Jon is not crazy

by Jon Sullivan - 2023-09-21 - Jonism

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The crazy is gone. Now we tidy up after the mess two years of crazy has left behind. Or Not.

Almost exactly two years ago I posted this - "Here we are in 2021 with it's rush towards inevitable civil war. With it's great plague and associated death cults. With it's unassailable oligarchic plutocracy. The last 6 years have been objectively disgusting. Yet I'm pretty happy. And I don't know why." The two years since then have been very odd. And the move to Oregon accelerated things quite a bit. I can say it's been crazy.

Just to recap - For about two years now I've felt crazy. I tell people this seriously and they just laugh. Like, obviously I can't literally be for real crazy, right? Yes.... crazy.... Crazy such as feeling like a different person is sharing my mind. Crazy like suddenly loving things I'd hated my whole life. Crazy like being unable to assure myself the world is real rather than a simulation. Like having my fundamental beliefs change weekly. Like crying for no reason all time. Like every single time I'd go outside, it literally didn't look real, it looked CGI. And the crazy feeling just kept building. I've written extra crazy posts about it that I've thankfully deleted before posting (will I post this one?). I sat down with a friend recently and made them promise to keep a close eye on me and get me to a doctor if I got too weird.

All that is gone now. Just stopped, for no reason at all, gone just like it came. I feel like just Jon again.

I wonder if anyone would notice this new change if I kept it to myself. I still love all the Oregon stuff I've picked up since moving here - Jam bands, hippies, seasons, seafood, hugs. And I still love all the new life skills I picked up while crazy - Joy on tap, sobriety, Stoic virtues, kindness, hugs. So "normal" Jon still has all that stuff. But the constant feeling that I'm apart from what's real is gone. People noticed quickly when I replaced loathing of all things with joy and kindness. But will they notice when the main change is just that I no longer see things and hear voices?

It doesn't matter. The purpose and motivation of it all remains the same. Go have adventures. Take wonderful photos. Eat yummy food. We don't worry about it. It's fine. All back to normal. Nothing to be concerned about.

Still..... The moment I realized the crazy was over was also the moment I was driving down the road and realized....... the magic is gone. I could see it was gone. The moment I looked at the world and it seemed Newtonian rather than procedurally generated. I'm not being vague or clever. That's what happened. One day the world was obviously not real on an objective level, the next day it was. One day the world was filled with abstract concepts seeming to have a physical form, which is crazy, but the next day it's back to normal. After two years. The magic is gone.

The magic is gone. But New Jon remains. Now I guess we figure out how not being crazy works. Today I load the bags into the car and head out. I don't know where, just that it will be a non-crazy adventure, searching for non-crazy beauty, perhaps find some new non-crazy food.

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