Writing to Clarify Thought | Searching for Faerie, Finding Me

Lately, I have felt deeply energized by Dan Koe’s encouragement to write essays — not simply to produce content, but to clarify thought itself. His call to action spurred me because it challenged the passive way many of us consume information today. We live surrounded by endless streams of fast content: quick reactions, emotionally charged headlines, recycled opinions, and algorithm-driven noise that grabs our attention. So much of it enters our minds without asking us to reflect, or truly understand what we believe. Over time, this can become dangerous - we’ve seen that in the cancel culture that raged post-COVID which sought to burn the world down - engulfing our mentality to lean on destruction rather than creation. Around this time, I had started the project of Searching for Faerie, Finding Me - and that business shielded me from the chaos. At that time, people found themselves unwittingly victimized by the repeated exposure masking as truth as we were swimming in an ocean of hateful opinions and shallow borrowed narratives that seemed right until scrutinized through a lens of kindness or even, (horrors!) love. In many ways, it felt like the poisoning of the waters of human understanding  — not necessarily through obvious malice, but through sheer herd mentality brought on by drowning in negatively charged social media. 

Writing essays is a way of resisting that popular herd mentality, where thought becomes reactive instead of reflective and feelings become amplified before they are understood. Beliefs become inherited rather than discovered. An essay demands patience and scrutiny. It asks us to slow down long enough to wrestle honestly with our own experiences, contradictions, and uncertainties. I find that writing forces me to scrutinize my thoughts, break it down and then re-assign it into several pigeon holes until it develops into a structure that can feed creativity rather than destruction. I am able to expose some weak reasoning, shallow emotions, and borrowed ideas. Sometimes I begin writing believing I understand exactly how I feel about something, only to realize midway through that my thoughts are incomplete or even conflicted. That discovery itself becomes valuable. Which was why Searching for Faerie, Finding Me had endless revisions before I finally just let it be. Writing is no longer simply about communicating ideas outwardly. It is about uncovering them inwardly - editing, and pivoting where needed. 

That realization has become deeply connected to my creative process surrounding Searching for Faerie, Finding Me. At first, I viewed my blog posts as simple updates documenting the second edition and my yearning to finish the painted Dream Edition. But gradually they evolved into something much more personal in documenting my shifting seasons. These essays have become part reflection, part creative archive, and part exploration of why I create in the first place. Through writing, I am beginning to understand not only the evolution of the book, but also the evolution of myself alongside it. My writing creates a space of refinement and contemplation. In it, I allow my ideas to simmer and mature. I encourage a nuanced scrutiny of outrageous ideas and reflect on impulsive thoughts. It allows me to examine why I believe what we believe. That process matters because meaningful perspectives take time and roll across seasons - shaped slowly through lived experience, questioning, failure, revision, and time. 

I think that is why writing feels increasingly important to me now. The world does not necessarily need more noise. It needs more thoughtful contribution. It needs more people who are willing to honestly share what they have lived, observed, struggled with, and learned. Even imperfect reflections contribute something valuable to the shared pool of human understanding. Even Searching for Faerie, Finding Me which is simply a children’s book with no philosophical postulations - is a small act of participation against intellectual passivity, or the raging herd mentality seeking to burn down the world. Processing out thoughts and emotions is a way of adding clarity instead of confusion. That is ultimately why I have committed myself to writing these essays. Not because I believe I possess the perfect answers, but because the process of searching for understanding itself feels meaningful. In slowing down enough to write, I begin slowing down enough to think. And in thinking more deeply, I begin discovering not only what I believe, but why I believe it at all.