Emile Thelander

Sometimes I wonder why anyone would care what I have to say. Maybe that’s insecurity, or maybe it’s just a passing mood – the kind that makes even honest work look pointless.

Most people aren’t waiting to hear what anyone else thinks. They’re just scanning for something that feels true to them, something that echoes their own half-formed thoughts. And that’s fine. I’m not here to please everyone.

What matters isn’t novelty, it’s honesty – the texture of experience filtered through a particular voice. Maybe that’s all any of us can offer: the angle only we can take.

When I remember that, the noise quietens. I don’t need to be important. I just need to keep saying things that feel real.

I heard a thin whimpering while in the bathroom. Went looking, checked the stalls – nothing. The sound kept calling, so I stepped outside and found Pyra in the bushes, staring back at me like she’d been caught in the act.

Five puppies, hidden and alive. Nixx, Ember, Myst, Wysp, and Fenn.

I keep thinking – what if I hadn’t heard them? Would she have stayed with them, or walked away? The sound of survival is small, but it travels.

Late Arrival

I thought it was over. Five puppies, all accounted for. Pyra resting. Hours had passed – that lull where you start accepting you now have five more mouths to feed.

Then I heard her munching. That wet, deliberate sound that freezes your gut. For a moment I thought she was eating one of them. Mid-class, I turned, ready to intervene, and instead had the displeasure of seeing her tear open an embryonic sack – a sixth puppy, impossibly late.

Three hours after the others. We named her Lumen, because she finally saw the light. It fits – the counterbalance to Nixx, the shadow-born. Birth and afterbirth, dark and light, mystery and revelation, all in one litter.

There’s something almost theatrical about the timing.

I keep scrolling through noise hoping for a spark of meaning. Maybe that’s why I build instead – to create the signal I can’t seem to find.

I made a TikTok account and haven’t posted anything. There’s no grand reason. I just haven’t.

It’s not perfectionism or fear – more like waiting for something that actually feels alive. The pressure to “just start” sounds useful until it starts to sound like noise.

Silence has its own timing. Maybe this is part of it.

Perfection used to feel like discipline. Now it feels like delay.

I used to polish things before they’d even earned the right to exist – rehearsing instead of releasing, refining instead of testing. It looked like care, but it was fear in disguise.

But I’ve been learning to work differently. To ship the unfinished, to test before I tighten, to let experiments breathe. Some things fall flat; others surprise me. But at least they move.

The work teaches me more in motion than I ever learn from holding it still.

Sometimes the hardest part is simply beginning. A small step today is better than waiting for the perfect moment.

Creation is “better” than consumption only in the sense that it’s active – it shapes you. Consumption shapes through you.

Creating forces choice, perception, and presence. It’s not about output; it’s about agency.

But if you define creation as something meant to be received, it collapses without an audience. That’s why real creation isn’t performance – it’s a way of relating to reality.

A sculptor carves to find the form inside the stone, not to impress the gallery.

So maybe:

• Consumption feeds you.
• Creation transforms you.
• Sharing connects you.

Only one of those needs an audience.

I said I’d begin yesterday. I didn’t.

It’s not resistance – just the body catching up to the thought.

Some things only move when you stop trying to push.

It doesn’t have to be perfect. It doesn’t have to be profound. Today, I just need to start. A short clip, a simple moment, anything – just enough to make it exist.

The rest is momentum.

I’ve learned that the honest thing is rarely the sellable thing. Sales and marketing often run on fear – selling safety, belonging, certainty, the promise that no one will be left behind. It works, but it’s sleazy. The moment you start appealing to fear, you’ve already stepped out of honesty.

There’s another way, quieter and probably less efficient. It doesn’t try to convince anyone. It just names something true and lets people decide for themselves. It spreads slowly, but it doesn’t corrode the soul.