Lede
If a tool can replace your page, it was never your page.
What fear really is
Fear arrives when the mind forgets the heart’s work. New tools appear. Noise follows. We imagine the end of craft. The truth is simpler. Tools rearrange effort. They do not create soul.
What has not changed
Readers return for presence. A living voice. A page that carries breath, experience, and quiet honesty. Machines can shuffle patterns. They cannot live a winter of grief or a summer of wonder. They cannot sit with you in prayer at three in the morning. Only you can do that. That is why your page matters.
The Modern Hermit Note:
The heart does not compete. It reveals.
When to worry
Be concerned if your work chases trends and copies shapes. Be concerned if your page could have been written by anyone. Then a tool will do it faster and cheaper. Take the hint. Stop imitating. Start living.
When you are fine
You are fine when you write from a lived centre.
You are fine when your lines carry warmth and evidence.
You are fine when you keep a promise to the reader: I will speak plainly. I will show my workings. I will bring clarity, not fog.
For seekers and authors
You are not here to feed a machine. You are here to serve love, truth, and clarity. If one day the tools make something truly new, that is a new shelf. Good. Creation expands. Your work does not vanish. It grows stronger by contrast.
I am still waiting for dolphins to publish a novel. Until then, two kinds of pages exist. Human pages. And human pages shaped with tools. Both can be honest. Only one can carry the weight of a life you have actually lived.
Follow the money. Bless the craft.
The loudest fear often belongs to those who sell it. They rename the age, sell a guide to survive it, then rename it again. Let them. You build a body of work that will still be read when slogans fade.
Simple practices
- Sit in the heart first. One minute of stillness. Breathe. Ask: What wants to be said with love and truth?
- Write from life. A memory, a walk, a mistake, a detail from today.
- Count and cite. If you use numbers, name the source and the out-of-how-many.
- Draft, test, cut. Use tools to outline and tidy. Keep your judgement on.
- Make a signature. One sentence only you could write in every piece.
- Rest the mind, open the heart. Short prayer, short walk, water. Return and cut a third.
- Build a canon, not a week. One honest book outlives a hundred forgettable posts.
Short practice for today
Close your eyes. Hand on heart. Say: I write from love. I write what is true. I release what is noise.
Open your eyes. Write one clean paragraph only you could write. Keep it. Do it again tomorrow.
The Raz take
If tools raise the floor, raise your ceiling. Keep heart in the work. Keep receipts in the facts. Keep your name for pages that count. The rest is training wheels.
Keep or toss
Toss the fear. Keep the craft.
For the daily roast to go with the prayer, I write at TheModernHermit.blog
FROM RM, THE MODERN Hermit’S NoteBOOK
