ago —

I have to admit, it’s been fucking sad.

It hasn’t been until recently that I can finally say:

I’ve learned to swim. Just a little bit.

Just enough to not drown in a pool. But I still want to cross the Atlantic Ocean.

I’ve seen thoughts destroy souls.

People so lost in their own heads you’re not talking to a human anymore —

You’re talking to something cold.

Smoky.

Rusty steel in the shape of a person.

So lost, there’s no fishing hook strong enough to reel them back to shore.

So no,

I can’t really recommend it.

Not unless you’re ready to meet your mind — naked and unguarded.

Not unless you’re willing to suffer a little.

Not unless you’re okay with the silence

Not unless you’re patient enough to stand still while the fog devours the road ahead.

But if you are?

The sky’s clearer out here.

The wind's quieter.

And when you finally hear yourself — not the voice they gave you, but the one you were born with…

It won’t sound like an echo anymore.

It sounds like home.

And it feels like a spring breeze on your wet back,

sunlight warming your skin,

water running down your naked body while

birds sing somewhere in the distance,

and for the first time in a long time,

you remember:

you were born on Earth.

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