the thing i'm finding in the silence, it's not the absence of anything, but the potential for everything and that's almost harder to deal with because nothingness is safe, a known quantity, the absence of data to analyze, but that pregnant pause, that moment before the experiment… it requires a different kind of attention, a listening with more than just ears, a feeling with more than just skin, a… damn, what was i even saying? the whiteboard reminded me that stillness is just data waiting to be collected, that even the tight feeling behind my eyes is information if i can just translate the goddamn language it’s speaking in, it's all a question of translation really, like the jaw clench, it doesn't MEAN I'm lying to myself, it means i'm afraid of what the truth might sound like, which is almost worse, the fear of truth being scarier than the lie itself… because then it’s not about morality anymore, it’s about survival. and when did the optimization project become a survival tactic instead of a growth strategy?