Let’s Take a Step Back
A rare moment of stillness from someone who doesn’t actually know how to be still.
Lately my articles have been… well, a bit depraved. Depressed. Catastrophic.
Just meh.
The world feels meh, everything feels slightly wrong, and my default coping mechanism is to complain about it loudly on the internet. Which is fun, occasionally cathartic, but not exactly sustainable.
So for once, let’s do the thing I should’ve done weeks ago:
get into the mindfulness and stillness of all this.
Not “voodoo hoodoo,” not meditation apps with rain sounds, not pretending I’m suddenly a monk (although that is my plan b).
I mean the simple, almost primitive act of being still, and in my case, thinking and analysing without spiralling straight into oblivion.
The Mind That Doesn’t Switch Off
I’m no stranger to thinking.
God knows I do it too much, which is… half the problem.
Some people think beautifully. Their mind is a calm river.
Mine is a pressure washer pointed directly at my frontal lobe.
Is it OCD?
Is it schizophrenia?
Is it autistic pattern-seeking?
Who cares. It’s just how my brain processes the world, aggressively and constantly.
And it does not switch off.
Ever.
So the closest thing I get to peace is when I force my brain to lock onto something completely different. A distraction with a pulse.
This article is that distraction.
And you’re here with me, so now we’re in this together (sorry in advance, but strap in).
Candles, Concerts, and Quiet Realisations
Right now, as I’m writing this, I’m sitting behind the sound desk at a candlelight concert. I’m here voluntarily, helping out my family and my church, and I’m half-listening, half-tinkering on a website while the musicians run through the same songs I’ve heard a dozen times (if you’ve seen my stories, you know I help out a lot).
And then I see something tiny.
A couple whispering to each other in the crowd.
Nothing dramatic. Nothing profound. Just a small human thing.
But my brain, being the chaos machine it is, immediately goes:
They have lives. They have stories. They have entire worlds inside them.
There are about 175 people in this room right now.
Every single one has dreams, problems, trauma, hopes, deadlines, families, pasts, futures.
I’m not the main character.
None of us are.
I’m just a cog in a massive, shifting, impossible machine made of billions of stories running in parallel. And so is everyone else in this room, whether they know it or not.
Everyone Is a Story You’ll Never Read
I’ll never see these people again. Probably.
Maybe I’ll brush past one of them at the shops next week.
Maybe one is a future client.
Maybe one is a future relationship I haven’t walked into yet, Gold Coast is small, after all.
But what fascinates me is this:
every person here is living a story I will never witness.
And I’m living one they’ll never see.
Someone here will drive home alone.
Someone will drive home with someone new.
Someone might not make it home at all.
Someone will sit in their car afterwards and cry for reasons I’ll never understand.
Someone will go home to a life-changing message waiting on their phone.
All these stories are brushing up against each other for a split second, then fracturing apart into separate timelines again.
It’s bizarre.
It’s beautiful.
It’s grounding.
The Quiet Miracle of Being Conscious
We take consciousness for granted in the same way we take breathing for granted.
But look around a room like this and suddenly it hits:
Everyone here is thinking.
Everyone here is feeling.
Everyone here is perceiving the world in a completely unique way.
People see versions of you that you’ll never see yourself.
And you see versions of them they’ve never considered.
We’re all walking around as incomplete biographies, footnotes in each other’s timelines.
The 6 Degrees of Gold Coast
We joke about “six degrees of separation,” but on the Gold Coast it’s honestly more like two and a half.
Everyone knows someone who knows someone who once dated someone you know.
And that connection web?
It’s how reality actually moves.
It’s how influence happens, even unintentionally.
Which leads me to the bit that actually calms me:
The Infinite Chain of Events That Put You Here
Think about what had to happen for this moment to exist:
My dad had to get the idea to bring this concert to the church.
I had to volunteer.
I had to learn how to run a sound desk as a kid.
I had to ask someone to bring my laptop tonight.
That person’s night changed because of my request.
And now I’m writing this article right now, in a room full of strangers who are unknowingly part of this moment too.
The cascade is wild.
We influence each other in ways we never notice.
We change paths for people without meaning to.
We alter tiny moments in strangers’ lives without ever realising it.
And that’s… oddly comforting.
Stillness, Found Accidentally
Maybe this is my version of mindfulness.
Not emptying the mind, but filling it with something bigger than my own noise.
The reminder that:
I’m not alone.
I’m not the centre of anything.
Everyone matters to someone, even if only for a moment.
Every story continues after it leaves the room.
And that thought, that little quiet awareness, is enough to make the world feel less suffocating for a second.
This is how I chill.
This is how I breathe.
This is the only stillness my brain understands.
Just… stepping back.
And seeing the whole, chaotic, beautiful machine.