if you are spiraling right now, please remember this simple truth:
the only thing the spiral wants is to keep spiraling.
the contents of your spiraling - the job thing, the text, the family squabble, whatever - it’s all simply fuel for the spiral.
the other day i was gifted the rare treat of spiraling about essentially nothing. The contents of my spiral were non-existent, and yet I spiraled nonetheless, down, down, and all around until I realized, after having a somewhat manic episode inside of a groupchat full of kind humans, what had befallen me.
this is that story.
the only thing the spiral wants is more spiral
It is a winter day, as they all are, when you spiral.
I’ve been building this little tool inside Claude Code, which is this AI coding thing I along with most of the Twitter.com world have been obsessed with. Man, I feel a lot of shame sharing this, like I’m betraying my writer brothers and sisters?
I call it Vibe Coach, or Ship the Vibe, idk, I keep going back and forth on the name. The whole idea is that all these people, myself included, keep coming up with ideas and getting manic and spending money and then not finishing anything. So this tool helps you finish.
I even use it to help me finish making it because I am nothing if not an ironic little guy full of whimsy and war.
And I do. I finish it. Put it on Gumroad for $99, which seems insane but I’m like “ya know what, people are paying $100 to $200 a month on Claude Pro Max plans and not finishing diddly, this could help and ‘add value’ so why not!”
Then I post it to this small subreddit called Vibe Coder Nest (shame intensifies) and I drop a link in WhatsApp chat for his Pathless Path community.
Then I get in the car to head home so we can all go see this art exhibit in the woods near UNC Asheville called BATLAND.
BATLAND!
It’s this art exhibit where you follow a hand-drawn map to find these hand-drawn bats hidden in the woods. It’s also a protest against the plans to turn those woods into a soccer stadium.
And I’m driving home, manic, anxious, full of worry about whether anything’s ‘happened’ with this thing I just launched.
Checking the WhatsApp chat to see who read my message. Nobody reacted.
Checking my email to see if any sales came through. Nothing.
Checking Reddit and - yep, my post was deleted. Removed for self-promotion, even though that’s what everybody on that subreddit does.
It’s a failure, I tell myself, and I need it not to be, even though it’s been six minutes and only six people in the world have probably ever even seen it. So there I go, spiraling and freaking out, and that’s when the blanket of self-loathing emerges: Embarrassed. Stupid. Ashamed. Fucking idiot, thinking this would work, rushing everything, shitbag moron, this is why everything fails.
“Dada look!!” Wilder screams as we find a bat in the distance, fifty feet up on a tree, staring down at us. “WHAT” I scream and we run toward it.
Lauren asks if I’m okay, says I seem like I’m somewhere else. I try to explain but don’t even know how to bring it up because it all seems so stupid.
I’m embarrassed to even tell her.
“Do you know what vibe coding is?” And she says no. And I think god what the hell am i doing.
The kids fight over the laminated map of the bats and Emma June NEEDS to be held but NOT by me, so Lauren doesn’t really have time to respond. Which I understand intellectually:
this is not about me.
But it still hurts a lot even though its not a big deal, like a gentle punch to the tummy that levels me, like the physics of reality have been broken, which makes sense: feelings are not physics, they are waves exploding, full of particles, both and all.
We cross the threshold from general toddler mayhem to meltdown mayhem and I’m getting snappy and short, so Laur says we need to go, “dada is getting hangry.”
And I say “I’m not hangry. I told you why I was upset and you ignored it.”
In the car now, having wrestled the kids into their buckles and straps, we sit, spent.
Lauren says sorry and i get more mad at myself because there’s nothing at all for her to apologize for. I’m not mad at her, I explain. Intellectually I get that its not at all her fault but still I just feel hurt? Ignored? Ashamed again for my insane illogic.
We get home. The night is hard but the kids fall asleep. We watch Pluribus together, which feels good. Too good, like I don’t deserve it. Because I’ve been a piece of shit all day.
And for what? The failure wasn’t real. No one had even seen the thing I’d put out into the world.
That’s the gift, actually, because it’s helped me realize: the spiral doesn’t care about the details - it is pure and hungry to feed on anything that makes itself make sense.
The spiral doesn’t care about reality. The spiral just wants the spiral.
post spiral post script (PS PS)
The next day, I spiral again in the WhatsApp chat and change the price from $99 to $0 and put it out for free. That leads to a few people reaching out to meet, some conversations that lead to me sharing more about what I’ve been building, which leads to Paul suggesting I tweet about it, which leads to this viral as hell tweet:
It’s funny because I almost didn’t include this part - the success - like it didn’t matter, because my mind doesn’t process good things as good but simply as nothings. That’s part of the spiral too. It’s selective as hell.
But reality does matter. Physics - matter - matters.
enter…the noodle
Instead of spiraling, perhaps I can simply noodle.
A noodle is a more calm version of a spiral. You’re just noodling, what’s the big deal!
Except of course a noodle can easily become a spiral.
And regardless of its velocity, the truth holds: all the noodle wants is to do more noodling.
So what’s the answer?
—
I’ve been waking up lately in the hour of four, high noon for the noodle and prime time for the spiral.
Noticing them both - awareness, annoyingly, helps.
I say annoyingly because part of me obviously likes the noodle. Loves the spiral.
Maybe the difference is simply in orientation. Noodles and spirals are active things. Verbs of movement. To notice feels more passive, observant - an experience more than a race. In one, there’s an end state, a goal of winning. In the other, you’re simply observing. Finite versus infinite.
Who knows?
Can you see it happening right here? My noticing is becoming a noodle. I’m looking again for an answer about how we shouldn’t look for answers. But then I noticed it, stepped back, and here we are, in the woods, amongst the bats.
We came back the next morning, the fam and I, to find the rest of the bats, except this time, we didn’t take a map.
comments, notes, updates
are you spiraling? plz check in
i feel like i should say: i don’t have claude code write my stuff. it helps me with copy editing a little bit and i’m playing with how else it can help but the words and ideas and thought and spirals are all mine
a lot of ppl seem interested in learning what i’m doing with claude code - if that’s you, add ur email here and i’ll holler soon with whatever i end up doing (workshop, a separate newsletter, etc)
unfortunately the rat bastards at city hall (or somewhere?) took down the bats which, as RustyNail put so well below, is a ‘load of manure’
The biggest thing you can do to help is sign this petition - they have a goal of 25,600 signatures and are 9,644 away.
what about now? are you spiraling? they can sneak up on you. share if you want:
what about ai - how are you doing with it? should we do a live zoom event to just chat about it all? happy to if ppl want just lmk
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